The fact that my whistling annoys my spouse dismays me. It is a benign little trick that I picked up from my step-father when I was in high school, and I have whistled happily ever since. Oldie Goldies, music from “West Side Story,” the wonderful score of “Porgy & Bess,” whatever enters my head, really, and I'm whistling like a mockingbird. It is my instrument, a proxy for the violin or oboe that I wish I could play. I have always marveled at all those individual instrumentalists in an orchestra coming together to produce a complicated piece of music. One day I was in a small town library. It was one large room and their musical collection was over in a corner. It was not walled off. If you wanted to listen to any of the records in the collection, there were earphones to put on. I was listening to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, which the great composer wrote and conducted while deaf. It is one of the most stirring, life-affirming scores ever composed. Suddenly, during the final movement, I noticed a librarian storming across the floor toward me, his lips pulled back in a sneer, his eyes radiating anger. What the hell's going on? I thought. I found myself thrown out of the library, other patrons all leveling me with dirty looks. Without realizing it, I had been loudly whistling the famous Ode to Joy.
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