I think the day the music died was a dictation test in music theory too. You have to listen to the piano and write out, chart out what is being played as it's being played. And I was sitting there with my hearing aids, with my hope, and everybody else's pencil started moving but mine. I was the only one who was standing still waiting for the test to start, and then looking around at the room and realizing this isn't going to work. And everybody got up and handed their test in and looked at me with this look of immense pity and kind of like, "Mmm, that really sucks." Welcome to the Dove Baron Show. In just a moment, you're going to hear from a young woman who has transformed a profound loss into an extraordinary victory. At 18 years old, Mandy Harvey faced a musician's worst nightmare, and that is total deafness. But where others might have seen an ending, Mandy crafted a new beginning, armed only with visual tuners and the feel of vibrations under her feet. She sat back onto the stage and into a journey that defied all expectations. Now, if this sounds a bit familiar, maybe that's because Mandy Harvey got Simon Cowell's Golden Buzzer on America's Got Talent. And inspiring millions worldwide, the video actually of that audition got over 700 million views, I believe it was. Mandy's story isn't just about music, it's about redefining possibility. So stay tuned because the next two episodes could change the way you see the challenges of your life. Welcome to the Dove Baron Show. Come for the stories. Stay for the learning. Tap into our community of deeply curious learners by subscribing now. This isn't just another podcast, it's your passport to unparalleled insight. Every episode features the wisdom of global leaders, scientists, entertainers, philosophers, theologians and journalists. So let's dive back in. Mandy Harvey was a focus music education major, when at 19 she lost her residual hearing and became profoundly deaf. However, her passion for music and encouraging others has led her around the world and onto some of the biggest stages as she works to break down barriers, build community and redefine what is possible. Ladies and gentlemen, turn up the volume and help me to welcome the author of Sensing the Rhythm, Finding Your Voice in a World Without Sound. Mandy Harvey. Welcome Mandy. Hello and thank you so much for having me. It is a pleasure. I've been looking forward to this interview very much. As you know, my assistant Michelle is a big fan of yours. I've watched your audition video several times. I actually showed it to my wife this morning and she's like, wow, wow, I'm excited. That's so sweet. You don't watch it too many times, you might explode. I found some people watch it all the time. I'm like, oh my goodness, that's bizarre. I haven't watched it more than like once myself. Yeah, it's weird. I don't like watching myself. I understand. I get it. I'm the same. So where I always like to start this show is with something called the emotional source code and what that gives us context for who you are because nobody arrives where they are instantaneously. There's a journey because first of all, you were a music major. So was music something that was in your family? Was that something that you were sort of born into or does it something that came about on its own? It's part and part. I would say that music is mostly something that I came into on my own, though my dad has a deep love and connection with playing guitar. Nobody in my family sings outside of just home singing. My dad's would say he's unit tuned. All the tunes start to sound the same, but at least he stays in key. I really did fall in love with choir, though, when I was very young. My mom put me in a choir class when I was about four years old. I've always been hard of hearing and she was very aware that I was socially isolating myself because as you get older, it's even harder to follow conversations and you're aware that you're misunderstanding conversations and so you kind of just stop talking to people. So she stuck me in a choir class to watch me while she was at church so she could go do a couple other things and they handed me the sheet music and all of the words were in black and white and it was the first real memory that I have of knowing what was going to be said before it was going to be said and actually being a part of the conversation and not being that person who was just guessing in the distance. So my love of music was really stemmed more on the community aspect of the whole thing. I wanted to be a part of making something with other people. But you went into music education. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Performance is horrifying. No. Well, how old were you when you went into music education? Well, I mean, my focus for that was young. I realized when I was in middle school that I did not have these grand visions of being a performer because I was utterly terrified. I would vomit on people when I had to perform or talk in front of them for too long. If they stared at me too long, I would pass out. So, you know, if you can't do teach, if you can't do teach and if you can't teach vomit, I know until you vomit until you vomit enough, but I never wanted the attention. It wasn't about the green lights and all of the fantastic, you know, look at me moments. I wanted to be able to be there for somebody else to find a community, to be able to express themselves and to be a part of something that was so beautiful, which music is. And I like the complexity of it. I'm a very music nerd at the soul. And so I love the study and my hope when I first entered into high school was I want to go and become a college professor and teach vocal jazz. That was my dream. And I aligned everything to that dream. So you lost your residual hearing at 18, but as you said, you had hearing loss before that. Yeah. That's what I found fascinating is that you chose to go into music even with partial hearing. Yeah. I had to work harder than everybody else, but it didn't change what my love was. You can't really choose what your heart follows, you know. So this music was not part of the family