You know you're a musician when...?

Hello, internet. Long time no post. I've been busy with school and so not playing much lately. However, I figured that as long as I wasn't playing I might as well listen to other people play, so I've been catching quite a bit of live music at XPN's Free at Noon shows over the last few weeks. If you're in the Philly area, these shows are every Friday and also, as you may have noted from the name... free. So if you're like me and, well, everybody else in the country right now, trying to save money, scoot on over to one of these. It's a great way to find out about new music. (Case in point: Bell X1. Saw them a couple of weeks ago and wound up snagging a copy of their new album, Blue Lights on the Runway, which they very nicely signed for me.) And if you don't like what you hear, then at least you haven't wasted money on a ticket, right?

I've noticed recently that in certain hands anything can become a musical instrument. (If you're a drummer or you know one, you probably already know that a steering wheel is one of these things.) A couple of weeks ago I went to the mall with one of my friends and her younger sister. We stopped in Sephora to help said sister pick out makeup for the prom, and I figured I'd pick up a couple of things I was running out of while I was there. They were playing the sort of nondescript, booming gym music they always seem to play in mall stores, and while we were standing in line I absentmindedly started tapping the box I was holding against my palm in a kind of syncopated beat. You can take the instrument away from the musician, but you can't... never mind, that doesn't quite work, but you get the idea.