September 4, 2024

The Rebirth of Ross54: Xeno’s Story and the Return of Music

For anyone who even marginally follows Ross54, it is clear that the band has suspended all activity since at least 2017. This was not due to internal disagreements or reasons related to the band itself; Xeno, the keyboard player and founder of the band, went through a series of health problems, rather serious and disabling ones, which required several surgeries and led to permanent damage. However, this did not cause the band to break up, as one might imagine, but rather led to a period of waiting and, as a result, to the suspension of all activity. What happened? Xeno suffered a series of heart attacks, the first in 2017, followed by a series of worsening conditions and three more heart attacks that eventually resulted in complete deafness. A deaf musician is not exactly the best thing in the world, but he reacted, and in this reaction he was supported by all the members of the band. After a very long path of both physical and hearing rehabilitation, and thanks to the determination and will to live that have always distinguished him, he finally returned to the keyboards. Below, if you feel like reading it, you will find a description written by Xeno himself of what happened to him.

First of all, I would like to thank those who follow us for their patience in reading what is written below, but my greatest thanks go to the many people who have stood by me over these years, giving me moral support: my partner, the irreplaceable love of my life, my children who have always been present, the doctors who got me back on my feet, the team that installed a cochlear implant in me, the team that made it possible for me to learn how to hear again, and last but not least, the band, which has always been close to me with discretion but active presence. I am no spring chicken, and unfortunately I have been diagnosed with arteriosclerosis. This means that there is no chance of a cure, but it is possible to slow its progression with medication and a healthy, calm lifestyle. In 2017, the disease first manifested itself with a heart attack; I was saved only because I was treated in time. Later, in 2018, a second and third heart attack followed, naturally with the application of several stents, and the last one, in chronological order, in 2019. These heart attacks led to a lack of oxygen and, as a consequence, to the death of the hair cells in the left ear, causing almost total deafness. The right ear suffered rather serious damage, but some hearing survived. I gathered information on how to remedy this situation, and what emerged was that a possible solution was a cochlear implant, but it would have to be evaluated by an extremely competent medical team given my heart condition. The procedure is done under general anesthesia and lasts a few hours, so the final word was up to the doctors. Their opinion was positive, and it was decided to go ahead with the operation, which took place in 2022. I missed music, and what drove me to take such a serious risk was precisely my love for it, apart from the fact that I could once again even take part in the simplest family conversation. Deafness is a very serious handicap: not only does it exclude you from society, but it also puts you at mortal risk in a world like ours. Imagine walking down the street and not hearing a car coming up behind you. It may sound like a trivial example, but I have nearly been run over several times. Returning to hearing recovery, it was not easy and took two years. A cochlear implant is not a simple prosthesis that amplifies and corrects sound by compensating for the shortcomings an ear may have. It is a substitute for the hair cells and works by sending that electrical impulse they generate inside the cochlea and transmit to the auditory nerve. This electrical stimulus was lost when they died, and unfortunately hair cells do not regenerate. Once they are gone, your hearing is definitively gone too, and that is what happened to me. Technology helps us a great deal in this regard, but the cochlear implant is not immediate; it is not usable right away, and the brain must be retrained to interpret what the implant communicates through electrical stimulation. Moreover, nature, which is far superior to any micro-surgical device such as the implant, gives us a very high number of hair cells distributed לאורך the entire length of the cochlea, providing the brain with an extremely accurate and precise signal. 20,000 hair cells is the average content of a human ear. These cells are like a 20,000-band equalizer. Micro-surgery and technology today replace these 20,000 cells with 10 electrodes, so covering the immense range of natural frequencies is almost impossible, but the external processors are equipped with astonishing technology and manage to do an excellent job. To achieve excellent results, however, dedication, a great deal of effort, and a lot of energy are needed. The first moments with the cochlear implant switched on are quite traumatic: what you hear is about as far from reality as possible — metallic noises, absurd sounds that do not match the visual scene, voices that have nothing human or understandable about them. But this is normal at the beginning: you are trying to understand a very complicated symphony and reproducing it on a little radio with a broken speaker, a damaged amplifier, and a disturbed signal. Then, little by little, everything starts to resemble something familiar, but resemblance is not reality; you understand something, but we are still very far from the real sound. Meanwhile, the months pass, then the years....

Two years have passed since activation, and today I can hear clearly, even though there are still some difficulties that I know will soon be overcome, because the results I have achieved allow me to say so with complete peace of mind and certainty. This led me to call the band together again and try a rehearsal. The result exceeded expectations: everything perfectly clear, everything perfectly enjoyable. Music has finally regained the place it deserves. A hard and difficult fight that I won, a battle that mattered, but that was won. Ross54 are preparing for a new adventure, and I believe the quality will be much higher than before. We are more mature, and I think this experience has changed us all somewhat — me for sure, and in a very profound way. Stay tuned and let’s discover together what the future has in store for us.

Thank you for your attention and patience

Xeno