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St. John Chrysostom: I am thinking of you!

It was my obligation, as a first-year college student, to have to attend daily chapel services in the
gymnasium:  it was a church college.  All of us conscripts were seated on one side of the gym, and the speaker stood out on the floor behind an old-fashioned microphone stand.  Had it been a really good P.A. system (do people still say, "P.A.", as in "Public Address"?) all of us reluctant disciples might be in church today, but it was just a wire attached to suitcases of sound somewhere.  We missed a lot of the words; probably the most important ones.

As a result, most speakers shouted at the microphone.  It was not a pretty experience.

One faculty member, whom I remember as one of the most interesting and stimulating profs I have ever had, had come to believe that he could "project" his voice quite nicely without the benefit of microphone and amplifiers.  He refused to stand behind what looked like a Pontiac hood ornament--in fact, deliberately walking away from it--and shouted at us unaided.  I think he had visions of Jesus addressing five thousand people while they were eating bread and fishes.  Maybe there was a shred or two of ego there, too.

There is a corollary to this:  in gatherings that are too large for normal conversational tone, when there is no microphone available, speakers often ask, "Can you hear me back there?"  The answer is always, "No!", so the person speaking usually says, "O.K.!", and raises his or her voice.  For about half a sentence.  You can graph it:  a little bump up, and a swoop right back to where it was.  Usually within the first sentence after the "O.K."

A lot of people in public life do not know whether the mic is live.  Just in case it isn't, they shout at it.

I do not know what brings this to mind, right now, this year, at the end of July just after the Republican and Democratic National Conventions.  I suppose it might be the number of clergy who have been invited to shout into a microphone at God for us.  God, you know, is famously hard of hearing, especially when it is politicians who are shouting at him, or her.  And everybody else is usually talking at the same time, some of them eating bread and fishes, and booing.  Or it might be the candidates and their admirers I am thinking of.  It brought to mind another oratorical story, of the preacher whose sermon notes were found with a marginal note:  "When in doubt, shout!"  (Actually, the story is that the note read, "Argument weak here.  Shout like hell!")

I am especially sensitive about shouters who think that they are simply "projecting their voices into the grand canyons of potential voters.  I am, myself, a runty, little second tenor who always wanted to be a baritone.  Some people have voices that cause stalactites to quiver and fall.  Some can cause ripples to roll across the reflecting pools of life like a flood tide.  Some cause the earth to tremble, and cottonwoods to shake and whisper.  Some just shout.  All those lessons in singing from the diaphragm and rumbling from the gut just become shouts.

It might be a good idea to fund elections publicly, to create a financial sound barrier between politicians and the people who think that having a lot of money entitles them to owning a lot of votes.  I am content to let others debate that, although for years I checked the box at tax time.  I think the public should fund good sound systems, really good sound systems, so that politicians did not think they had to shout to be heard.

A really good sound system is a thing of beauty and a joy forever.


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