other than your dad playing guitar. Nobody was going to be performing. You went into it to be a professor eventually. That was the desire. Then you're studying the music and you lost the hearing. Yeah, I made it. I mean, you have these like grand amazing dreams where you're like, I'm going to do this. This is the goal. And I worked my butt off. I did all the scales, I was in four or five different choirs at the same time, all year round. I was constantly working on my craft and music theory and dictation and history and everything. And I had the opportunity to audition for multiple universities. And I was accepted into all of the universities I had auditioned for. And I got to pick. Since I chose a smaller program at Colorado State University because I knew the teachers that were there and I knew their heart in what they were wanting to do. And I made it. And there was this beautiful sense of calm when you're where you're supposed to be. You know that feeling is like, I did it, I'm following the dream. I just have to show up now and do more work. And that's when everything started to go wrong. Can you walk us through that? Sure. Because this moment of wow, I've made it. And then the anticlimax. I think that I had had pretty realistic expectations of my life when I was young. I'd always known that I had hearing issues. I've always had audiologists at the ready. I've had a lot of ear infections and a lot of perforated ear drums and things. So lip reading and understanding that it's going to be a difficult time has always been known. But I was told pretty confidently, you won't really lose your hearing hearing maybe until you're much, much older because it's going at such a slow progression. So I was very confident that I would be able to hold a career. But I started noticing a problem in a psychology class actually. One of those ones that you have to take, your standard educational courses that you're forced to do to graduate. And I was stubborn enough that I chose that I was going to sit in the middle of the room and not in the spit zone front and center right in front of the teacher staring at her down because I'm independent. I'm an adult now. I get to choose. And I couldn't understand what she was saying. So the next class I moved close front row still couldn't understand her talking. And this was a big red flag. I've been here before. So I just assumed ear infection are a perforated in her drum or something like that and called and set up an appointment with my mom. And I just had this feeling that something was really wrong. And when they tested me, I had lost 35 to 40 decibels of sound in both ears over the course of they don't know probably just the summer. And we said, well, maybe it'll stop. And this is where it'll stay. Come back in a couple of weeks, went back in a couple of weeks and I lost another five. Went back in another couple of weeks. I lost another five. And they were really hopeful that it wasn't as progressive as it was. But by Christmas, I couldn't understand people talking anymore. I was getting fitted for hearing aids and getting handed a diagnosis that you're now legally deaf in both ears. But here's your hearing aids. Here's your hope. Go back to school. You got this. And I went back to school for that second semester with hope and it wasn't enough. I think the day the music died was dictation test in music theory too. You have to listen to the piano and write out, chart out what is being played as it's being played. And I was sitting there with my hearing aids with my hope and everybody else's pencil started moving, but mine. I was the only one who was standing still waiting for the test to start and then looking around at the room and realizing this isn't going to work. And everybody got up and handed their test in and looked at me with this look of immense pity and kind of like, that really sucks because music is also very competitive. And so it's like, oh, one more person, I don't have to worry about, but there were genuine people who understood the gravity of what was happening and you could just see the sadness on people's faces and concern and that was it. At that moment though, I think most of us would go, it's over. Yeah. Forgive me, I would assume that that's what you would think too in that moment. I did. I did for quite a while. I think a lot of people are uncomfortable with the idea of mourning loss. They want you to be happy. And when you're going through a rough patch, when you're going through something that's monumental or something that is extraordinarily difficult, they always kind of try to force the happy stuff into you. I always look on the bright side of life. You're going to get through this one, one door closes, another one opens. And to be truthful, when one door closes, one door just closes. Doors don't just open themselves, you have to open doors. And if you're not emotionally ready to even look for the other opportunities or notice that other doors exist, you get swallowed by your pain. And I think for me in that time, I really needed to mourn the loss of who I was. I needed to have a mental funeral and bury the person who I was, because I was never going to be able to go back to be her again. I think that's a really important message, as I believe you know, I fell off a mountain and got smashed to pieces. And people used to say things like, on the bright side, fuck off. Look at all the other people who have fallen off a mountain and said, they got back up. Yeah, just noncease. Even as the grief of identity crisis, who I was, is gone. That person has died. Even though I may be physically living, there is a death of who I was. And I've got to grieve that in order to birth somebody new. Yes. I know for me, the first nine months of that was complete denial. I'm great. I'm coming back, which was bullshit. I was really quite depressed but not telling anybody. And then there was another nine months of sort of manifesting, pulling away myself to discover who I was. What was that grieving period for you and what was that like? I think my grieving period started back at Christmas time when I was getting fitted for hearing