Watching for the Changes

 I go out sometimes. Not for any particular love of music. Not for any particular love of people, either. I guess you could equate it to knowing what you're not missing, and having to see it to believe in it.

My bedroom. I spend give or take five hours here a day, excluding mandatory downtime. It is my office, my lounge and my library. It's a bit much to require of one room. Include the fact that I've been using it for about twelve years, you can imagine how much is clinging here. Not just physical things, but memories and baggage. It's actually pretty neat on the physical side because I throw things out all the time. Those small gifts people give me for Christmas. Figurines and birthday cards. I surreptitiously sneak a few of them into the bin once a week, and I feel a little cleaner.

But the memories stay, piling up everywhere like piles of laundry and dishes. Things I've thought, things I plan to do, mental sticky notes layered on everything until I get paper cuts whenever I move. They are necessary, but they do not comfort me.

So I go out sometimes.

With people crowding around me, all those wandering thoughts are corralled and fenced off inside my head, making room for others' ideas. Eventually their thoughts become just as visible as my cobweb-laundry-murmurs, burbling in hazy streams around every limb and face. For a while, I just enjoy being all on the inside. It helps me concentrate.

I sit in the cafe. There is loud music and smoke and conversation. I am wearing a blue sweater and a fake smile. My facial muscles are the stagehands at an opera, pulling the curtains open at the right moments, changing the set. No-one is singing.

I detest these fake smiles. They make my cheeks hurt. I finish saying “hello” to some people and I go sit alone outside. I concentrate. I relax my leering grin into something small and neutral. Neither sad or happy. Just me. I take out my notepad and I write something clever and overdone. I'm writing forever. Metaphors, that-word-not-this-word, streaming continuity. I reach a conclusion and I pause. I put away my pen and paper. Perceive and react. Reacted. Now perceive.

I move my chair into a nearby group of people I sort-of know. No one responds. I am a 21^st century ninja. I listen to them talking about small things. Brute reality. Who has just bought a beaten-up motorcycle from the impound lot. Who is trying to sleep with whomever else. Blah.

Getting nothing, I shove my chair under a nearby table, lean over the balustrade and take several refreshing gulps of cold air, diluting the second-hand smoke in my lungs. I stare into traffic. I go inside and sit right up front by the band platform, staring at a wall. I write a little more.

The first band comes on. It's a never-ending, freeform instrumentalist piece between a guitarist and a drummer, with a visual feed controlled by foot pedals. These days, it seems that bands are their own roadies, adjusting the stage effects in-between key changes.

I'm not complaining. I can't, really. I sit blank-faced and staring at the wall as clouds and egg yolk and red dots tumble over one another, listening to this stream of noise pouring over and through me. Every vibration hits me like a shock from a defibrillator pressed against a rotten corpse. It tingles, but I feel nothing. My fingers are twitching slowly as the electricity pulls at my tendons.

My neck gets stiff, and I turn my head slightly to look at the band, just enough to watch the drummer beating fury into his kit. I look at his face. His face looks at the guitarist's hand. He's watching for the changes to get the beat right. Every now and then he gets this crazy smile on his face, and moments later dives into a tantrum of beats.

And that strikes me as meaningful. A flash of whimsy passes through me as I see what I've been looking for. I couldn't care less about the music. I'm watching because of what just happened inside the drummer. He's enjoying himself. He loves to make music. I couldn't care less about his music, but I care all the world for his love of it. I watch for the changes; here, frustration as the beat drones on and on; and here, joy at a gunfight of rhythm.

It stops. I get myself a cup of tea. I go out for more air. I go inside and sit at a table that has remained miraculously empty. I muse over the 'Reserved' sign in front of me. These swarms around me are the anarchists and rebels of The City, and they are standing around growing bunions because of a small plastic sign on an empty table.

I write. I finish my tea. I stare at the far wall. I just stare, and feel the rapture echoing blankly within me. I am suddenly concerned I may be on a minor high from all the nicotine swirling through the air, but I dismiss the idea. I am what I make myself, not what the world tries to make me. I have felt the calm acceptance I am feeling now in more isolated conditions, and so it is beyond chemical suggestion.

I stay and listen to the next two singers, my ears pricked for the smallest hint of enjoyment, eyes staring through the crowd hoping for a contortion of feeling, a hand caressing a guitar, anything. There are moments. I don't feel them. I curl my lip a millimetre or two and pretend a little, but it always comes down to the same thing; there's them, and then there's me.

Sometimes, it's enough knowing that they feel. They have love, anger, bliss and sorrow. Knowing these things, seeing them pass in front of me... it strengthens my resolve to maintain the quarantine.

Someone walks into a glass door. Another slurs loudly about how brilliant the last singer was. Thoughts are bubbling around everyone in a haze, not quite visible, but 'there' enough to make the room feel thrice as crowded. I get up and leave, having already cut into my 8 hour downtime. I am a phantom. I don't bother saying goodbye, because I am not leaving you. I am that image lurking in the back of your mind: the stranger with hooded eyes you think you might have imagined but aren't really sure you'll ever truly recall enough to know for certain.