Growth

I attended a concert at Avery Fisher Hall the other afternoon. It was a rare matinee performance for the Philharmonic so the audience was thick with seniors. My friend had warned me about this, but only five minutes into the concert an old woman across the isle began coughing. After a few minutes, she reached into her zippered bag to retrieve a hanky. Then, she spat into it, all the while thumbing through her program as if she was in her parlor on the Upper East Side. I gave her a look or two, but didn't push it. Soon enough, the woman got the idea and left for the bathroom to hack up in solitude. Cheers to her.

The orchestra went on. The first piece was by Bach. It's that fugue TV producers always use when evoking a lone madman plotting evil in his study: DAH-DAH-DAH (pause) DAH-DAH-DAH-DAH-DAH-DAH. Don't pretend you don't know it. It's the DAH song. Duh.

However, the music could not stop the senior death gasps. The man behind me emitted what I first thought was a growling stomach. After the 15th growl, I had to look back and ask if he could use a fucking cookie. But my fury was allayed when I realized that the man was just asleep. The "growls" must have been gutteral dream sighs. I let him rest in peace and began to re-evaluate my prejudice against old people. Just because humans over 60 add their own percussion section to an orchestra does not make them bad people. It means that health and wakefulness must deteriorate to such a degree that the true enjoyment of a concert must come from the stubborn refusal to leave it. "I got through the damned show, now gimme my hanky." I admire the will to remain an active member of society, despite neither enjoying nor being fully lucid during its cultural moments.