As we were standing, waiting for the march to begin, one of the march organizers stationed along the route called out to those of us in front of him, that at 1 oclock there would be a moment of silence, after which we would sound the alarm. Using the technique of the human microphone, so brilliantly developed during the Occupy movement, whereby large crowds can hear in the absence of a PA system, the group within his hearing shouted out the words to the people behind us, and so on down the line. I didnt have a watch, but it didnt matter: at the appointed time, a wave of silence originating a mile ahead came rolling down Central Park West. There was no need to shush anyone. It wasnt so much that we decided to be silent as that we were, simply, silenced. The wave arrived and we were in it, felt it passing through to those behind us, taking them up as it had taken us. And for one astonishing moment all of us--the marchers, the watchers, the birds, the trees, the rocks of Central Park--all were still, listening together to the collective pulse of the larger body we were at that moment comprising. And then! Down the avenue there came rolling and swelling a great wave of sound that trembled the leaves as it came. It was not that we decided to erupt when it arrived--the wave arrived and we erupted: Trombones and banshee wails, raptor cries and wolf howls, yips and roars, tambourines and tubas. It was like we were instruments being played by some big wind. Yeah. Like that.
Posted on: Mon, 22 Sep 2014 12:13:10 +0000
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