broke baroque

Outside the 7/11 that I frequent, they play Mozart. Posh people who shop online from “Price: High to Low” trumpet this idea that classical music is good for you. “Studies show...”, they say. But when it’s 2 AM and I want a white cherry slushee and they spin the volume knob up like the Wheel of Fortune, I just want to retire. Or expire. I have a friend who works at the mall, and she says they do it there, too. “Keeps out loiterers”, she peeps, “and hooligans. Undesirables”.

Picture yourself, an intelligent and socially-liberal adult, attempting to smoke a spliff outside your local seedy drug store. As soon as you step out of the car, you hear Chopin at a distance, which is only about as annoying as your office mate burning a scented candle in “Bell Pepper Bang” flavor. So you plod up the parking lot towards the building with your hands in your pockets, grinding your teeth. You must keep your eyes peeled for your cannabis connoisseur, your hoodied ganja guy. As you approach, the Brahms is becoming intolerable. As a classic Bildungsroman protagonist, you've been to an outdoor music festival and experienced some special toons at full volume before. So it's not that, really. It just dawdles, never building to any kind of crescendo, never making a point. If there is a point that you're missing, it's still not one you want to hear. It reminds you of the homily you sat through with your mother at Easter Mass. Bringing one hand up to brush nothing off your face, you mumble a greeting and produce your green and receive his. But it's not really- it's an off-white rolling paper. This joint kinda looks like a chewed up lollipop stick. You sidestep to a corner not under direct light.

Now this is where the Debussy really screws you. You use your thumb to spark, but the focus just shifted to the brass section. It's loud enough that you hear that crackly, bass noise that sounds like what TV static looks like. You don't know what it's called but if you could guess, maybe stereo interference? It's certainly interfering with your thoughts. You know how out of place you are. You see a kid inside without shoes rifling through these collectible cards. The music is so jovial like it's a whole orchestra of fat babies, and we can both agree you shouldn't be lighting up around young ones. For a few minutes, you wonder if this noise is supposed to distract you from cops. You move to another corner. Like a photophobic rat with anxiety. You've only taken two hits, and it's been at least 15 minutes. Your hand wearily moves upward, then drops, and you scoff and rub the back of your neck. Like, jesus, you paid good money for this! Again, you go for a third hit, just as Vivaldi joins the string sections. It becomes this tempest of elegance and piety, this swarm of noise and impractical hubris. These fat babies are musical savants, and live in an era where the word "bitch" was actually used for dogs and people knew the names of trees, and you are this pitiful person, coughing and cowering, who will drive home and get in bed and sleep for nine hours and then wake up and say, "I'm tired" and you know all that. But you're confronted with it, standing next to the shopping carts, and there aren't any thoughts you can think that are unrelated to this belligerent art. So you let go of the spliff, smush it into the ground and walk to your car.