whistler

Remember those old Disney movies, or 50s and 60s era films, where one of the characters or actors would spontaneously start whistling? Didn't it always sound so pretty? They had dead on pitch, a pretty little trills, and appropriate vibrato. Birds would fly around and everyone near by would stop and listen. Sunlight would break through the clouds and little Timmy's cancer would disappear.

Ahhhh.

Why isn't it like that in reality when people whistle? There is a guy in my office who thinks he can whistle. He whistles Mozart and church hymns and disco music. His pitch is iffy and he slides from note to note with little-to-no discernable dynamics or accents. It's not bad, I suppose, but it's not good. I guess I admire his self confidence, but man...

I can whistle ok. I have a friend who can also whistle. I know he is decent and he has told me I am, though he may be lying, and we both have had musical training. Still, I would not say we are anything like the whistlers of those old movies. No where near. And I would never consider going Pro Whistler.

Perhaps it's a lost art. Nobody really gives a crap about whistling anymore. It was probably already on the way out back in the black and white movie era. Bing Crosby himself probably couldn't whistle. I bet he never learned how; his lips were too dry or his tongue was too fat. Who knows? I bet he doesn't even whistle the part in White Christmas. I bet he had a whistling double do it. And I bet it was some pimpley-faced fat kid who couldn't whistle himself up a date if tried. He probably got $10 for his work.

No, whistling was probably already dead back then. It was well on the way out in late 1800s. Look at the painting Whistler's Mother. She looks bored out of her mind, and she's his mother. I mean, if you can't keep your mother smiling while you whistle then you really suck.

My theory is that the silent movies killed whistling as a respectable art. I bet some industrious silent film maker wrote a whole string of screen plays for the whistler. They had this Detective Whistler who would solve crimes by whistling to the suspects until the beauty of his music made the guilty confess. Only because the films were silent they just had scene after scene of this dork with his lips pursed together in a whistle formation while his eyebrows rose and fell emotively. So then this movie producer sunk all of his money into these films and he never did figure out why his studio went belly up and he died a poor man.

That producer is probably me but with whistling instead of writing.