• My classmate bringing up Captain Beefheart in a class discussion about art created via abuse.
  • Seeing (and hearing) a working wax cylinder phonograph for the first time.
  • Watching my friend talk to strangers on the street and at a bar in a way that felt foreign (but heartwarming) to me. I guess as a (Midwestern) city person, I feel like you ought to be sincerely friendly to strangers but keep contact to a minimum—especially if they’re busy, the way most bartenders are. But my friend talked a lot, and no one seemed bothered at all by it.
  • My gamelan teacher stopping in the middle of a song to point out that a little bat was sleeping (or dead) on the ledge of an acoustic panel on the wall.
  • The smell of campfire everywhere.