I Can't Hear You

Newsletter 2024-03-04

Live music is inspiring. It lifts the heart and feeds the soul. It’s also a menace that must be stopped. Somebody, please turn it down.

A hip new distillery recently opened near my house. It’s within walking distance, which is a key criteria for any institution serving alcohol. Date night is more fun when my wife Lola and I can have a few drinks together instead of one of us having fun while the other one glowers. Pro tip: In marriage, an expressive scowl counts as good communication. We had a limited window to check out the distillery Saturday night. I’d planned to take Lola there after dinner but before we were supposed to meet up with our friends in St. Louis via video call for a night of virtual board games. My life is wildly exciting, but only to someone as boring as me. As usual, my best laid plans were foiled by dog poop. With our local friends away on vacation, eliminating any chance of a surprise invitation to socialize in person, Lola declared that it was the perfect weekend for cleaning. We aggressively scoured every room in the house. Well, Lola and I scoured. The kids yelled at each other about who was supposed to clean what. To children, putting your heads together to get something done means aggressively headbutting each other. By late afternoon, I could see the finish line. Then I smelled something. I blamed the dog. He’s the source of most unpleasant odors and wet spots in this house. He’s sixteen, which is ten thousand in dog years. He’s basically the canine Methuselah. He’s at the age where he either can’t or won’t control where he makes a mess. Whatever the reason, the result is the same. I searched the freshly vacuumed carpet for the unwanted gifts Niko left behind. They were nowhere to be found. Then I checked his actual behind. Bingo. His butt hairs were encrusted with a boulder of poop as hard as concrete. So much for getting to the distillery on time.

I spent the next hour and a half shaving the dog. It was my fault for letting his fur get so long, but I didn’t have much choice. He doesn’t shed thanks to the poodle genes mixed in with the thousand other varieties of little yappy dogs that were crossbred to create his cute little face. I have to shear him like a sheep a few times a year or he’ll become so overwhelmed by his own fur that he won’t be able to walk or see. If you’ve ever wanted to own a real life tribble, this is the dog for you. I used to pay a groomer, but they all became ridiculously backlogged after covid, so I bought a pair of thirty-dollar clippers. I’ve been handling the trimming myself ever since. Neither Niko nor I is happy with the arrangement. He comes out looking like I trimmed him with a weed wacker. If I give him that hair cut too early when the weather is still cold, he will pee in the house even more than usual. That might have less to do with the weather than with shame. I wouldn’t want people to see me with that haircut, either. This year, I clearly waited too long. I plunked him and his poop boulder in the empty bathtub and got to work.

Things went wrong right from the start. My wireless pet clippers didn’t work, so I had to switch to wired human ones. They weren’t as good at dealing with thick fur, and they were also loud. The last part wasn’t a problem any more. Having a mostly deaf dog worked out in my favor. Niko was still less than cooperative. I can’t blame him. As someone who had to have a lingering butt wound packed with gauze for a month after surgery, I understand the discomfort of having a third party muck about in that region. The entire bathroom smelled like poop. Lola made me close the door to trap the odor in with me. The world record poo berry held on to the end. When I was finally done, the clippers were as hot as a welding torch, and Niko and I had built up enough animosity between us to last a lifetime. I gave him a quick bath and then set him free. It was time for that trendy distillery.

My clothes were too covered in dog hair and poop for the regular laundry, so I tossed them on the burn pile and changed into something more suitable for a night on the town. Well, a half hour on the town. There wasn’t much time left before Lola and I had to do our video call. After a short walk, we arrived to find the distillery packed. Everyone from the city was there, and they all brought a friend. That was great for business but bad for finding a seat. In one corner, a band was getting ready for its set. The venue was entirely too trendy for me. I fought the overwhelming urge to run out the door. The only thing waiting for me back home was the lingering smell of burned hair and dog poop. Lola and I made our way to the bar to order some drinks.

That’s when we got our next clue that this place was too cool for us. Every cocktail was ten dollars. If you live somewhere upscale, that’s perfectly reasonable. In suburban Indiana, it’s a little much. I understand that we were paying for the venue, not the drink. I have to remind myself of that every time I go out instead of chugging cheap beer at home. With the tip, we ended up paying twenty-six dollars, which was enough for an entire case of Miller Lite plus two bottles of grocery store wine. God bless Aldi. Thoroughly out of place, we took our overpriced drinks to one of the communal seating picnic tables. We managed to find someone we knew, which was unsurprising considering that literally everyone in the town was there. The other half of the picnic table was taken up by wasted strangers, who are my favorite people to talk to. That’s not sarcasm. I love new acquaintances who spill their darkest secrets after I’ve known them for three minutes. Unfortunately, I didn’t have even that long. Moments after we sat down, the live music started up and all talking ended for good.