aid, one, because they were extraordinarily expensive. I think there were $3,000 apiece, so six grand, and insurance doesn't cover stuff like that. So it had to come out of pocket. My family is very not affluent. I don't like to say that we're poor because we've never struggled for finding food or stuff like that, but six grand was an awful lot of money. And it was heartbreaking that I felt like I was being a burden to my parent on that. But when I started the new semester, I was in denial that this was going to work. And when I failed that test, I had to change that class immediately because I had a lot of surgeries and stuff because I have a connective tissue disorder, Ehlers-Danlos, and so I had surgeries coming up. And without having that credit, I was going to lose my insurance. So I didn't have time to mourn that class. I had to jump into another one, but I shut down. I completely shut down, I stopped showering, I stopped leaving my room. I went through a period of investigation where I really wanted to understand the finality of what was happening. One of those examples was I used to try to clap really hard because when you clap and you don't hear yourself clapping, it's a very awkward thing to see. It's awkward to feel. You can feel yourself clapping, but you can't hear it. And so I was like, "Well, maybe I'm just not clapping hard enough." And so I would clap harder and harder and harder until I bruised my bone and I couldn't move my hands anymore. Or I would drag my nails onto different surfaces to try to remember what the sound was, but the recall never came. And so I lost most of my fingernails for a time. I knew how many steps it was to the bathroom and decided how long could I hold it because I didn't want to get up out of bed because that was way too much effort. I knew how many steps it would take and how much effort that would be to go to the bathroom. I shut down. I stopped whistling. I went from being in choir all day long, all day long, and then singing outside of that and working outside of that since middle school, I've sung 12 hours a day since middle school and now I can't even whistle. It's too painful and too awkward and too unknown. Why am I making noise that I can't hear? What's the point? But I truly think that my denial was a much bigger issue because when the reality hit, I had made the profound mistake of attaching my entire identity to the singular dream. And when that dream died and I was past denial and into, "No, this is actually real," I lost a sense of who I was, who am I anymore? I have no focus, I have no potential, I have no gifts, I have no talent for anything other than this. I'm nothing. And that is a very dangerous mental place to be in because it's one is an absolute lie because you're built up of so much more than one singular dream and so much more than one singular dream created and done exactly in the one way that you thought it could go. There's so many different ways to chase what it is that you fell in love with in the first place. I just couldn't even see that part for a very long time. How long were you in that very darkly depressed place? I would say I don't know how to whistle, I'm very angry, angry, angry for a full year and then even when I cracked out of that, I started getting involved with music again because of my dad. Even when years later, when I was performing, I was still very bitter. I would say it took me a good five years to fully embrace the situation and I still have days where I'm just like, it would be really nice to be able to listen to that album with everybody else. Like David Gilmore, David Gilmore had a new album that came out. I would flip and love David Gilmore and I went and saw him with my husband at Madison Square Gardens and all I kept thinking was this is amazing that I have the opportunity to be here. I never thought that I would be able to see this person live and I can't hear it. This sucks. I still have my moments. I still am so thankful for the opportunity and the moment that I got to share, I'd spent the time and effort to actually look up sheet music for the songs that I thought would be played and took the time to actually learn some of them so at least I would know what was going on. But I still have my bad days. Of course, of course. I know there was a moment for me that was the turning point but it wasn't like, oh, now I'm better. In fact, it was like, now I have to really admit how shitty things are so that I can turn them around. There was a catalyst for me which was a moment of rage that actually was for me and that at realizing that I was not angry about what I was angry about, I was angry about me, the death of Dove or the previous version of Dove. Was there a moment like that for you? Mine was a little bit gentler. Mine was a little bit nicer, no offense but there was a distinct moment where there was like a sparkle. It wasn't like, oh, everything is perfect now, not at all. But my dad asked me to play guitar with him and we had done that since I was a kid. His way of kind of communicating and being connected to his kids was playing guitar so playing guitar with him was very normal except we hadn't done it for a very long time and he missed that and he didn't have anything to say so he was like, well, we can just sit in the basement, play guitar and don't have to talk. You're not talking to anybody anyway, so what's the worst that can happen? And so I sat in the basement with an acoustic guitar and I didn't want to be there, I didn't want to do it, I didn't want to disappoint him and I didn't want to say no so I sucked it up and I was following chord progressions and watching his strumming patterns and following patterns and watching him smile and thinking to myself, okay, probably another 10 minutes and this will stop, then I can go back home and sleep, it's almost done. And then I kind of stopped thinking about that long enough to notice that my fingers were hurting because I hadn't played in such a long time like they hurt. And then because they were hurting, I was paying attention to there's a deep vibration that you can feel on your fingertips when you're strumming