"The music columnist? Hm. You're going to make a lot of friends."

Friends? Friends? When the legendary Gato Toninas offered such as his encouragement last spring semester, I panicked. Were random people going to saunter up next to me, ask if I was that Holm girl who writes for the Herald? Could I convincingly deny it? Was I going to get glances over the Thursday edition of the paper during lecture at least every other week? Painfully aware of my awkward social skills, the position suddenly sounded like a less-than-stellar undertaking. What was wrong with remaining an unobtrusive ArtsEtc. previewer of shows, reviewer of albums, interviewer of bands?

Spreading the nets of my social network was the last thing I considered as I fell into the sidebar. I just wanted to listen to some good music. I just wanted to pretend the prose could get people interested in those local sounds for nothing more than the sake of the local music-making community. I just wanted to fade into the porous newspaper pages, letting the music and the musicians speak for themselves. We never quite get what we expect, do we?

I waited at a red light, my headphones only naturally glued to my ears. A 60-something gentleman stopped next to me. I slipped one of the tiny speakers aside when he looked over and pointed to them. He said there was a time — his time — when people talked to each other while waiting to cross the street. I smiled, shrugged my shoulders, said it was a sign of the times — my time. The pedestrian signal changed. He wished me a good day, ducking into Union South. I resumed listening to Living in Clip.

We come from a music culture doing its damnedest to alienate us. And seems to be quite adeptly succeeding. How many of us cannot withstand the mere 10 minutes of walking time to get from Humanities to Social Science without plugging our ears with three or four tunes? How many of us habitually get no nearer to watching music than streaming the "Grillz" video online? How many of us get no closer to critically contemplating sounds than reading the seriously waning music authority Rolling Stone?

Add to the list a regularly validated complaint of Madison rarely serving as a standard stop on national tours (ahem — Stuart, Murdoch and David, Jack White, Patterson Hood et al., Casablancas and company …). The question now becomes one not of why music leaves us each in our own individual world, but of how it was ever supposed to bring us together in the first place.

Laughing away the Toninas comment, I comfortably wrote with those expectations, with a background in the school of music in isolation. While revealing preferences can be like playing truth or, well, truth, the press offered a barrier to the confessional. I never had to face a hipster as she learned I completely dug the Hush Sound. There were no heated debates resulting in a sudden disregard of my critical credibility. Never had I to stand beside a rock and roller and tell him I did not think the Beatles were the best band in the entire history of all musickind. There was no subsequent inquisition suddenly leaving my musical merit qualified.

And then came the Madison music education.

Undertaking an attempt to focus attention on local music requires experiencing local music. The problem? Well, let's be realistic. Unless you are familiar with the music, you are not particularly likely to go to a show. Unless you are friends with band members, you are not particularly likely to be familiar with their sounds. Unless you can bribe your own friends with libations, you are not particularly likely to find accompaniment to those shows.

Concerts attended solo, any public events attended as a lady alone, are never ideal. Where will you position yourself? Can you fiddle with your phone during the entire set change? What if you run into your ex and your, probably perfect, replacement?

The occasions to deal with such issues were less frequent than anticipated. Sometimes the isolation theory persevered; a quiet chair provided an oasis. Sometimes complete content came from pulling out Norman Mailer and having a good read between sets. Other times, musicians whose names found their way into my articles made introductions.

But most often, those good, old Midwestern folks revealed themselves as chatty, chatty creatures. Inform them you are simply a music afficionado — in fact not dating the bassist and playing the good girlfriend role, at least not yet — and you have yourself a new best friend. Within minutes, you know his musical history, his brand of drum kit and the not particularly good band he plays in. Within minutes, you learn of the best show she saw in her hometown, that time the lead singer swung the microphone right into the guitarist's skull and her roadie ambitions.

Music and company is like cheese and wine, Badger hockey and Phil, milk and cookies, summer and the Terrace. Certainly, one exists without the other. But who can resist even one seasonably fine June evening sipping a Capital brew from waxy Union cups? Do we not cheer a little harder with the instruction from the man sporting a white mock turtleneck and black slacks?

Music and company is like coffee and chocolate, Carrie and Big, Jack and Coke, Thursday night and Paul's Club. Certainly, one exists without the other. But who the hell wants a dance party by themselves? Is conversation not a little livelier when you do not have to speak for more than one side?

Try as our modern society might, the broad expanse of music manages to encompass us all. With innumerable genres and subgenres, the phenomenal predecessors, the current culture-shifters, the struggling club-shakers, how someone goes about without experiencing one pleasing note, one soothing chord, is unfathomable. It colors our memories, ameliorates our moods. I am not the only one who hears Green Day's "Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)" and thinks prom. I am not the only one who listens to Dashboard Confessional when bitter wallowing is of the utmost importance.

We might heatedly disagree on the specifics, but music as a conversation-starter is fail-safe. And through those discussions, we discover new sounds, new styles, new venues, even those new friends. You can make the trek to Milwaukee, Chicago, Minneapolis if you wish. But I simply must indulge in making you privy to one last secret: The music, in its purest form, it is all right here, right at home.

Christine Holm is a senior majoring in English and psychology. Questions? Comments? Want to talk music with her? Reach Christine at [email protected].