The sound is gone. Off.

Unplug it. Plug it back in. No difference—the sound doesn't work.

Loss of smell and loss of taste—these are the symptoms of COVID-19, but I'm telling you: there's a loss of sound. Not hearing, but sound. So: not the loss of a sense, but the loss of the thing being sensed. And if you lose the thing being sensed then what's the difference, really, with losing the sense?

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We ordered some food from iNDO in Tower Grove last weekend. (iNDO pulled in two James Beard awards in 2020.) My job, as ever, is to drive and pick things up. In the best of times, a trip to Tower Grove might leave a little time for a side trip for coffee or a drink or a book, but in 2020 you go, you do what you went out for, and you return.

Stepping into the foyer of iNDO was... lush with sound.

Fashionable music. Rustling of people working. Banter with the staff. People eating and talking somewhere on the back. In this Year of Our Virus 2020, all of that hubbub you expect in normal times is both the hubbub you miss and dread now. Just... give me that sound of other people laughing and talking and so on—I miss it. But not today. I miss it today. But don't give it to me today. I want—but don't give. Give me—but, I just—I must decline. But. No. Yes. That sound.