My deep listening session took place at Fazoli's around 8:30 pm on Saturday.
As I sat down in my booth and prepared myself to listen, I realized that since this was such a familiar place in which I've learned to tune out certain sounds at times, I needed to clear my head and be able to focus on each sound I could hear from not just the dining room, but also the kitchen and elsewhere in earshot. Of course, the very first sound I noticed was the music playing from the speakers in the ceiling. In the particular booth I was sitting in, the ceiling speaker was located to the left of me. During the entirety of my listening session, the music played in the background, sometimes softly, sometimes more lively, but never stopping. Either way, the music makes me feel more relaxed and at ease than I know I would be in a room of complete silence, and I imagine that the music has this same affect on the other guests in the dining room as well. Though the music is discernible, it is quiet enough in the background for me to hear the conversation of the couple in the booth two tables down from me. Their conversation blends together with several other conversations I hear going on around me, all of them consolidating to make more background noise that continues for the entirety of the session. All of the voices sound very monotone, comparable to the voices you would hear at a funeral. It adds an odd feeling to the air. Ignoring the monotone part of their voices and just focusing on the voices themselves makes me realize that the restaurant is getting fuller and busier on this Saturday night.
As people walk into the dining room, I hear the scuffle of their feet on the carpet, and then the silence that comes with their feet stepping onto the tile in front of the condiment stand. I hear the "thwack," of them pressing down on the ice lever and the grumbling of the machine as it readies itself to drop some ice into their open cup.
The sound of beeping is coming from a few certain areas in the restaurant. I hear a manager press a button on a register, resulting in a "beep." Immediately after this beep I hear three beeps come from a screen in the kitchen. As I'm registering the beeps, I suddenly hear an unpleasant squealing noise that I realize is the pasta machine in the kitchen. It's an awful screeching noise, comparable to nails on a chalkboard almost, but easier to handle. The noise proves that work is being done in the kitchen after an order has been placed.
It's a little strange, but to me, I feel like the more people came into the dining room and the louder everyone talked, the louder the music became and the more dominant the music became in my mind. Looking at it this way, I also felt as though my ears were a camera in which I was using the zoom option before to hear every tiny little sound I could, but when I zoomed out, I could see the big picture (this being the music playing and the guests walking around with trays of food and such). All of the little sounds made up the big picture and the fact that this was a restaurant during a busy time on a weekend night.
