I love overhearing conversations between people who are obviously totally immersed in a very specific world that most people never join. I suppose it wouldn’t be as interesting to me if it were something really foreign to me like neurology or fluid mechanics, but I was in Tealuxe today and heard two guys talking about what Bach piece one of them should choose to have a group perform. They were referring to everything by numbers (k?chel?), like 77 – “so slow, really challenging” – or 120 – “I’ve played continuo on that seven times, but I’ve never done it myself,” with such familiarity, it was really interesting. “You’d need a soloist, four gambas, strings..” “How many strings” “Well, you could do 6-6-6-4-2…” It sounds like a description of a massive steam locomotive.

I was impressed and intrigued by this conversation not because I was ever close to being that engrossed in performing music, but because I’ve been close to those who have, I guess, from Youth Symphony to music major friends in college, and it’s always impressive to hear people have such mastery, almost more so in conversation than even in performance, of a subject with which you have passing familiarity. In performance, they seem like musicians, who are supposed to be amazing, but in conversation, they’re people, PhD. candidates and mentors and people who decide whether to use students or union musicians and which pieces are better suited to which spaces, and somehow, that’s even more interesting.

And on a sidenote, Tealuxe is a weird place. I go there fairly often, and they really project classiness and the quiet dignity of tea, no drinks ending in “-ccino” or made of gingerbread, but if you sit there for awhile, you get pummeled by the sound of “The Simpsons” floating down for the upstairs office (not that “The Simpsons” isn’t classy, but this place is pretty much frequented by solo tea-drinkers reading), along with employees’ unattended cell-phones ringing, complemented nicely by people working the counter who seem to have no idea how small the place is and just yell a lot. I sound old and possibly stricken with what Roz Chast labeled “Creeping Rooneyism,” but it just seems like Tealuxe is never quite as Tealuxe as it could be. I guess I never would have overheard that conversation, though, so who am I to complain?