I've been back at this writing thing
for about a year now and the ideas are starting to dry up. I have
written about the few primitive ideas involving music that I've had
rattling around in my brain for years and now I'm stuck. I've been
trying to come up with some other angle for the past few weeks but
I've got nothing.
Writing about current events is
downright exhausting and the equivalent of banging my head against a
wall. As much fun as it is to type the word “pigfucker” from
time to time, I couldn't do that on a regular basis in order to
protect my own sanity. I'd eventually end up standing on a downtown
street corner wearing a sandwich board with “You Know What You Did”
printed on it while having both middle fingers extended.
I find writing record reviews
difficult due to how personal music is to me. I can barely form a
sentence about a record, let alone several paragraphs, unless I have
a life altering experience by the time I get to side B. When that
does happen, it takes weeks to put that experience into somewhat
coherent words and by then no one cares about that record anymore.
I have taken to writing in the cafe at
the Carnegie Museum of late. It used to provide a level of white
noise without the over populated environment of a Starbucks. That
was working well until recently. Now, in the past few weeks, it
seems to fill up quickly with families that let their kids roam free
like it was a playground. This has a tendency to immediately derail
my train of thought and the only words I can come up with are “Stupid
fucking white people” and the white noise has become really white. As entertaining as that sentiment is at first, I can only seem to
take it so far before it gets redundant.
I have noticed that I don't mind the
conversations of the other tables if they are not speaking English. They could be talking about the most mundane horseshit but it doesn't
bother me because I'm an ignorant American and barely have a handle
on English. Most people seem to sit around trying to impress each
other like they don't already know each other. As much as I don't
like to contradict Mr. Rogers, we are not special. No one is.
I'm still trying to figure out why
large groups of people go to a museum if they're not on some sort of
bus trip. Viewing art seems like a very personal/solitary activity
to me instead of a “Hey, let's all grab some beers and hang out in
the Post-Modern wing” sort of thing. You know, that whole art
being in the eye of the beholder thing but what do I know. I'm the
type of person that would rather go to a movie or see bands play by
myself than be distracted by another human and their endless wants
and needs.
People seem to wander around aimlessly
and hope that the cafe staff will take them by the hand as if they've
never been out of their houses before. No one seems to be able to
handle the simple task of ordering food without turning it into a
life changing ordeal. It's a sandwich with soup or salad, not brain
surgery or tying your shoes. How some people have made it this far
in life without jamming a fork in a toaster while in the bath is
beyond me.
This brings me back to my old idea of
everyone having to serve two years of mandatory food service like
some countries have for military service. If people had to work in
food service, they might be less of a bunch of morons when at a
restaurant because they would know how awful it is to deal with a
clueless, picky asshole. Or they would stay home and cook exactly
what they wanted instead of being a drag on the rest of humanity
because they won't eat anything that's touched an onion or has
mayonnaise on it.
I seem to encounter these types of
people more and more of late. Recently, I have started to stagger
out of day job in the mornings and end up at Zeke's to sample the
dark roast coffee of the day. More often than not, I end up in line
behind someone that places a drink order that is so complicated I'm
sure that there can't be any coffee in it by the time it's done being
made.
I almost ended up having a mugshot on
the evening news when the guy in front of me placed his excessively
long drink order and then proceeded to quiz the staff about why his
cappuccino from the other day had a smokey flavor to it and asked if
they could recreate it. The staff looked at him blankly and saw they
certainly had their hands full with this customer. I don't know what
kind of coffee this guy ordered but it was a two person job to get it
made. The clerks were relieved when I placed my order of “Put
coffee in the coffee hole,” handed them exact change plus a dollar
tip and merrily parted ways after our transaction. The staff has
better things to do and I have things to pretend to be doing back at
my desk so why prolong the human interaction?
I guess normal people would call it
being friendly but I don't want to be friendly at 9am on a Tuesday. I want my coffee from my dealer with a minimal amount of hassle and
then to get on with my life. I see it as making things more
complicated than they need to be so why add baggage to my day when I
clearly have enough of my own already.
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