3:33⅓ - Ella Fitzgerald - April in Paris

Breaking up when you share an apartment is a whole thing. It’s not like a young 20s breakup where once you say you’re done with each other there’s no glassware to divvy up and no security deposit to haggle over. I only had one co-habitation break up situation. It was a mixed bag, not the best, not the worst. Proud to say we are still really decent too each other and supportive of each other professionally. BUT, when the writing was on the wall a few months before things would ultimately end I did go secretly RIP the entirety of the Ella Fitzgerald Verve box set my girlfriend had just bought. I’m sure if I had asked she wouldn’t have had a problem with it, but I remember doing it after she left for work, just knowing that I had to get my hands on that Ella Fitzgerald. Now of course, I knew Ella Fitzgerald’s body of work, pretty well before that, but I always associate Ella Fitzgerald and her Verve years more with the months of details surrounding a break up. I don’t even think we had moved to the final apartment we lived in together when I started ripping those CDs. But we lasted in that final apartment for a cool one month before the break up. (I realize I’m not really talking about Ella Fitzgerald at all, sorry bout that, got life on the brain). Something about those CDs, that spindle stuffed with all the great music she listened to (she had, has and will always have unbelievable taste in music) it felt like this painful connection. . .can’t believe it’s not working out with a woman who would spend her hard-earned dollars on a fancy ass Ella Fitzgerald Verve box set. But there I was, disc 2, disc 3 - reading the liner notes, thinking about where I would love, who I would become, what would happen for me next in the love department all while ripping Ella in at 320 kbps.