Klarinet Archive - Posting 000692.txt from 1999/02

From: Ken.Wolman@-----.com
Subj: Re: [kl] A movie about a clarinet player
Date: Thu, 18 Feb 1999 13:09:35 -0500

Beyond Silence sounds seems to hang on the same irony as a movie I
really disliked, Mr. Holland's Opus, only in the case of Beyond
Silence it's a hearing child of deaf parents becoming a musician
instead of the other way around.

Actually this strikes close to home because an old friend of mine grew
up as the hearing and amazingly well-spoken child of deaf-mute
parents. Henry learned to speak by hanging out with his aunt; and by
the time I met him in 1965 he'd developed a manner of speech that
reminds me of jazz riffs rather than normal speech. It modulated,
rat-a-tatted, improvised on thoughts and the sounds of words
themselves rather than on mere content.

We were once in a restaurant in the East Bronx, late one night in
1966, and this guy came in and spotted two hippie-druggie looking guys
sitting at a table near the bar, eating oversized burgers to quell
their late-night munchies. The visitor was a deaf-mute beggar of
sorts, selling pencils and little sign language cards. Well, he got a
surprise when Hank stood up and began signing furiously at him and
pointing toward the door: that part even I understood. The guy backed
out, pale as a sheet.

"What did you say to him?" I asked.

"I told him my parents are both deaf mutes and they've never taken a
dime from anyone by begging in saloons."

Be careful who you hit on in bars late at night...:-)

Ken

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