august philippic

(Part III in the Urban Voices series)

Taipei emits a constant roar of petty commerce — hawkers peddling, firecrackers declaring the birth of a new hair salon, police cracking down on illegal shops, loudspeakers encouraging the purchase of knives or noodles, trucks delivering such wares as they may hold. Penetrating this din — shouting, shouting, and more shouting: the abusive husband in the back aparment, the gamblers celbrating their winnings, the schoolchildren announcing to one another that later they will be studying in the McDonald’s, the bus drivers exchanging greatings and traffic info. Along the fountains and covered walkways of Chiang Kaishek Memorial Park in the nineties, even late into the night one could find veterans shouting to one another about the war years.

Urban conversations are high-decible affairs. In the nineteenth century, such shouting bothered Chinese officials, who thought that noise could usher affrays, mobs, riots, rebellions. Shouting is necessary (try getting a train ticket in China without raising your voice — no chance), but it seems to bespeak extremes of emotion, and thus unruliness.

For there is much in shouting that is unnecessary and nonsensical. The man screaming “Hallelujah…Hallelujah…Hallelujah” at regular intervals signals something closer to mental illness than religious devotion. The woman on a Brooklyn streetcorner who told me that the book I was reading was “Really, really great” spared nothing of her larynx to convey her enthusiasms. Even my yoga class, mostly silent in its unfolding, spills out into the dressing room in a sizzle of overdone voices.

Why is there so much shouting? It’s more than the creep of trying to rise above your neighbor. It’s a declaration of cosmopolitan worth. Within each shout stir professions of belonging: “I am here. I deserve to be here. I can afford to call attention to my presence. I shout.”

It is this self-confidence that makes shouting threatening to urban planners, who tend to wish to rearrange and beautify city populations, and to officials who hope for docile burghers. Shouting is the city’s choral retort: “We shall not be moved.”

Tags: cities //