Eavesdropping Is Underrated

Totally enjoyed Sarah Larson's little piece titled 'Eavesdropping Through a Pandemic' published in The New Yorker on June 16, 2021. She wrote about how the pandemic changed her habit of eavesdropping, which tends to inspire many thoughts and also topics to write about. "Notes on a year and a half of overhearing what’s overlooked."

The writer couldn't eavesdrop in convos in town. Masks muffled conversations and also discouraged them. It took a lot of shine out of the fun. In quarantine in her own home, she could only eavesdrop on her neighbors for as far as the eyes could see, and the ears could match. 

There are two kinds of overheard conversations: the kind you try to avoid and the kind that inspire eavesdropping. I’ve been tracking that second species all my life; I still remember good lines from Paris, in 2019 (“I don’t care what the blood test says—he’s my son”) and Albuquerque, in 1992 (“So the mayor goes, ‘How was I supposed to know he was a convicted felon? Don’t all hot-dog venders look like convicted felons?’ ”). But few places can match the overheard conversations of New York, which, before the pandemic, had me eavesdropping as assiduously as Harriet the Spy at the luncheonette. East Village, 2009: “Most ophthalmologists are schnooks.” Seventh Street, 2014: “He has a passion for pizza, and I’m not going to argue with it.” Smoker outside of a downtown bar, 2015: “Nobody can ever Google me, because there’s a million hits for the political prisoner with my name.” The best lines provide several little thrills at once: a sketch of character, a hint of story, the joy of feeling like you understand the rest. Like a Norman Rockwell painting, they’re obvious yet mysterious, conveying too much and too little in a single moment.

The writer opines that "living in New York offers a zillion opportunities to observe, in fascination or repulsion, without actually having to interact". She's spot-on in picking up funny lines and shit from passers-by around the estate, at the parks and various street corners around the neighborhood. Loads of little portholes into another's life and perhaps secret thoughts.

I was tickled. I have a habit of eavesdropping on conversations. It's often unintentional. Hello, I'm busy figuring out what's on my screen too. But when the voices get a tad louder, my ears simply pick up the conversations. Some people do talk really loud and have no sense of how sharp their voices carry. I suppose the pandemic has changed that since I can't sit in coffeeshops for hours on end, and occasionally tuning in to what other people are talking about. 

I do hear my neighbors though, A LOT. High density living in flats meant that I could hear what my neighbors are talking about, or yelling about. Most of us are on the phone, fielding work calls and conducting meetings. Many host guests and have drinks and a meal on the balconies. Often, personal conversations happen loads on the balconies too, where the building design ensures that all your neighbors in the same block will hear your most intimate details as long as your voices remain at conversational volume. But yeah, eavesdropping ensures that I don't bear the 'psychic costs' of actual human interaction or engaging other humans. 

You don’t want to befriend all of these people, but you’re glad to have them around. Slowly, we’re reuniting not just with loved ones but with everybody—the people we don’t know and may never know but have been missing just the same. These thinner threads of contact, though they form and fray in an instant, create our sense of being both of and apart from a place; they also help put our own lives in perspective, which is especially welcome after a year when perspective has been hard to come by. Years ago, near Port Authority, I saw a woman get off a bus, look around, and exclaim, “So this is New York City!” It was funny to me then, like the beginning of a musical—but lately I keep thinking of her, and I hear what she’s saying.