• The announcement of my dad’s new solo album, Warm. :)
  • The student eating lunch in the dining hall with his pink retainer on a napkin in front of him.
  • The student pop-lock robot-dancing to a jukebox on a platform in the quad, and the other students taking Snapchats of him from far away.
  • Learning that George Harrison referred to augmented chords as “the naughty chord” from a Rolling Stone interview with Jeff Lynne.
  • Almost certainly finding a vocal splice in Jeff Lynne’s 2012 version of “Telephone Line” by ELO, at 3:05.
  • The guitar solo on “Really Love You” from Paul McCartney’s Jeff Lynne-produced solo record, which sounds like it quotes Roger McGuinn’s solo on “Eight Miles High.”
  • How you can be Paul McCartney and still have only 2,000 plays on the auto-generated (but official) YouTube videos for some songs in your catalog, which is both reassuring and scary.
  • Playing drums at the weekly student jazz jam and really bombing on a solo.
  • Realizing that the reason I recorded fewer songs of my own in college than I did in high school (which I beat myself up about, because it’s college! I have my own gear! I should be able to record an album a week!) might not be just because of laziness, but also because free time in high school is in big uninterrupted blocks of time after school each day, while free time in college is spread out into an hour here, an hour there. (Those hours are useful, duh, but not great for deep project diving.) I’m also no longer convinced that I have more free time in college than in high school after all, even if class itself takes up less time. I’ll still beat myself up about it but I’ll try to remember that the only cure is to make some more stuff now.
  • Hearing my housemate’s phone buzz through the ceiling above me with messages from group texts of which we’re both a part.
  • Having a glass of almond milk before bed most nights since getting back to college, because my mom sent me here with a Costco case of it.
  • How everything you need to know about anthropology is in “Plastic Cup” by Low.