By w.e. leathem
It is a certain kind of person who writes in a bar (reading in a bar demanding an altogether different psych profile)...and its not proximity to a beverage of choice, per se, though that is nice. Those who seek out bars or their pasteurized cousins, coffee shops, to write are blood brothers, feral truffle-cavagers, sniffing out a boutique kind of aloneness. A solitude found only amidst cacophony. As the old adage notes: to be alone, truly alone, move to the city. Nothing like neighborly proximity with a few million fellow humans, stacked high-n-wide, to cut one off. The anonymity can be deafening.
Let there be a chorus of conversations. Boisterous. Out of sync yammerings exquisitely grating – akin to a Steve Reich composition (City Life, perhaps?). Pipe in music over tinny speakers: chill-hop…hell, even classic rock will do. Anything to calk the cracks and crevices, to halt the draft of the too-aware anima. Only amidst such a setting can a certain kind of scribbler achieve focus, lose themselves, find the concentrative calm perched at the eye of the social maelstrom.
Why not write at home?
Other than a gratuitous familiarity with every contemptuous, distracting tic and creak and sigh (is it really any wonder that houses are so often anthropomorphized in the horror genres?). There’s the clear-and-present threat posed by ledgers of honey-dos magnetized to the refrigerator door…the annoying interruptive familiarity of cats seeking laps…the gravitational tug of unwashed laundry and a sink of dirty dishes...the insistent pacing of dogs wanting out, back in, out again, back in…periodically combusting into a cardiac caterwaul of barking: at passing cars, at squirrels, at falling leaves, at the postman in his driver-on-the-wrong-side panel truck…
Writing is work, and the work requires setting, character even. Even sequestered in a more appropriately decibeled library carrel, certain kinds of writing remains elusive. I would go further: it is held at bay by the prevailing sterility of beige, cinder-block, corporate-carpet aesthetics.
Not just any old bar will do. That goes without saying.
Bars along the ‘9 have served a host of writers well. Window-shoppers can spot them perched behind picture glass – seated alone, a stack of books at hand. Laptops open. Wait staff, unbidden, refreshing drinks that have grown precariously shallow. No need for interruptive conversation to serve the transactional needs of this sort of liquored capitalism.
One must be attune to the tell-tale signs: while not a priori a deal killer, televisions are to be accommodated with a certain long-suffering (we aren’t unwashed barbarians! We know there are Final 4 championships, Tour de France pelotons and Presidential debates). But the floor-to-ceiling yammer, the surveillance by the burning Eye-of-Sauron is never conducive to the marshaling of thoughts, to the capturing of inspiration in the amber of written words (teles are seldom conducive to much beyond the numbing of interpersonal communion and the dampening of most higher thinking).
Of late, I prefer the confines of a dark, shotgun joint. Squirreled away down an alley. Its door partially hidden, tucked behind a trash dumpster. The only thing to eat: a basket of popcorn and three iterations of salt. Something to keep a mouth parched and in need of refreshment, yet inexpensive enough to offer for free. It is down hill from a campus, from which loftier, more timeless musings can seep. But not a student bar — that would be bad.
Not much room for day-trippers or happy-hour office socials. Regulars and townies preferred. Familiar faces. Known quantities. Perhaps a smattering of mothballed, military sorts - divergent POVs, sure, to those of us tacking bohemian. The state of the nation and just what's to be done about it can be the stuff of lively conversation. Still, most thoughts along these lines are kept to one’s self. A little slack may be cut for the odd conversational turn if accompanied by an appropriate world-weariness. It's just plain, old fashioned respect, that’s all: the kind extended to the elders of the tribe, even if we’re certain they are full of it.
A garrulous barkeep is a plus: lanky, tallish. I’d say graying except for the time-tonsured aryan pate. Quick to greet any new arrival with acerbic New Jersey charm: Don’t you have someplace else you could be?! Itself, a revealing statement doubling up on its entendres. A salt of the earth kind of guy. A rock for the forgotten, as David Baerwald sings.
They say that Charles Dickens wrote in a bar – The Lamb and Flag off Covent Garden (also located down an alley). The kind of place where a writer can fish the gene pool for character sketches. Where those with ears to hear can overhear the sweet, idiomatic turns of dialogue. The kind of place where those who labor are want to frequent. Where service industry staff congregates after the last grease trap has been drained, the last catsup bottle topped. No $14 dollar frou-frou drinks here. No bullshit. You see, service peeps always tip, and tip well — a stark contrast from the puckered, parsimonious entitled, down from the glass and steel towers. Service peeps truly understand the urgent velocity of money.
I became a rower – one of the most ballet-beautiful sports – following an evening at the Lamb and Flag. I and a buddy, Murph, spent the better part of ’87 curating our year abroad via that indispensable travel bible: The Good Pub Guide. The Blackfriar. The Mitre. The Marlborough Head. The train-rattled caverns of The Hole In the Wall, tucked beneath the Victoria Station spans that cross the Thames. Writing our own chapters in storied watering holes like Ye Bunch of Grapes. Commingling our voices with the crowds singing and drinking in the Olive Branch of a Saturday night. After hours, rapping on the locked door of the Bee Hive. The shade of Davey’s Geordie-red hair still visibly moving about inside, obscured by the frost of the windows...hoping against hope for one final nightcap.
Even then, some 35 years ago, I wrote in each of these establishments. Between drinks and conversations, between flirtations and pilgrimages to the loo or the jukebox. And so, there is no awkwardness in my laying my claim to a table by a window, its view to distraction. Placing my claim on a double Laphroaig, neat. Flipping open my Mac book. Giving myself over to rumination. Perhaps, in a few, I may have something to write about...
