The sounds of the pandemic are multiplying in peculiar ways. It used to be that via my iPhone’s notifications, I’d get the occasional ping or chime to announce a text or a message or to let me know that someone from abroad was reaching out on WhatsApp.
Now I’m dealing with a whole new soundtrack. Let’s start with 4:30 or 5:00 am when the birds, recognizing that their competition from early traffic has all but evaporated, begin to carry on. I live a half block from a pond, which attracts a high density of winged creatures. From early in the morning they are honking and chirping and cheeping and squawking, and flying around in squads or alone, big wingspans or little.
They are not alone. The general closure and the near-empty roads mean that sounds I should be used to after living here a decade or so are transformed into something threatening. It took me hours to realize that what I thought was a helicopter landing on my balcony was the idling of the fire engines in the fire station a block away, the building’s doors open and the motors reverberating. This was clearly going on all the time, but was masked by the main street traffic in pre-Covid times.
And then there is the teen drummer down the road a bit who has been making a clatter as long as I’ve lived here, and who is surely no longer a teen, but never before seemed to practice his instrument in my own living room.
Here, though, is the real audio clutter. I get infinitely more messages and texts and heads-up and phone calls nowadays than before the shut-down. My phone is a veritable orchestra of interruptions. At night, if I want the phone in the bedroom with me, I must either turn it off altogether or mute each app one by one to avoid being awoken mid-sleep by a friend from abroad for whom it may be a perfectly reasonable 9:00 am in Pietra Santa or Dublin or Tel Aviv – but is 4:00 am for me.
Even worse, if I am on a Zoom meeting, I hear the beeps and bings of all the people on the call who have not exiled or shushed their own phones. Or my space is flooded with the barking of their dogs – which is only slightly less disconcerting than the crying of their children, sounds that have never before darkened my doorstep. The variety of levels and quality of participants’ mics is an assault on the eardrums, mitigated only by those whose mouthed curses when they can’t find their own unmute button remain silent.
Part of the soundtrack is distorted. On any given Zoom-a-thon with three or more other people, one person will be enveloped in feedback while another’s mic will be cloudy and mumbly. The variety of devices through which we are all communicating makes the cacophony uneven and conflicting. People speak at once, or there’s an awkward silence, with folks looking down or around uneasily in their little online boxes.
Perhaps the most annoying of all is the confusion emanating from the television, especially the cable news stations that feature a chessboard of commentators whose gigs now radiate from their homes. I might have the news on in the background while I’m at my computer (which is all the time) when my attention is commandeered by a familiar ping or pong. First I have to find my phone; then I have to scroll through to see which app is summoning me, only to realize that it was the phone of this Senator or that virologist on the TV.
The problem with reduced urban noise is that it elevates and amplifies the sounds that are not only still coming through, but which have proliferated. I used to react to each notification, but my lockdown strategy now is to wait until the trills and clangs accumulate before checking to see if any of them are actually for me.
My best friend, Barry, brought me some things today, with the main goal being to run my car which, other than a 5-minute idle, has been sitting neglected and deserted in the basement garage of my building. Barry lives in a different town, 35 minutes away, and this is the first time he has taken a drive since we both locked down in our separate apartments. “As long as I’m in my car or in your car, I should be perfectly safe,” he said.
When he appeared down below in my parking lot, I burst into fierce sobs, from some very deep place; sobs that, once begun, continued for a long time. First some backstory:
I wrapped up my car keys in bubble wrap around which I folded an old magazine, then stuffed it in a bubble envelope and tossed it down the eight stories below. It descended gently with the grace of a swan, the wind embracing it like a parachute. “Damn it,” Barry said into the phones through which we were talking across the vertical distance, “I should have filmed that.”
The next thing I see is my own red car being driven out of the lot. I cried harder. I remembered when I was free to come and go and thought little of it. Barry had a brilliant idea: he placed his phone in my hands-free holder, turning the camera outward so that I could do the drive with him. “Where do you want to go?” He drove past Spy Pond, which I see from my balcony at a frustrating distance, and I just sobbed with joy. He stopped at every tree that was flowering or heading to full leaf, and I got my first close taste of Spring. He drove down to the Capitol Theatre, an old-timey movie house where we often see films.
Then he had another brilliant idea: why don’t I order food. I have not eaten a single meal that I myself did not cook – and I really can’t cook worth shit – since March 11th. I called Twyrl, a pasta restaurant, which is giving a free meal to needy seniors for every meal someone buys. I ordered some Tagliatelle Alfredo. This is a win-win: my money not only supports a small local business; it also supports someone in need. They put your order on a table outside when you call to say you’ve arrived. I don’t go out so that isn’t an option for me. And I can’t get delivery because although they promise they’ll come up the elevator and leave it outside my door, most delivery services end up leaving things in the entryway without even ringing my apartment.
So I went to the outside of the restaurant virtually with Barry and then around the center of my town, Arlington, sobbing at every tree sighting and every revelation: there was so much more traffic, for example, both car and foot, than I had anticipated. After about 20 minutes he came back, parked my car, and then took the stuff he had brought me, including a couple of months of New York Times magazines, and put them on the elevator – which I won’t enter. He pressed the button for my floor and I grabbed them out, wearing a mask, and hurried back to my flat.
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