Finding relief from storms of this summer

Despite public events — infuriating news conferences, terrifying tweets and horrifying images of violence — I have found an oasis of bliss this summer. In mid-July, when the “Soundtracks” exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art first opened, a column item suggested that readers go see/hear Ragnar Kjartansson’s “The Visitors,” behind the elevators on the seventh floor of the museum. I didn’t go into detail to keep it a surprise.

Well, I think I’ve been back seven times, each time lunching with a friend or relative at the Fifth Floor cafe, then escorting them upstairs to the installation. So no more surprises, here’s what it is: Nine large video screens are set up around the room — seven on the inside perimeters, two in the middle. When you walk in, you are surrounded by the images on the screens, each one showing a room in a tattered mansion in which one musician plays, and the sound of it.

All the musicians are wearing headphones, enabling them to be in separate rooms and play one piece of music together. The melody is simple; it fades in and out. It’s full of rich harmonies, but they are simple; even if you are a plunker, you feel you could join in.

As the visitor walks from screen to screen, the music played by that musician becomes audible. It’s almost as if by looking at the screen you activate the sound, said an artist at one viewing. Another said that the moment she entered the gallery, her eyes filled with tears.

The presentation, I’m told, is a little over an hour long; I haven’t seen it all in one visit, but even in fragments, viewers/ listeners are engaged by the sound, engrossed by the visuals, the minute they walk in.

Each time I’ve been there, it’s been more crowded than the time before, though never uncomfortably so. Adults and children are apt to be sprawled on the floor. Some people walk around with cell phones making videos, but I can’t imagine that a video of a video is as warming as the comfort of being blanketed by the images and sounds on the screens.

In one aspect, it’s totally undemanding. No one will look at this/listen to this, and think, “What is it about?” But it’s also transporting; a midday vacation only steps away. More public pianos: Readers report that there are many Kaiser Permanente facilities with pianos, which seem to be a respected piece of lobby furniture.

Stanford Professor Peter Stansky notes that the instrument in the lobby of the Stanford Medical Clinic in Redwood City is a player piano, “which most of the time plays on its own, which is rather eerie.” Perhaps this is in keeping with Stanford’s emphasis on technology.

Meanwhile, Ken Maley is recently back from France, where he saw several pianos in train stations, including one in Rennes. They are there for travelers to play, and Maley sent a snapshot of a young student — apparently with buddies returning to school — seated at the keyboard. P.S. A long time ago, when pediatrician Jean Abbe was a resident at Children’s Memorial Hospital in Chicago, she came to work one morning and discovered someone playing the piano in the third floor playroom. It was Jimmy Durante, and he was playing and singing “Inka Dinka Doo.”

PUBLIC EAVESDROPPING “Life is too short to live with a broken toilet seat.” Woman to woman, overheard at Lowe’s in South San Francisco by Abe Battat

In 1995, Michelle Carter left her job as managing editor of the San Mateo Times to be journalist-inresidence in Russia for the U.S. Information Agency. Her new book, “From Under the Russian Snow,” is about the year she spent there, but includes at least one tale from her newspaper years. For even a journalist, any mention in a Herb Caen column was an occasion.

Carter had written a headline for a story about President Ronald Reagan contemplating pulling Americans out of war-torn Lebanon. “Reagan/ firm on/ pullout” got her a mention in Caen’s column ... and, she writes, was the “highlight of my retirement roast.”

Carter is scheduled to be at Books Inc. in Palo Alto at 7 p.m. Sept. 27.

Tom Sweeney, who is into his 41st year as doorman at the Sir Francis Drake hotel on Powell Street, says he’s been asked thousands of times where the cable car stops and what is the fare. But the other day, for the first time, a tourist asked him whether he needed to tip the driver.

And speaking of tourism, see you later; I’m off on vacation.