Digressions of a Dilettante

Digressions of a Dilettante
Vignettes of Inanity by Bud Hearn

Friday, September 6, 2013

The Mute Button


We have a TV remote with a magic yellow button…the mute button. We use it often.

**********

I’ve become a TV scriptwriter. Last night I was watching Longmire, the one when a severed finger arrives inside of a box. I ease to the edge of my seat, anxious for the next scene.

Suddenly a man comes on. His face fills the entire 48-inch screen. He appears to be a WWF wrestler…angry, bearded, bald and sweaty. He shakes his fist and screams, foams at the mouth, demanding I purchase a Chevy pickup…Now! Or else.

I seize the remote. It becomes a club in my hand. I swing it viciously like a feral savage. “Take that,” I shout. Instantly the poor creature is reduced to babbling in silence. His now-mute mouth continues to move in rapid motion. His wild gesticulations send him into a frenzied convulsion. I hear nothing.

It’s like a silent movie, all action, no sound. I watch him squirm in his state of seizure. I pretend he’s complaining about his third divorce settlement instead pimping pickups. I imagine he’s trying to justify why she got the house and the money. His lips synch, “My lawyer shafted me.” Suddenly he disappears.

I curse silently. Just as I was getting into his ‘story,’ he’s jerked off the air. Then, as if by magic, a middle-aged couple appears. They’re sitting on a dock overlooking a placid lake. His arm is around her. She smiles seductively. He gets the message: “When the time is right.”

I leave the mute on anyway and fabricate another story. Maybe she thinks he’s rich. Why else would she be smiling? She moves her lips, “Where’s your wife?” she seems to say.

Cleaning the mobile home,” his silent lips reply.

Does she suspect?’’ her soundless lips implore. He blushes and gives her a John Belushi roll of the eyes look. His voiceless smile virtually says, “Do I look that dumb?” He pats her on the shoulder for comfort. They look into the distant sunset. It casts a fiery red glow upon the water. The scene is a contrived theatrical metaphor for where this dalliance will ultimately end up.

Several dumb commercials segue past. Poor material for parody. I switch channels. Ah, the weather man, dressed like a Rodney Dangerfield redux. He’s good for a laugh. I mute him.

He gestures at the weather map, a colored, refracted-light image on a wall. It’s shaped like a brain out of control. His lips move without sound as he points to the hideous morphing shapes…a growing green blob, mixed with a yellow mass and a red serpentine worm crawling in concentric circles. The image seems to be alive.

The map colors pulsate in violent motion like an amoeba squirming under a microscope, attempting without success to exit its confines. I choose words for him. His muted lips lament, “This is a grave situation.” A plot evolves.

Then he stops, faces the camera. His expression is grim. His lips move slowly, silently. I read them in fragments. They seem to say, “Fellow Americans…tonight…regret…report…by his side…situation…grave...brain scan…red lines consume the brain…Obama…after meeting… Putin…Syria… unresolved…mobs…riots…expelled from Russia…Biden in charge.” I wince at the frightening possibilities of my own script.

Enough amateur programming for me. I kill the mute, laugh at my creativity and resume Longmire. Then I remember Arnold’s story of how he was muted. It’s worth repeating.

Arnold’s an old friend, an alcoholic, albeit a dry one. He once talked incessantly. He identifies himself as ‘a dumb drunk.’ Harsh, yes, but the truth often is. He’s sober by day eight of detox in the dry-out institution. But he’s angry. He marches to the director’s office with a gripe.

He tells it this way: “Listen, this place has problems. Here’s my list. Now what I want is….” The director interrupts him in mid-sentence.

“Arnold, you’re a self-made man, right? Lots of friends, successful, own your business, a home, drive a Cadillac?” Arnold nods “Yes.”

The director continues. “But Arnold, you’re a drunk, and a dumb one at that. I’ll give you some advice…if you’ll keep your mouth shut you’ll be the only one who knows it.” Arnold says these words changed his life.

*********

I had a little fun with the mute button last night. But today, I may take heed and remember, “…but you’re dumb, and if you keep your mouth shut you’ll be the only one who knows it.”

I think about these words a lot…..

Bud Hearn
September 6, 2013


Illustration courtesy of Leslie Hearn

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