On Saturday, I tried to read this article on mindfulness, the practice of actively paying attention to one’s perceptions of body and surroundings in an effort to live a more patient, present, mindful state of being. I failed to finish it, because I was trying to read it while driving to a bar, swiping my phone at stoplights, cramming in paragraphs as if they were fingerfuls of curly fries. Three greens in a row distracted me long enough to lose the narrative thread, and when I hit the next red light, Facebook decided I had had more than enough time to absorb the mindfulness piece. My news feed refreshed with a few hundred articles about Donald Trump, each demanding interaction. Did you know you have to do that now? If you don’t tap or click on Donald Trump-related online content every 12 minutes or so, the entire media economy threatens to collapse under the weight of its own hyperventilating, click-drunk hot air.
I put my phone in my center console after that, seeing as how mindfulness probably also entails noticing –– and not running over –– a pod of college kids crossing the street to day-drink at Varsity Tavern. My band and I were scheduled to play at nearby Magnolia Motor Lounge that night, so I went to the West 7th corridor in the afternoon under the pretext of checking MML’s backline gear situation. The last time I’d played the place, the owners offered drums with hardware plus a bass rig. I know you can use a telephone to find out that information, but I also really wanted a beer and a burger.
MML does indeed still keep the backline gear on stage, and it did indeed provide me with ample beers and a burger. Part of what I’d digested from the half of the mindfulness article had to do with eating without working or driving. Both of those are activities that keep you from enjoying the experience of tasting, chewing, and swallowing food –– I’m not sure that Taco Bueno is supposed to be eaten anywhere other than in a car, but life is full of strange truths, right? Keeping that in mind, I resolved to leave my phone in my pocket, eat a late lunch/get a low-level day buzz, and do my best to take note of all the accompanying sensory input. You know, mindfully.
Unfortunately, I am one of the most irritable people on Earth. Being mindful to everything around me just opens the door to all that drives me fucking crazy for no good reason. To keep from diving to the bottom of the deep end of an Olympic-sized pool of misanthropy, I’ve learned to tune out a lot of external auditory stimuli. Most reasonable people likely think background noise is totally innocuous and easy to ignore, idle conversations about seasonal beers, or The Bachelor, or the number of times you’ve seen the Black Angels. But the bulk of the time, that chatter sounds like a jackhammer excavating a minefield in my brain.
Weed and alcohol help. They make the conversational whirlwind more interesting. The content itself might not be, but when I’m blazed and buzzed, I start to notice interpersonal rhythmic patterns. Dialogue becomes melodic in a hilarious way. At MML, I overheard two women greet each other. For what felt like 20 minutes. Their vocal inflections suggested they hadn’t seen each other in literally a thousand years.
“Hey! How are you?!”
“Good! How are you?!”
“Good!”
“Good!”
The second woman’s husband joined them. He said to the first, “Hey, how are you?”
“Good! How are you?!,” she said.
“Good!”
“Good!”
Great!!!, I thought. I had had a bowl of puffs for breakfast and now two beers, so I too was “good.” And once I was snug in a caloric blanket of bacon, beef, cheese, and fries, the friendly chatter five seats away to my right settled into a cheerful, ambient murmur. Suddenly, I was mindful to everything. I could hear the hum of the beer coolers and just how cool the can of Dallas Blonde felt in my hand. I realized the familiar voice drawling out of the satellite radio country station was Cody Jinks. My fries tasted fry-ier. Through the windows, I could see throngs of people on the patios of Varsity’s two floors, tossing back Bud Lights under a flawlessly blue sky. I paid my tab and went for a walk around West 7th, trying to enjoy the peace in everyday noise until I was sober enough to drive and read again. –– Steve Steward
Follow Steve @bryanburgertime.
