Oh, Where are the Sounds of Silence?

All I want for Hanukkah this year is … QUIET!! I want to hear the hushed strings of a Rachmaninov concerto. I want to fall into an absorbing movie and forget where I am. But I can’t. Bah! Humbug! Silence at the movies? Forget it. It seems to be a thing of the past. The ones I dislike the most are the explainers, by far the majority of movie talkers these days. Now, whispering in your partner’s ear if he’s missed a word of dialogue I can understand once in a while. But the explainers feel free to speak out loud whenever they figure something out about the movie. Coming in a close second are the reactors. Nothing remotely dramatic or unsettling occurs on screen without the Reactors sharing their feelings with everyone around them. “Oh, dear!” “That’s really awful!!” And of course the evergreen “Awwww!!!” Not that I’m going to give up shushing people, although I realize I may be increasingly at risk for movie rage. Don’t laugh. I’ve read about fights breaking out in theaters. Nevertheless, I’ll try to nip all this chit chat in the bud. My preferred line is, “You’re not planning to talk through the whole movie, are you?” Oh, you are? Well don’t. Bah! Humbug!! Concerts are something else altogether. I refuse to relinquish the belief that concerts are for listening, and proper decorum calls for silence. Total silence. Yet at a recent New York Philharmonic concert I attended with my mother, a pair of middle-aged women kept up a stage-whispered conversaContinued from page 3tion throughout the entire first half, while someone nearby fiddled loudly with a cough drop wrapper. I literally could not concentrate on the music down below, the gorgeous Brahms Double Concerto for Violin and Cello. In some slight bit of irony or karma, perhaps, the musicians played as badly as I’ve heard them, even completely getting out of sync with each other at one point. I stewed in my $60 seat. Following the intermission came one of my favorites, the Brahms Second Symphony. Again, the chatter commenced with the first downbeat. But lo and behold, I turned to see my mom’s seat empty. She was leaning over the offending couple making vague but unmistakable threats. God bless that woman, I thought. The rest of the concert passed uneventfully. Actually, that’s not true, because, you see, there are the Unstoppably Ill. My mind wanders far from the stage as I listen to a nonstop barrage of hacking coughs, whooping coughs, wheezes and sneezes, more often than not perfectly timed to the most sublime pianissimo passages of the music; and I find myself wondering if people who pay for $60, $100, or $250 tickets feel duty-bound to attend the concert hall even if they are approaching death’s door. Or is it the faltering economy that makes the thought of throwing away a hard-earned ticket especially unconscionable nowadays? I look down from my $60 perch in the not-quite-nosebleed section upon the comfortably ensconced and Unstoppably Ill, and I begin to count the seats. Mental algebra ensues: What is the average per capita rate of colds and coughs in the general population versus the concertgoing one? Does the typically older age of the classical-music-minded public introduce a key variable to the equation? Has anyone done such a study? And if I had a Sudafed in my pocket, would I offer it to the woman sitting next to me, who is snuffling so badly with nasal congestion she can barely breathe? Somewhere off in the distance the timpani sound, brass blares and the concert draws to a conclusion. Off I go, mulling over CDC statistics, dodging germs and strange stares. And to all a good night!