Serendipitwaddle - Tania Katherine

I miss music.

To some extent, that sounds like such an odd thing to say. I have music around me every single day: on the bus to and from work, when I get home, etc. But not how I used to. I used to liv music. I used to wake up to music, listen to it until I needed to leave for work, listen to it on the way to work in the music industry, listen to it at work, listen to it on the way home from work and then get home to listen to it and spend a good amount of time trying to make the perfect playlist or discover a new band. Most nights, there would also be some sort of concert involved at a venue I had an opinion about. I would go to enough venues that I had opinions and commentary on each (such as knowing to pan left to exit Mercury Lounge or never hating the Living Room’s drink policy). I had opinions and always a set of tickets to some show in the upcoming future.

Now, I don’t have any of that. I don’t get music for free anymore minus a few publications that I still write for occasionally and I am too nervous to download it. I can’t really afford it either as…you know…I can barely afford to buy groceries and all. I can’t remember when my last concert was (but I have a feeling that it was Innerpartysystem at ML, though that was early July and I think I’d have had to have gone to something after that…). I don’t have any plans for shows. Incubus is playing here this weekend and normally I’d be all on top of that. I’d have had tickets months ago. But here…I don’t even bother to see if it is somewhere we can get to by bus. One of my favorite bands ever and I have not even mildly tried. This is the first year since I started going that I am not going to Warped Tour. But every time that I am outside after dark, I can smell it. The perfect smell of summer nights, sweat and nostalgia. I can smell it clearly. The Wrens—one of my favorite bands in the past ten years—are playing here for free in a few weeks and I can’t even be bothered to think about leaving my apartment for it. The Fiery Furnaces and Margot and the Nuclear So & So’s are playing the two Friday’s before too and I can’t even be bothered.

I know that things may change as we get older. I always expected that there would be a time that I would stop going to two or three shows a week and breathing music as much. And yes, Cincinnati isn’t the music mecca that New York or even Columbus is. But when did I lose such a large part of me? Maybe it’s because Michael doesn’t “get” or even understand music and that’s not something we’ll ever share. Heck, he probably couldn’t even name my favorite band. He doesn’t breathe it. Or live it. Or care to. And that’s okay. The problem isn’t with him: it is with me. I just wonder when I lost the biggest part of myself.

Somewhere in between moving to a city that two years ago I could barely spell and having bed bugs…I lost myself.