I went shopping yesterday at the outlets near Morongo Casino in the desert, where the windmills spun to the wind, and it was mighty windy outside. I wanted to buy a light jacket for the fall. It was getting cold in the mornings when I woke up before the sun rose each day to go write somewhere, and I needed something to wear that kept me warm enough.

So my mother and I headed to Vuori, an Italian clothing store, and searched the racks. I couldn’t get over the music they played in there—not that I went there to listen to it. Maybe it wasn’t so much the music but the volume.

Since before my birth, music had always played everywhere except for hospitals. Imagine if they played Daryl Hall in there while your father was dying from rectal bleeding.

Daryl Hall wasn’t playing in Vuori but some kind of music without a genre. It was similar to a fan blowing but much louder and of the same emotional intensity as a fan. It was nothing. I heard a YouTuber describe today’s music as being more like mood music than anything, meaning it was less about the emotional pull of a song but more of something to play in the background while you’re doing homework or cleaning the kitchen or folding your clothes. All the songs blended in with each other to where I couldn’t tell when one song ended and the next song began. It was all the same woman singing to fake drums, synthesizers, with too much echo, too many fancy effects in the studio to hide the blemishes of a droning singer and notes that didn’t resonate. It was astonishing that I even noticed the music. Usually, I tuned out because it was so monotone that it blended with the walls like beige. People actually enjoyed this music. I ended up buying a mustard yellow windbreaker, the best way I could describe it.

I was at my team meeting on Thursday morning and had to listen to my supervisor give us news. And during our icebreaker, she asked everyone to share their dream jobs when they were kids.

“Ben, it’s your turn,” she said. I was the first one up.

“I don’t know,” I said. “A baseball player? Robert, your turn.”

Raquel said she wanted to be a professional singer. Our supervisor told us Raquel was putting out an album and that she was a great singer. Raquel didn’t say much about herself and her singing, but after hearing her voice, I could picture her sounding like the music in Vuori.

But I no longer kept track of contemporary music, an old-school chump like me who never listened to the Gen-Zers who called things “mid.” I learned that from reading comments on social media from potential Gen-Zers, meaning something was mediocre. Maybe they didn’t know what mediocre meant. Judging from their illiteracy, I thought they didn’t. So they used slang. Well, the music I heard in the clothing stores was mid, and I was beginning to think all music was mid these days, except for Jerry Cantrell, whose music was always incredible. I gave the Vuori soundtrack credit for not drawing attention to itself like someone who wore a swimming shirt at a beach, except when it was being played at an excruciating level where I couldn’t hear my mother talk.

Speaking of which, I sat in Coffee Bean where they played Rick James’s “Superfreak” at a high volume. I could’ve been wrong, but Rick was singing about a prostitute. Maybe Coffee Bean based everything on interpretation.