powers of observation

The sound of chewing. How do you feel about it? Here's the screenplay. I have my director's notes (in script) on it:

1 INT. DINING ROOM

MAN and WOMAN facing each other, seated. MAN starts shoving food from his plate into his mouth. Volume of chewing increases and ambient noise slowly disappears as camera slowly zooms in on MAN's mouth. 

WOMAN gets up, walks to a sound bar across the room, turns it on and puts on music from her phone. Chewing sound is buried by music and other sounds.

THE END.

I think this is why there is always music in restaurants. They can say it's to create an ambience but it's really for people like me! I have to admit that sometimes the music is less than desirable. It might be too loud or just not something I want to listen to, but that is still better than hearing the person in front of me chewing!!!! I'm sure you can tell how strongly I feel about this subject.

Have you ever considered who determines what music is played at your favorite cafe, supermarket, or shopping mall? Some places, like franchise eateries, for the sake of consistency, are supplied pre-recorded music. Places like Starbucks have deals with Apple or Spotify so they can curate their own list of songs and make this available to guests. I remember when my daughter was really young, we used to go to Starbucks a lot and get these little cards that would give you a free song download on iTunes or free apps. Where's My Water? My little girl loved playing that on the iPod Touch. I was able to download Lights by Ellie Goulding from that too. The songs and artists weren't always complete unknowns. 

Hello Kitty Cafe in LA

I have a sked that I sort of go by, but I do tend to switch it up. For a few days, just getting into the rhythm of writing, I would go to a cafe with my laptop. I picked a place at the mall which doesn't normally open until 10 so I still get other things done at home or elsewhere before then. If you've never been to a Capital One Cafe, it's definitely an option if you just need a comfortable seat, a proper table, access to an outlet and a limited selection of food and drink available for purchase at the same high prices as everyone else. Of course, if you have actual banking to do, they have people there who can answer questions and ATM machines for routine transactions but... I'm not here to advertise Capital One. I wanted to talk about music. It's a cafe so naturally, they have music. I don't know if there's just some guy who plays DJ in there and picks out songs or if they play a list of selections supplied by the company. Maybe they just picked some pre-made Spotify playlist but even for me, oldish person, the music seemed... old and often, way too loud. When I say old, I mean a lot of 90s pop, which I normally wouldn't object to, but the selections were sus, you know? Then you go to the bathroom and it's... Peter Cetera. I did not understand that. Also why the bathroom had different music from the cafe seating area. 

Do you say macaron or macaroon?

The Wegmans I go to, on the other hand, plays a lot of mid 2010s pop/rock and sometimes I actually really enjoy it. Yeah, sorry. I kinda do. It's embarrassing. I find myself singing along while shopping sometimes. Ok, now it's even more embarrassing. Maybe I should hang out at the supermarket instead of the cafe.

The thing about writing outside is, I can people watch. People are interesting. It's a shame that my powers of observation aren't as sharp as they used to be. It's not just the multi-focal contact lenses, that make me trade a little clarity in my distance vision to be able to read my phone, which is a key culprit. I suppose that now I just don't need to focus on a lot of the details that in the past, I would have paid attention to. I did some mystery shopping before my kids started school. I did this for a couple of years, maybe? Sometimes I have to include descriptions of people in my reports or I have to remember names, hair color, absence of hair, presence of hair. What are people wearing? What music is playing when I enter the store or is it too loud? What does it smell like? Crazy, right? Initially, it was a lot. But if you get used to it, you actually end up becoming very observant. 

Teaching? You have to remember names. It's a different sort of memory game. In elementary, when you're the regular classroom teacher, you have the kids nearly all day, everyday but when you teach special areas, you get all the kids, in all the grades and you only spend 30-40 minutes with them at a time, maybe once a week. That's a lot of kids. Want to go to the next level? Try being a substitute teacher. All different kids, all the time. Yep, powers of observation are incredibly useful, and so is good memory. I watched some guy talk about this on Oprah once. He was demonstrating that he could meet all the members of the audience and remember all their names by the end of the show. The key takeaway for me was, you just have to pay attention. Listen. Remember. It can be done. Or you can try some that Prevagen whose ads always come on during the evening news.

Now, if I could remember better what the man and woman talking about the master looked like, I might run into them on one of my walks again and make friends. I wouldn't mind meeting new people in my neighborhood. Maybe the conversation could revolve around where we live and what we do during happy hour. I do wonder how long it's going to take for a new acquaintance to ask the question: what do you do?

Playlist Recommendation: Lights, Ellie Goulding