THE NEWYORKER, APRIL 13, 2020 49LONDON, ENGLAND, BY BILL BRAGGneeded to see faces, to look into anoth-
er’s eyes, to hold someone’s hand.
We like to say that we are wired, as
if we are computers or electrical grids.
My wiring is shot; she needs recharg-
ing; he’s in shutdown mode; you have
power. We say that music soothes the
savage beast. The expression is a mis-
quote from the English Restoration
playwright William Congreve, who in
fact writes of the savage breast, not beast.
“Musick has Charms to sooth a savage
Breast, To soften Rocks, or bend a knot-
ted Oak.” A savage breast is what we
feel when we are alone too long.
My apartment faces south. There is
a tree outside the living-room windows,
and across the way are brownstones in
a line, painted blue and red and pale
yellow. On sunny days, the living room
is filled with light. In spring and sum-
mer, with the windows open, you can
hear the birds. The year that I was alone,
I sat on the sofa and listened to the
music that had mattered to me when
I was young, Steppenwolf and Pink
Floyd and Black Sabbath. I put on
the music that I came to later in life,
jazz, and electronic and experimental
music; and Bartók and Mozart and Bach.
Sitting in my apartment in Brooklyn,
that year when I couldn’t easily leave the
house, I listened. I was always shaking
and hyperventilating. I felt my body
pressed down, as if by some weight that
I could not see. It was a feeling of being
crushed from every side. Maybe you’ve
felt this. Maybe you’ve felt that you can-
not stand straight, or make a smile. Some-
times I got up from the sofa and paced,
but then I might stop to adjust the speak-
ers, angle them a little. In? Out? Was I
sitting the right distance away? I put my
gear on platforms made to dampen vi-
bration, and added big fat speaker cables.
The music seemed incrementally to
soften, and, as I fiddled with the system,
it came to sound, to feel, more and more
close. That’s how I think of it now: lis-
tening as intimacy. My shoulders dropped.
The muscles in my neck and face relaxed.
I breathed more deeply. I prayed and I
wept. I stood at the window and watched
the people on the sidewalk below, par-
ents with children, groups of friends,
neighbors bringing home groceries. I
thought of all of us who, like me at that
time, lived in danger and in fear, a fearthat might seem inexplicable, yet also
concrete and real. Who hides behind the
curtain in the window across the street?
And what about over there, or down the
street? How many of us might we find
on the block, the avenue, the neighbor-
hood, the city, the land? How many of
us were afraid to live, afraid to die? Dear
God, take care of my brothers and sis-
ters. Take care of our families. Take care
of the people in hospitals and on the
streets. Take care of our doctors and
nurses. Take care of our war veterans. I
was never a soldier, never went off to
fight, but all through that year I cried for
the veterans. They return home wounded.
I put on my records and prayed. I
was, we could say, sitting in music. I
wasn’t wired. I was wire. The sound
waves were wire, and the air in the room
was wire, and the walls were wire, and
the books in their shelves were wire,
and my body was wire. I found my com-
munion with others who were alone.
And I might notice, when I felt you
near me, that I was tapping my foot,
and that my thoughts were, for the mo-
ment, clear, and that I could smile, a bit.
—Donald Antrim