Not only do they stand behind the desk, greeting patron after patron with a friendly (if wearied) smile and a pleasant demeanor, shunting out coffee after coffee to ravenous hordes of caffeine-bereft college zombies, they also somehow manage to auditorily perfume the atmosphere with only the best indie stuff. Well, the best indie stuff and a few things not suitable to my particular palate, but if everyone catered to my every whim…

… the world would be a fabulous place.

I walked in the other day, grizzly determined to obtain not my second, not my third, but my fourth cup of coffee from the establishment. Thankfully, the person behind the register had changed out, and with the new desk person came a new playlist. While I was ordering, the Glass Animals cover of “Love Lockdown” (which, although incomparable to ‘Ye, always amps my mood) came on her shuffle. I think we met eyes and exchanged in silence a dialogue in mutual admiration of the song over the course of the next few seconds, just before the general roar of the place overtook the song.

First of all, the Glass Animals are a fantastic group to listen to any time. “Black Mambo” was solidly the anthem of my summer and I spent many a night driving with the sound up and my windows down. Throw in the smell of coffee and the tiny snippets of sarcastic banter peppering in between the beats and it’s one of the best experiences on this campus.

Later, once I could hear the music again, I could make out the middle portion of James Blake’s “Retrograde,” another personal favorite. Do you ever just experience songs so viscerally that it feels like you’ve been physically altered, somehow? Like you can feel the rhythm of the song as much a part of you as is the rhythm of your veins, your pulse? Maybe that was just the four cups of coffee, but I think I can safely attribute some of the frisson of my skin to the song.

I’m sure there were other equally great songs, but I had to return to the world of the living (and the drizzly fog, and the chill) and leave the warmth and closeness of the house.

The moral of the story: Kudos to you, O People who Work at Stirling’s. You weekend warriors. You blues travelers. You purveyors of the intellectual lifeblood of this campus. I’ve seen many a rude customer be treated with the utmost respect, and have had so many pleasant conversations with all of you no matter how busy you were. I’ve also expanded my musical horizons thanks to your absolute fire tastes and raised the boundaries when it’s come to caffeine tolerance. Anything’s possible, especially if you’re nice to the people who work at Stirling’s. They deserve it.