I Fill This Small Space: The Writings of a Deaf Activist

The Violins

246 The Violins There was this opulent exterior of a Mexican restaurant. Inside it was as classy looking as it appeared outside. As soon as we looked at the menu, we found the prices surprisingly to be reasonable. There were eight of us stone deaf adults seated around a heavy dark oak rectangular table. Of course, a circular table would have been preferred. This preference, I daresay , is one item of deaf culture since a round table brings everyone within eyesight and thus facilitates the communication process. But it would mean a half hour to one hour wait for this table and we were hungry. No sooner was I seated then out of the corner of my eye I noticed a band of musicians moving from table to table. Most were playing on violins while one strummed a guitar. Do not ask me how “strummed” is supposed to sound or how I know when to use the word. I have read the way others have used it thus it seems the appropriate verb. Anyway, we have seen on television or at the movies how a romantic swain and his lady friend were at a table in a dark corner of a restaurant. On the table was a lone candle burning, setting off a mood of romantic ambience. As if foreordained with a generous gratuity, musicians came to this area. Music is said to have charms to sooth—And yes, the lady friend seemed all aglow and what resistance she had to the young swain must have melted as the notes of the violins wafted her to giddy romantic notions. But to come back to reality, what are a bunch of us stone deaf adults supposed to do when the musicians come to our table? We have choices. There are deaf people who don’t give a damn, who have no reservations about how non-deaf people view them. They will just be themselves . They even consider themselves tough and often use the sign for “tough”—a clenched fist hitting the chest. The more passionate they feel about this the harder they hit the chest. (Warning: females learning to sign have to be careful to make sure the clenched fist hits above the breast area). Another method to express tough feelings is to use the expression “deaf power” by covering one of the ears with one hand and with a clenched fist of the other hand pummel the air. Mervin Garretson, ed., Perspectives on Deafness. A Deaf American Monograph (1991) 247 And there are other deaf people who are sensitive, perhaps overly so, on how others view them. They do not want to be viewed as different. They would rather blend into the landscape of the hearing world. Perhaps , their childhood experiences tuned them to be this way. It could be their parents telling them not to sign, at least not in public. It could be other children staring at them causing acute and uncomfortable feelings of being different. Anyway, sure enough the three violinists and the guitar man came to our table. They seemed so focused on their playing that they did not realize they might as well have played to an empty table. And what did the eight of us do? We were disparate in our upbringing, in our school experiences, in our attitude to the world around us. None of us could tell the difference between a guitar and a violin and would probably have considered Rachmaninoff’s “C-Sharp Etudes” as something to do with C-section births. At first, we carried on with an air of insouciance, then the irony of the situation hit us. Vainly, we tried to suppress a spasm of giggling, some of us covering our mouths with our hands. We were not the clenched-fistbeating -on-the-chest type nor were we the cringing overly-sensitive-towhat -others-think-of-us type. Perhaps, we were somewhere in-between, moving on the fringes from one extreme to another depending on the circumstances. The musicians must have taken our actions as a show of little or no interest, still not realizing that their music took detours. They moved on to the next table. I was tempted to give the head player a tip to make perfect the irony or illusion but for some reason I did not do it. This brings up the perception of music. Most of us probably do not think about it or have relegated it to somewhere in the subconscious...