Pocket Dispatch From A Cafe Where People Are Studying
The young man across from me at the cafe is studying. He has announced this with a collection of multicolored highlighters, a stapled copy of textbook pages in impossibly small font, and a sweatshirt from a varsity team. He has announced he is concentrating by placing Bluetooth headphones in his ears that look like rotten candy from a movie theater.
But when an indie rock song plays over head, he betrays himself. He is drumming now, and precisely. As he mouths the lyrics, he performs the intricate ostinato with his pens as he reads. He knows the fills, the ghost notes, the rests. He follows the dynamics. He is air drumming on the ride cymbal when it’s actually hi-hat, but I suspect this is to avoid taking the absurd step of actually crossing his hands over the text he is studying.
At any rate it is clear there is nothing playing in his headphones. The rotten Dots are a farce. He only wishes not to be disturbed with conversation. This is ironic both because no strangers are striking up conversation in this cafe, and because it has freed me to do something arguably worse: Observe him intently, record my impression, and publish it on the internet.