Diner Breakfast and the Infra-Ordinary

One of the things I learned from the August Wilson biography was that most days he walked to a nearby restaurant or diner in whatever city he was in, a place he called “the spot,” for a breakfast that could last up to five hours. He held court there, met up with friends and collaborators, did some writing, and sometimes he just soaked up the life all around him.

Ever since I finished the book I’ve had a craving for a classic diner breakfast.

If the “10,000 hours” idea is true there’s a good chance I spent roughly a quarter of mine in diners. The first one I could really call my own was a place called Alexander’s in the Edgewater neighborhood in Chicago. I looked it up, it’s still there, still thriving. I used to take my notebooks there and set up shop in one of the booths on snowy days. I hadn’t even finished a full-length play or screenplay yet but sitting there made me feel like a real Chicago writer.

My favorite diner in New York was The Renaissance in Hell’s Kitchen. It’s not there anymore, which is surprising because I remember it being busy all the time. It was the kind of place you’d inevitably run into fellow actors and artists. We had a lot of production meetings there for Fringe Shows and cabarets and stuff we were doing off-off-off-off Broadway in peep show theaters turned black boxes.

When we moved to LA I stopped going to diners for breakfast. One, I don’t live within walking distance of the kinds of places I used to frequent in New York or Chicago. Two, I discovered one of my favorite foods, the breakfast burrito. The best come from trucks, or small stands, and I mostly ate them standing over the hood of my car parked at some trailhead. Three, I mostly make my own breakfast these days. Since May, my go-to is a green smoothie and a sandwich with sliced chicken, tomatoes, and Swiss cheese. I’m 50 years old now, I had to pull back on the breakfast burritos.

After a couple of weeks of obsessively thinking about August Wilson’s breakfast routine I came across an article in the New York Times about “the powerful forces fracking our attention.” It talked about the French writer, Georges Perec, and a short work he created called, “An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris.” (Read it here!) Perec sat in a corner of one cafe and recorded everything he saw over the course of three days. He was determined to explore “the infra-ordinary,” the seemingly mundane events that otherwise might go unnoticed. “What happens when nothing happens other than the weather, people, cars, and clouds.” The authors of the piece use it as inspiration for an attention-preparing exercise of their own.

That was the last bit of motivation I needed to pack up my journal and head to a coffee shop in town. I went to a place that I’ve driven by at least a hundred times this year. The outdoor tables are always crowded on the weekends so I figured it must be pretty good. It was exactly what I was looking for, the kind of place where I could set up shop for a bit, order something terrible for my arteries, recalibrate my antennae, and retrain my attention after a busy holiday weekend. A diner breakfast is a perfect opportunity to observe the infra-ordinary. It’s not an accident that it was an essential part of August Wilson’s creative process and life in general.

I ordered the combo with two eggs, two slices of bacon, and two giant pancakes. I also ordered a side of toast because there’s something about diner toast, it’s never quite the same at home. While I waited I took out my journal and wrote down every little sensory detail that came to mind.

“License plates covering the walls, dozens of states in eyeshot. Sign, “$5 charge for whining.” Sound of customer coughing. Tables are covered in faux-wood laminate, wavy black lines to make it look real. Silver condiment tray has Tapatio, salt and pepper shakers, little plastic tubs of Smuckers (grape, blackberry, orange marmalade, off-brand strawberry), sugar shaker has granules stuck to top, syrup dispenser. Mismatched chairs, ceiling fans rotate to circulate air, conversation, plates being dumped in plastic bin, chairs squeak. White blinds, small curtain at bottom with retro coffee ads.”

“I can see into the kitchen. There’s a handwritten sign over the garbage can, “Get it in the trash, not on the floor,” then a woman’s name underneath. Did she write the message? Or, was the message for her?”

I have four pages of these details. What was amazing is that just when I thought I’d “seen” everything a new detail would reveal itself. That silver condiment tray was stamped with the Tabasco logo. The white blinds were capped with a maroon ruffle. I hadn’t noticed it before but I could hear the traffic outside.

The last thing I wrote: “A fly dances from cap to cap, weightless and graceful, like Gene Kelly.”

I’ve been doing this for so long that it’s easy to take certain things for granted. I have an expectation that when I sit down in the chair to write that I’ll be able to accomplish the thing I set out to accomplish. But that’s not always the case. It’s often incredibly difficult and I think, in many ways, it gets harder the older I get. When that happens, it’s easy to say, “The characters just aren’t talking,” or chalk it up to being uninspired.

But it could also be that I’ve just forgotten the fundamentals. It could be that I haven’t spent enough time going out for diner breakfasts lately and instead I’ve spent too much time drinking green juice and eating my sandwich at the dining room table while scrolling through reels on my goddamn phone. Maybe those blocks are a temporary side effect of having my attention fracked all morning.

The old saying is, “God is in the details.” The details, the specifics, help make a thing universal. (I bet you were able to picture those little plastic tubs of Smuckers.) If we don’t keep up the practice of noticing and filtering the details through our own particular prism we get rusty. That’s the other thing — the details we notice and how we process and communicate them back to the world is unique to all of us.

The details are always somebody’s details.

When you’re a writer they belong to you.

The fly reminded me of Gene Kelly. It would have reminded you of something else.

Observing, learning to “see,” translating our experience, those are the fundamental building blocks of the job. Michael Jordan never stopped practicing free throws, even after his fifth championship. Being in the diner, writing down the most mundane details, dry lists of observations, felt like doing free throws. It also reminded me of how much fun I used to have writing in booths in my twenties, when I first felt that spark inside. Putting pen to paper while inhaling fried potato vapor was such a powerful sense memory combo that it was a bit like traveling back through time.

I went to the gym afterward (blame it on the pancakes) and a Frank Turner song called, “Good & Gone” came on the playlist. The chorus says, “Sometimes the things you need are right back where you started from.”

It felt like the universe was in rhyme.

Follow August and George’s footsteps. Pick a diner. Go alone. Take a notebook. Sit INSIDE. Order the combo. Spend an hour. Soak up the infra-ordinary. Notice everything. Record as much as you can. Get in a few reps. Repair your attention, seal up the fissures from the constant fracking of your attention.

Find God in little plastic tubs of Smuckers.

Wisdom From Andre 3000

It’s been out for a couple of weeks now but I wanted to pass on this great interview with Andre 3000 about his new album of flute music. It contains so many of the ideas I’ve been talking about for the last couple of years here. He did a deep dive into the flute, playing and studying obsessively, he followed the joy, he moved cross country to LA where he met the collaborators for this album - there are so many similar steps to other artists who made major creative breakthroughs.

Check it out here!

Thrilling Adventure Hour in LA on 12/2

My friends Ben Blacker and Ben Acker have a live show of their throwback to old time radio, The Thrilling Adventure Hour, tomorrow night at The Bourbon Room in Hollywood. I contributed to a segment in the late show at 8:30 and I’ll be there in the audience to check it out. The show is a blast and the cast is phenomenal. If you’re in town, come check it out! You can get tickets here!