Coughingly Incorrect, or, Proof That There Are Two Sides to *Everything*

Full disclosure: As a professional audience member, I am as righteously
irked by noises as anyone.  And yet, Jon Carroll here takes a position
which is as difficult to agree with as it is to ignore.

   The Audience Talks Back

   JON CARROLL/SF Chronicle
   Wednesday, January 20, 1999

   LATELY THERE HAS been much hoo-rah in the popular press about coughing
   in concerts.  Michael Tilson Thomas, it is said, glares at the offending
   coughers, hoping perhaps to shame them into slinking away.  Kurt Masur
   of the New York Philharmonic actually stalked offstage in the middle of
   a concert because he disapproved of the coughing level.

   You'd think these maestros were professional golfers or something.

   Programs passed out at serious-music concerts contain ever more lengthy
   and stringent anti-coughing screeds.  Rudeness is mentioned; lack of
   self-control is noted; the idea is put forth that classical musicians
   have the temperaments of Chihuahuas and may sometimes actually spit up
   on the carpet if they hear a cough during a particularly tricky passage.

   Now a writer for the New York Times has suggested that symphony
   audiences should contain a higher percentage of amateur musicians.
   Amateur musicians understand the wonders of music in a way that ordinary
   mortals cannot, and therefore they would be loath to cough lest they
   miss a particularly thrilling obbligato.

   I rise today to defend the members of the audience.  They are required
   to drive to a remote location, where they can either pay $12 to park
   in a presumably secure location or a lesser sum to park in a dark
   lot surrounded by abandoned warehouses.  Or they can take public
   transportation and have big fun after the show waiting on the corner
   or the platform with the entire cast of "Night of Living Dead."

   (In Berkeley, a crackdown on parking aimed at cruising youth causes many
   people to flee the concert hall just as the encores are getting under
   way -- so very amusing.)

   ONCE INSIDE, THEY pay extortionate prices to purchase $7.50 beverages
   laden either with fruit juice or alcohol or both, to sit in seats that
   are probably not ideally located, to listen to music of varying quality,
   with no refunds offered if the soloist is in a snit.

   They do it anyway, because they love music.  With the exception of a
   few see-and-be-seen openings and events, people would not go to all
   that trouble were they not generally enthusiastic about serious music.

   THIS JUST IN: Coughing is a reflex action.  It is involuntary.  It has
   to do with clearing the esophagus of fluids that, were they allowed to
   remain there, might pose a significant threat to respiration.  Coughing
   is not like talking or whistling or humming.  It is nature's way of
   helping us to breathe, for heaven's sake.

   Yes, it is possible to some extent to control a cough.  One can resist
   the tickle, wait for it to get worse and worse, wait for the small panic
   reaction to set in as the entire throat becomes clogged, wait until just
   before unconsciousness before hacking, but the resulting explosion is
   a lot louder, and more likely to expel germs into the air.  Plus, the
   person attempting to control a cough is in no wise enjoying the music
   he or she just plunked down actual earned income to hear.

   If you have a cold, probably you should be tucked down in your
   jammies watching reruns of "Friends." But even healthy people cough
   occasionally.  It just happens.  Everyone else seems to deal with it.

   Lincoln gave the Gettysburg Address with the sound of shovels and axes
   digging graves clearly audible, and he managed to make it through the
   speech without glaring at anybody -- and his was one human voice,
   unaided by amplification.  Despite the noise, he could be heard at the
   very back of the crowd of 20,000 who stood in the sun to listen.  Surely
   humans equipped with noisemaking instruments could equal that feat in a
   closed room with superior acoustics.

   Have our instrumentalists and journalists grown so frail that they
   cannot deal with a common human noise, a brief and inoffensive one at
   that, usually muffled, unaccompanied by odor? Feh, I say, and fie

[log in to unmask] (NO attachments)
[log in to unmask] (YES)