Awkward Conversations About Music
I haven’t done my awkward conversations about music thing in awhile and I’ve had one stored up this whole time. It happened when I returned from work in September. There were conferences in the beginning and on a lunch break, some people I work with and I went to a Mexican dive nearby. Now, I don’t usually bring up music with people I don’t know really well because it never tends to go as smoothly as I’d like and sometimes it makes me feel a little pretentious too.
I was doing great as I remember it. I hadn’t brought up music at all in the conversations about summer and the things we had done. (I could have easily rambled about the joy of seeing Os Mutantes at Pitchfork Music Festival or the obsession I felt as I poured over David Browne’s Dream Brother) but I held back because I wasn’t sure if anyone at the table would know or care who Os Mutantes or the Buckleys were…
But I guess the breakdown occurred when a friend of mine, who I actually really care about a great deal, looked at the mints tossed on the table at the end of lunch and said, “Oh look, it’s starlight mints.” Of course, I thought of the band. I had actually enjoyed seeing them play the Wicker Park Street Festival shortly before Pitchfork. And I was misled because this particular friend has come with me to a few shows and is actually musical herself, being a great violin player. We’ve talked about music in the past so it just seemed….safe.
“Hey, are you making a music reference?” I asked relieved. But no one at the table seemed to show even a glimmer of recognition that Starlight Mints were anything but candies. I was on the opposite end of the spectrum. I didn’t even know those peppermints were called Starlight Mints. I had just heard them called simply “peppermints.” So immediately I thought it must be referring to a band. It wasn’t. I guess the candy probably came first…before the band did.