#25 - Ringing in Our Ears
My Stylish Coffee Morning; Live Music?; Our Final Hope is Sleep
Hello, my friends,
This newsletter is six months old! Half a year of weekly posts — that’s around seventy little sections and a few longer essays. Before I started HMF, I briefly considered that I might eventually run out of ideas. To combat that possibility, I brainstormed some backup topics and questions I could ask myself. To my surprise, that list remains unused; life has provided all the ideas I’ve needed thus far. Usually, by Sunday or Monday I know what I’ll be writing about for the next issue. It would be accurate to say that I’m confident that by Friday morning a newsletter will be in your mailbox.
On the other hand, I’ve had a short story idea in mind for ages and haven’t written it! Part of the challenge is finding relaxed time to get the words down, but that’s a silly excuse. My real problem is fear! Will I be able to plot it out? Will I choose the right words? Will my story keep a reader’s attention? There’s no way to know until I do it. I need to face this fear and I will. Creativity shall overcome!
My Stylish Coffee Morning
I had a couple of free hours recently so I decided to return to the neighborhood that contains des pair books, Canyon Coffee, a tiny grocery store called Cookbook, lots of young creatives, hip older affluents, dogs (mostly small), and this past Sunday, me. My time was limited so all I envisioned was having a cappuccino and pastry at the coffee shop while reading Reuven Hammer’s engaging Entering Jewish Prayer and then browsing the bookstore for 20-25 minutes before heading home. And it happened exactly like that! As Ashley says, “Life is good when you’re Oleg Kagan.”
With my chocolate croissant (just recently back in stock, I overheard a barista tell another customer) and delicious coffee, I learned that the Talmud has a prayer (that isn’t Modeh Ani) that’s to be recited in the morning. It’s so beautiful that I want to share it with you here:
O my God, the soul You have placed within me is pure. You created it, You formed it, You breathed it within me, You will take it from me in the future and will restore it to me in the future-to-come. As long as the soul is within me I thankfully acknowledge You, O Lord my God and God of my fathers, Master of all deeds, Lord of all souls. Blessed are You, O Lord, who restores souls to the dead.
For context, this seems to be part of a series of morning blessings (see Berakhot 60b). I say “seems” because I’m still learning the exact order of things. I hope this last statement will describe my condition forever. Curiosity is one of my strengths, after all (for my top ten strengths see #19).
Before I finished my coffee, an important person sat down next to me at the bar. I don’t know what made her a VIP, but the staff was solicitous of her and she was very gracious to them. Everyone should be a celebrity for a day, but not more than a week.
After I finished my coffee, I went to the bookstore. Outside on the bench, the store worker was talking to some friends, among them an alert 3-legged Chihuahua who was acting as a bit of a bouncer. My vibes were acceptable, and I was allowed to pass.
Low shelves give des pair books a negligible burial score (#21), but the collection (all new books) is worth browsing — popular literary fiction mixed with classics and works in translation, non-fiction comprised of arts and culture, essays and memoirs by latter day intellectuals, contemporary and classic poetry, and enough thick philosophy books to whet my appetite. I didn’t buy any books this time but did make note of Monk!: Thelonious, Pannonica, and the Friendship Behind a Musical Revolution by Youssef Daoudi. I’ve already ordered it from the library (it arrived yesterday!) and I will report back when I’ve read it.
Before going up a very steep hill to my car, I peeked into the diminutive grocery store looking for impulse purchases. The lovely cheeses eyed me from the cold case, but it was hot and I wasn’t in the mood. I would have bought a chocolate bar but there weren’t any.
Speaking of spotting. Last time I was in the area, I spied an art bookstore a few blocks from the center of that morning, but it was closed during my jaunt (and I was out of time anyway). I’ll have to look it up during my next stylish sliver of freedom.
Live Music?