I appreciate the artistry that goes into creating music. I don’t appreciate the volume it takes to make it live on-site. It’s kind of like sitting in the middle of a commercial kitchen while chefs and their assistants loudly bang their pots and pans around you. I don’t need all the extra noise that comes with making a gourmet meal. I’m perfectly happy to sit in the quiet dining room next door to wait for the finished product to be wheeled out. Dinner will taste just as good either way. Live music isn’t better, just louder. I’d rather hear the same melody from somebody’s iPhone played over the distillery’s speakers at one-third the volume. Music at a non-music function should be background noise, not the main event. I went out for overpriced drinks. I didn’t need the overly loud music thrown in for free.

We made it through two songs before we “had to leave.” We could have stuck around for another ten minutes before our Zoom call was scheduled to start, but my eardrums needed a break. The band was great, but that didn’t mean I wanted to sit around and let them give me long term hearing damage. Our excuse was even more of a stretch than I expected. The other couple was an hour and a half late. That’s what happens when you schedule a call around bedtime with people who have three young kids. They say you’ll miss those days, but that’s a lie. Instead of playing games, we used the time we had left to discuss logistics for our upcoming group vacation to the Lake of the Ozarks. We’ll have seven kids between us. That will generate a lot of stories and even more volume. It will still be quieter than that distillery and its live music. Even a few minutes of it was enough to make my ears hurt. I’m old and weak and just want to go to bed. I turned forty a full two years early.

The noise issue really is a deal breaker for me. If I wanted maximum volume, I’d stay home. When I fork over extra cash to drink somewhere else, I’m paying a premium to cut the decibels in half. I’ve been this way for years. Once, we took our family and my in-laws out to a local restaurant. As soon as we got in the door, we saw there was a live band. We turned around and walked back out. My in-laws probably would have preferred to stay. The last thing they wanted was to hear me talk. Going back even further to our days before kids, Lola and I received a few invitations from friends to a dueling piano bar in downtown Indy. The dueling part meant there were two pianos, which generated twice the noise. I thought the theme was music, but it was actually sadomasochism. I’ll never understand how the singles scene functions in places like that. Maybe it doesn’t, which could be the whole point. If you don’t want to be hit on, go to the bar where the music is the loudest. A live band a day keeps the creeps away.

Photo by Magnus Lunay on Unsplash

None of this bodes well for an upcoming concert I’m supposed to attend. For Christmas, my brother-in-law Jerry got me tickets to see Sabaton. They’re a Swedish heavy metal band that sings about historic battles. They’re the perfect blend of nerdy and cool, which is why the average person has never heard of them. Sabaton is the opening act for a much bigger band neither of us care about seeing. I’m sure the music will be impossibly loud, but the concert is also outdoors, which should help. Local ordinances forbid the volume from going high enough to break windows or explode birds. I haven’t been to many other concerts. Pre-kids, Lola won free tickets to see Elton John. That one was also outdoors. I don’t remember it being too loud, but I don’t recall much from those days. It’s possible the volume was so high that I suffered long term memory damage. After that, I didn’t go to another concert until last fall, when I went to the free one Colts owner Jim Irsay hosted at Lucas Oil Stadium. You might notice the trend here is that I don’t like to spend money for music. Or at all. That concert was loud, but the stadium was big enough for me to find places to escape. Those bathrooms were sound-proof bunkers. They should build them like in homes. I do not want to hear what’s happening on the other side of that door.

There is one form of live music I pay for. Saxophones aren’t free. My eleven-year-old, Mae, has a band concert coming up. Those usually aren’t painfully loud, but they can be painful for other reasons. If she asks, that means it hurts because I love her so much. At past concerts, the band tried to blast us out of the gym, but they were limited by their child-sized lungs. They’ll only get stronger with time, unfortunately. For now, the noise level is tolerable. Put those sixty kids in a distillery, though, and I’d end up as deaf as my dog. It all comes down to the venue. I’ll stick to places that have recorded music or no music at all. Or maybe I’ll just stay home altogether and do a better job dealing with my dog and his various butt situations. It’s all about priorities.

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for now. Catch you next time.

James