Craving Silence

Last night, I attended a performance of the Austin Symphony at the Palmer Center. The auditorium was set up with round tables of ten, and audience members were encouraged to bring their own food. The table beside mine was empty until fifteen minutes before the performance was scheduled to begin, and then a family arrived, dragging behind them a picnic cooler on wheels and toting several grocery bags of snacks. As the orchestra warmed up, the family unloaded enough food onto their table to keep a family in the Philippines alive for a month. And, like stereotypical Texans, the preparations for their feast were all conducted in full voice.

Since living in the US, I’ve noticed that Americans are, generally speaking, much louder than Canadians. Many believe that it is the Canadians’ modesty and reserve that causes their quietness, but I believe the reason is due more to geography than culture. Up north, we usually huddle together for warmth ten months of the year, so there’s no need for us to shout. The other two months, we’re trying to be quiet so that we stand a better chance of swatting the 3,000 mosquitoes that have just landed on our leg. But in the US of A, loud is the norm, and nowhere more so than Texas, where everything, including personalities and voices, are bigger.

As the first violinist took the stage and most of the audience politely turned their attention to the musicians, the family beside me carried on with their chow. And as the conductor took the podium, and most members of the audience turned their chairs to face the stage, the folks beside me focused instead on their vittles. “You don’t need to see what’s going on…you can just hear it,” the mama said. But sadly, I couldn’t hear it, or at least not as much as I wanted to. I strained to catch a few bars of Smetana’s The Bartered Bride between the gourmands’ comments, all delivered with Texan accents so thick they sounded fake: Is this some kind of cheese? There’s more biscuits if y’all want some! Yeah, I’m fixing to have more cole slaw.

Clearly the combination of foods they were consuming produced a high level of endorphins, thus preventing them from feeling the pain of the holes I was burning in the backs of their skulls with my best evil eye. Nor were they able to feel the sting of my eye-rolling and sotto voce utterances of “Dear God!” and “Unbelievable!” Eventually, I could take no more. I stood up, put my hands on the shoulders of the nearest noisy nosher, and suggested that perhaps they could keep the table chatter down during the performance.

It worked; the family thereafter whispered their requests to Pass me that Dr. Pepper and Y’all gotta gimme that recipe. It wasn’t perfect silence, but it was the best I could possibly hope for from this family. Today, I couldn’t hum one bar of the music that was performed last night, but I do know the ingredients for Sally’s cornmeal muffins. I think I’ll make a batch as I listen to some classical CDs.