“A
PIANO TINKLING IN THE NEXT APARTMENT…”
Mayor
Bloomberg’s new campaign to crack down on violations of
the city’s excessive noise ordinances will no doubt be met
with almost universal acclaim. It is, after all, the rare New
Yorker who has not been driven nearly to homicide by one completely
unnecessary, inconsiderate, and brain-rattling noise or another,
usually in the middle of the night. In my neighborhood, the major
culprits include semi-trailers blasting their air horns as they
hurtle up Amsterdam Avenue, apparently trying to break the sound
barrier (Note to the nation’s truckers: New York is not
a movie set. People actually live here.), or that first, dreaded
blast of music that heralds what my wife and I have come to call,
“Three A.M. Salsa Party” (pre-empted occasionally
by “Two A.M. Hip-Hop Jam” or “Four A.M. Cruisin’
to the Oldies”).
Believe
it or not, though, New York is actually a much more quiet city
than it was, say, a hundred years ago. Try to imagine tens of
thousands of iron-rimmed wagon wheels rattling over cobblestone
streets, or a steam engine on that elevated rail just outside
the window.
And
what about those noises that we love? They do exist, although
I imagine that our taste in sound is as subjective as everything
else in the city.
One
rule of thumb, I suspect, is that distance lends enchantment when
it comes to city noises. Much as I loathe the truck grand prix
a few yards from my door, I am always transported by the distant
wail of truck brakes, somewhere out in the night. There is something
achingly, primordially lonely about that sound. Then there is
the faint twang of the subway rails as a train starts to approach
the station, still several blocks away. It is a small sound, but
the very embodiment of anticipation—much better than the
actual, clamorous arrival of the Broadway Local.
Even
better is the rumble of the Metro North trains as they emerge
from under Park Avenue, which we can hear clear across town sometimes
on particularly still nights. This is an atavistic, rural noise,
one that feels as if it should have been banished from the city
long ago—much like the bells of the beautiful, Romanesque
church of St. Michael’s, sounding every half-hour, just
across the street from my apartment building.
I
feel privileged to be able to hear such sounds still. They make
one cognizant of another urban noise that has vanished, although
up to a generation ago it was nearly ubiquitous. That is the human
voice of the street vendor, hawking his wares. No doubt, New Yorkers
of a certain age can still remember the used-clothes collector,
singing out his mournful cry, “I cash clothes!”
as he shambled from neighborhood to neighborhood, laden down with
used dresses, suits, hats. Not to mention the cries of all the
newsies, pushcart peddlers, knife sharpeners; or the fish, greens,
sweet-potato, ice, and even coal sellers of Harlem, who specialized
in setting their own, sly lyrics to the popular tunes of the 1930s
and ’40s (“A tisket, a tasket/ I sell fish by
thebasket/ And if you folks don’t buy some fish/ I’m
gonna put you in a casket…”).
The
songs of the peddlers must have all but defined the tempo of our
city throughout most of its history. Even more so in the nineteenth
century, when street vendors were everywhere, aggressively peddling
oysters, lemonade, cabbages, matches, handy black funeral veils,
or pears in syrup served in little clay dishes. Then there were
the hot corn girls, pre-Civil War New York’s twisted, virgin-whore
fantasy. These were teenage girls, always barefoot, wearing trademark,
calico shawls, and selling ears of fresh-roasted corn—and
sometimes themselves. They sang plucky little verses at the passing
men who pitied them, and wanted to protect them—or to buy
them:
“Hot
corn! Hot corn!
Here’s your lily-white corn!
All you that’s got money—
Poor me that’s got none—
Come buy my lily-hot corn
And let me go home!”
As
sad and sordid as the existence of the hot corn girls was, their
cries could evoke the sort of instant nostalgia that is one of
the greatest rewards of living in a large city. Even so strait-laced
a puritan as George Templeton Strong wrote in his diaries “of
sultry nights in August or early September when one has walked
through close, unfragrant air and flooding moonlight and crowds,
in Broadway or the Bowery, and heard the cry [of the hot-corn
girls] rising at every corner, or has been lulled to sleep by
its mournful cadence in the distance as he lay under only a sheet
and wondered if tomorrow would be cooler. Alas for some far-off
times when I remember so to have heard it!”
It
is these human noises that ultimately convey the romance of city
life. What New Yorker doesn’t understand the essentially
urban experience inherent in, say, the lyrics of that sublime,
Holt Marvel-Jack Strachey-Harry Link standard, These Foolish
Things:
“A
tinkling piano in the next apartment,
Those stumbling words that told you what my heart meant…
These foolish things remind me of you—”
Somewhere
down the alley that runs behind our back apartment, there is a
voice teacher who gives lessons in his home, and in the afternoon
one might catch a gorgeous line of opera, or part of a classic
show tune. Every year just before Christmas, the voice teacher
has his students over for a party, and my wife and I will sit
by the window in the evening, listening to the animated buzz of
party conversation, then the sound of students and teacher singing
together around the piano.
We
have no way of knowing just where the music is coming from; there
are four or five apartment houses down the alley. Nor would we
ever want to be invited, or even to look in on the party. It would
only be bound to disappoint. It’s much better this way—evoking
at once all of the best holiday parties we have ever been to,
or imagined, or seen in the movies, just by ear alone.
Or
take the space where I am writing this. It is a little room, that
faces on the fifth floor of the small inner courtyard of my building.
It is a good space for a writer. There is not much to see—only
brick walls, a small patch of sky, and other windows with the
shades perpetually drawn for privacy.
But
in the evening I can hear a whole hive of activity, all around
me. People preparing or clearing away dinner, scraping plates
or lighting stoves. Calling to children to take their baths, or
do their homework. Laughing, and speaking in English, Spanish,
Mandarin, Creole French, and other tongues I do not recognize.
Somewhere there is even a man ringing small bells while he chants
Buddhist prayers.
This
is, I think, the great, redeeming quality of city life, what makes
it worthwhile living here, despite all the thoughtless depradations
of bikers and truckers, and radio blasters. It is the rare opportunity
to both live in the world, and yet remain as distant from it as
one needs to be at any given moment. The chance to listen, and
yet be still.
Kevin
Baker is working on a historical novel, Strivers Row, which is
set in Harlem in the 1940s.
©
Copyright The
New York Times