I’ll just out and say it: I’m ambivalent about live music. And it’s not age talking — it’s always been this way for me. Expressing this opinion is jarring since so many people love going to clubs and concerts. Me? I enjoy orchestral concerts and opera and a limited number of pop acts live (Ashley and I have seen Pink Martini at the Hollywood Bowl several times), but mostly it’s challenging. The problems are comfort and sound, especially at small clubs: Standing for hours, opening acts I’ve never heard of playing far too long, drunk fans singing along loudly, and an awful acoustic atmosphere where I can barely make sense of the music and the lyrics are a blur all make going to concerts less than pristine. I don’t relish songs I’ve been listening to for years from artists I enjoy being made to sound like a chewed-up cassette. It’s often not much better at larger venues, just more spread out. I suppose this applies more to bands or hip-hop artists. It’s not as hard to hear a single person with a piano or guitar, but more people on stage, please no.
I know that I’m allowed to share this unpopular opinion because it’s my newsletter, but I still feel like a heel for decrying live music (or maybe live music venues?). It’s a little like someone saying that they dislike travel on their dating profile. A highly unorthodox flex like that makes you wonder. How did they become this way? Did they get bitten by a train when they were younger? What’s the story?
For me and live music, it’s just a relationship that’s not on the best of terms. We talk, and it’s fine, but we don’t actively seek each other out.
Our Final Hope is Sleep
Many of the world’s problems would be alleviated (and a few solved) if humans got enough sleep. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), almost 35% of adults in the United States reported “short sleep duration” (under 7 hours) in 2020, a number that has held steady since 2013. Need I tell you about the pitfalls of shorting your sleep or the benefits of getting enough? Like eating healthy and exercising, sleeping enough is something that most people would agree is an objective good and yet, we unreasonable humans can’t seem to put theory into practice.
Some might argue for inaction due to lack of definitive information; the keys to universal wellness can be vague or unknown. I disagree! The simplest of guidelines do exist to move us in the right direction:
Exercise: 30 minutes of aerobic exercise 3 times a week. Or 10 minutes. Or any at all.
Diet: Eat more vegetables
Sleep: 8 hours or more for most people
Getting enough sleep would help our mood, lead to better decision-making, reduce stress responses, and improve long-term health. I say “our”, but I’m talking to myself here as much as anything. It’s a quandary I grapple with often: What mechanisms can I (we) use to make better decisions around exercise, diet, and sleep? Discipline doesn’t seem to be enough. I feel like maybe I’m asking a “magic” question here. And yet, I wonder: How do you work your way towards good habits around exercise, diet, and sleep? Let’s solve the world’s problems together!
I love the morning prayer and description of the coffee shop and bookstore, Oleg
Oh, this whole piece is so lyrical. My favorite so far, I think.... Oleg, you are making me covet a personal substack even though the one I already have is high-maintenance already...
Let's go to the live music thing. Reading it reminded me of my lack of interest in book stores and pesto, two things that virtually everyone else in my life seems to worship at the altar of. Neither of them do much for me -- putting aside the mysteries of the appeal of pesto, I walk into a bookstore feeling like I ought to be excited but I'm at a loss for what I'd actually look at there. So I wander around, poke at a few things, check out the music section (which never has anything I don't already have) and, most of all, feel awkward for leaving without buying anything, like I've somehow betrayed the Sacred Order of the Scribe. Perhaps it's because I write, but I don't think of myself as a writer and I don't read the kinds of books that are generally featured in bookshops.
All of this is a long way of saying, it is odd not to connect with something that our culture (or at least our subculture) assumes we connect with.
I do enjoy live music, but what I don't enjoy is the experience of having to go out at that time of night, when all I want to do is curl up with the fire with some vinyl on the turntable and write and, yes, read, and contemplate. I'm not good at collective ritual after dark, and that's when most live music happens.
Speaking of which, re: sleep -- I continue to be fascinated with the mounting evidence that we are not meant to sleep the full eight hour stretch, that this is an invention of the industrial age. I think you and I have maybe talked about "second sleep" and how that seems to be our natural condition. I keep trying, because I'd love to have those precious hours in the middle of the night (see prior conversation about sacred night time rituals), but it's an ongoing process. There's an article about it here (and a book too that I'm now not finding...) https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220107-the-lost-medieval-habit-of-biphasic-sleep
A few more things...
I'm pleased you passed muster with the 3-legged chihauhua.
"Everyone should be a celebrity for a day, but not more than a week." -- I love this line so very much, I just had to call it out. Move over, Andy Warhol.
“Life is good when you’re Oleg Kagan.” -- it sure is, and thank you for sharing it with us so eloquently