A tale of two burritos

How music preserved my personal identity over the past year.

Two nights, and two burritos, at Felipe’s in Harvard Square revealed to me the power of music as a method to preserve personal identity in a place that you disagree with.

The first burrito was on a first Hinge date with a bookish Harvard student who brought up Taylor Swift after I asked him about his music taste. At this point, my takes on Swift are stale, and I realized only after I let them run dry, my burrito becoming stale too as I yapped on and on: “She’s great for music business, but I’m not a fan of how she monopolizes charts,” ‘I think she writes the ‘From The Vault’ songs new,” etc. My date asked me who I listened to, and I thought for a second … he’s lucky to be alive – I could have literally bored him to death; well, I could mention my recent appreciation of death metal, or I could just say… “I like Sufjan Stevens and Big Thief.” I was not trying to be earnest or lie – I genuinely really like these artists and could stand by that; but the curation of my selection represented a sudden surface breach of the me trying to fit in here in Cambridge.

For the first few months here, I really did try to put on the Cambridge shoes (let’s just call them Blundstones). My attempt was indicative in the clothing purchases I made during this time: I bought slim-ish fit jeans (a first), a burgundy down jacket (useful!), and a Tracksmith x JCrew collaborative polo (God save me). I started a routine – gasp – in which I went to sleep by 10 pm so I could hit the gym at 6 am. I didn’t go out much, other than occasionally to Club Café or the like, as it didn’t seem like that was really the thing to do in Cambridge. I was quiet and awkward around my office, my personality scaled back in a way that reminded me of early high school.

And like I told my Hinge date, I listened to a lot of Sufjan and Big Thief. The fall felt like a good time to put on some chamber folk and wear athleisure, perhaps on an early stroll on the Charles. But the music grew to bore me, and so did the scenic Charles, no matter how majestic Beacon Hill looked from Memorial Drive, accented by its autumnal ochres. I found myself switching to mellow electronic fare – Burial was a choice, good to work to, then to Oli XL, whose deep UK bass hypnotized me as I counted trees on spreadsheets. “Boring, Lame!”

My boredom turned into angst as I grew frustrated with life here. It came to a crescendo when I was in a car accident while driving back to Cambridge following Thanksgiving break. I was tired and scrolling time away in the passenger seat when our Jeep collided head-on with another car and flipped, tumbled, and eventually stopped, our bodies hanging upside down, the windshield shattered, suddenly exposing us to the brisk late November air. Nobody was really hurt, but I got a concussion, and I couldn’t listen to music for weeks. As I recovered, I wanted to listen more and more – to perhaps lick something spicy, for I’d been wallowing for months, wearing bland clothing, listening to bland music, and eating Dig Inn at work for dinner. When my brain could just barely handle it, I started listening to the riotous Militarie Gun and the noisy Hotline TNT among other hardcore bands. I wanted washed-out guitars, big drums, shouted vocals: anything loud.

In January, I started commuting via bus and T, because I was too chicken to ride my bike in cold weather, and too lazy to get the flat tire repaired. On the bus, I listened to dub, techno, and occasionally hyperpop on the ride home. It was quite fun to put on whatever I wanted, to have a designated commute time where I could do nothing but look out the window and listen. At work, I relistened to Goo, Sunbather, Safe in the Hands of Love, more weird, noisy stuff that I was worried would seep out of my headphones and cast me as the angsty 22-year-old I was.

In February, around a month after my Hinge date, I went to my first solo concert at The Sinclair in Cambridge. It was for Militarie Gun, who had risen to become my most listened to artist of 2024. Alone, I grabbed a Miller Light and listened to the openers, nodding my head to look like every other dude. After the last opener, MG came on quickly, and I had to smash my can with my foot as the mosh pit opened up where I stood, and I didn’t even have time to think about whether this would be good for my concussed head and whiplashed neck before someone stage dove and landed on it, and birds circled around my vision for a second, and I was woozy until I became one with the crowd. Perhaps it was the brain damage, but yelling out: “I’ve been feeling pretty down, so I get very hiiiiigghhhh” was almost cathartic, if not just a heck of a lot of fun. I laughed, jumped, and left with a smile, hungry and sweaty.

I hadn’t eaten, and Felipe’s was a block away and open, so I grabbed a burrito and sat on a bench outside and unwrapped it as I waited for the bus. I was so tired and my head was ringing (that’s the brain damage), but I was able to fight the mental lag for a moment of clarity. What was satisfying about the show was not that there was a sea of people who appreciated the same music I did – it was instead that I did something I had really, actually wanted to do. As I ate, I realized I had spent so much time trying to fit in that I’d forgotten what I’d liked, and music had led me … back to me.

In a place that I don’t like, I think I’ve found what I do like. I understand that I am a person with preferences – however simple of a realization that is, it is satisfying to understand – and I’m a strange dude. The Reed who was on the verge of wearing flannels, buying lululemon, and listening to Noah Kahan, was someone who would make sense for Cambridge but did not make sense for my happiness. I am grateful to Cambridge for allowing me to see a clearer silhouette of my personal identity. And I am grateful to music taste, generally – a discreet, personal superpower for you and you alone, for keeping your sense of you alive. Art permeates leachy unanimity: in the words of Leonard Cohen “there is a crack, a crack in everything / that's how the light gets in.”

My burrito from Felipe’s post Militarie Gun and a Gatorade from CVS for rehydration, of course!