an instrument. And then as I was focusing on my fingers, I started to notice that this wide-bodied acoustic guitar is quite large, so my arm is fully around the other side of it resting on it to strum and I could feel the sound all the way down my arm and it was just this moment of realization that just because I can't hear it doesn't mean that the music isn't there and that I'm the one who gave up, it was very obvious that I was the one who gave up. And so dad kind of issued a challenge and he said, "Hey, why don't you learn a song and try to sing it?" and I was like, that's ridiculous, fine, sure, whatever I can say to get out of this basement and not have to do this anymore, but the next day I was sitting on the floor and I had this guitar tuner and I was sitting in front of a mirror and I thought, if I could find one note, I could do a scale. And so I just started making random noises, any noises, random noises until any of those lights turn green. On a standard guitar tuner, there's only six strings, so you have to hit one of those six notes. So I just kind of went, until I hit one of them and held onto it and then did a scale and tried to see if once I get to the top and come back down, if it's still that. And it wasn't, but I wasn't very far off because one of the other lights turned green and I was like, okay, I'm going to step off. And then I started feeling the vibrations and kind of monitoring each half step as I'm going up this chord and then that was the beginning of this Eureka moment of how much work can I put into it and what can I get out of it? Question. Which led to everything? Wendy, that is freaking amazing. Really is. I remember seeing a movie that I, a show that I loved because I like house music, huge house music fan, loved to dance and, and so Pete Tongue. Oh, yeah. Who went deaf and there was another, I'm sure remember his name, who was a rock drummer who went deaf. Sound of metal or something? Yeah, sound of metal is the movie that was made about it. Yep, yeah. So Pete Tongue would DJ with bare feet so he could feel the beats, which was like amazing. And then somebody who can drum, okay, I can kind of get that, but you were fucking singing. Yeah, I know. And you know, it was the funniest thing because getting over the weirdness was probably the hardest part of the entire process is the constant understanding that you shouldn't do this. This shouldn't work. This is really bizarre. This makes no sense. Once you can strip that away, you start to focus on, okay, your throat is a muscle. Your muscle is like anything else. If it can be trained, it can be trained. I have sung these scales since I was four, over and over and over and over and over again. So all I want is a scale. And if I never sing anything other than one single scale, I will have accomplished more than anything I thought I could have done in the first place. So I sat in front of a mirror with a bunch of Sharpie markers. Mind you, if you do this in your own house, if you experiment on this, use a water-based marker. I just grabbed what was next to me and they were colorful. So I didn't realize it would take that long to get off your skin. But, you know, I would make a noise and then I would look at the tuner and I would mark off where that vibration was the strongest on my throat and then move up and up and up and up until I had markings all over my neck and face. And I went to bed and I woke up and I had to start all over again the next day because it just didn't stick. And again and again and again and again and again with really no intention of it ever working. I had worked so hard for such a long time I could do this even if it led to nothing. At least it felt like I was connected again. How long ago was that? Oh, see, 2008. It's been a while. Mm-hmm. It's been a hot minute. Yeah, to say the least. You know technology is better now. I have much better visual tuners. I still use them. In the second part of the show I want to talk about going from that to being on America's Got Talent and then to being on tour and writing the book. There's a lot more after that. And I really want to get into that because I want to talk a bit about your dad and his encouragement because you mentioned him and playing guitar with him and obviously he's a catalyst of that, you know, that you do have a beautiful voice. Thank you. You do. That was the first thing my wife said. What a beautiful voice. Because I played her a part of you singing. Yeah. And then I played the whole thing. And she gave her the one too. Yeah. So it was like, wow. So we're going to talk more about that in part two of the show. But before we go out of part one and into part two, I want to make sure that people know how to find out more about you, about your music, about your books, about any of your resources. Sure. You can follow me on Instagram, on @mandyharvey or on Facebook, Mandy Harvey Music. I have a website, Mandyharveymusic.com. For all of my music, it's out there on any of the streaming platforms. My last album, Paper Cuts, it's a beautiful album. I wrote everything. And it's a lot of love. And so you can stream it anywhere or you can buy vinyl copy from my website. And then for my book, which is about the lessons that I learned going through this process, the best and easiest way to get it is from Amazon. I hate plugging them because I feel like they're taking over the world, but it's easy to grab it from there. If for some reason you didn't catch any of that, we're going to put all that into the show notes so you can just look back and find it there. We're going to be back for part two of our amazing delicious conversation with Mandy Harvey in just one click till then. Stay curious, my friends. Stay curious about maybe the limits you've put on yourself and how maybe they're not quite as real as they seem at the moment. I realized you might be going through some heavy, heavy doo-doo, but you know what? There is some hope. There is some light at the end of the tunnel. Believe me and certainly believe, Mandy, we're going to be back in just one click. Stay curious, my friends. Stay curious. [music] [music] [music]
