I have recently come back to a playlist that I created more than 13 years ago. It is a "smart" playlist that counts how many times I have played a particular track on iTunes and compiles my 400 most played songs ever. After a 4 year absence, during which I used only Spotify the 400 tracks on offer feel a bit like a time capsule. It is full of surprises and soaked through with nostalgia. Weighted heavily with Sufjan Stevens, early Arcade Fire, Vampire Weekend, and tracks that dig even deeper into my musical history. Many imported from CD's carried over from my pre iPod days. Radiohead, Weezer, Bush, No Doubt… and on and on. The specificity of memory every one of these songs brings forth is remarkable.
I can hear the White Stripes “Ball and a Biscuit” and suddenly be standing in a Banana Republic in the Boise Town Square Mall at three thirty in the morning hastily hanging racks of clothing to set the holiday mens line before 8 ‘clock came and I had a test in my French 101 class. I remember a verbatim conversation explaining that the two guitar solos were my favorite from the last 5 years. In that moment I was on the precipice of a decade that would take me from Boise to the cold of a Canadian winter, the thin glamour of the French Riviera, and the sunny beaches of Orange County and Los Angeles. But while trying to get through a long night of tedious labor, those things were not even a thought in my head. I can vividly recall the anxiousness of that moment. Feeling it now as I sit at my desk color correcting soundbites, it is exhilarating.
Damien Rice’s “Eskimo” which just followed, has me laying on a bench in the back hallway of the Boise State University library more than a year later. Around the corner from the language lab where the criminal justice department was quiet and peaceful and great for a nap. It was almost finals week and my two jobs plus my 40 minute commute had drained me completely. It was a Wednesday and I had intro to art history coming up so I had been intending to read my textbook. Instead I spent the two and a half hours between classes that afternoon, eyes closed in and out of sleep with the epic, soaring, operatic, crescendo of that song on repeat. Each new play feeling more hopeful than the last. Against a tide of melancholy that tried and failed to wash over me, those notes leveed me onto dry ground. I remember the feeling of the bench, hard against my back, and the leather bag full of books, in that moment neglected, making a fine pillow. I wish I could somehow transcribe the sounds onto this page and write out the ephemeral nature of those moments. But music is special in that it is invisible so without form it can really only exist when heard. And only being heard can it be felt.
Each track has a memory attached.
Peter Bjorn and John - Young Folks
Driving to Will’s wedding with Daniel.
Arcade Fire - Neon Bible
The first time I drove to Chapman heading into a desert night in the summer
The Geese of Beverly Road - The National
When I spent my first Thanksgiving alone in Orange county. Cooking a chicken instead of a Turkey and heating up my store bought pie in a microwave.
Belle and Sebastian - For the Price of a Cup of Tea
Hanging out with my sister on a spring break when we drove around outside of Nampa in the rain while farmers prepped their fields for sowing.
Stronger - Kanye West
The first time I had a Chipotle burrito with Dobbs during our second semester at Dodge. I ordered a beer but he wasn’t 21 so he couldn’t.
I could go on. This playlist will only grow and evolve as time goes on. Like music, time is ephemeral. It only exists as we know it because we are here to participate. To measure it and watch it pass. Just as the sounds that we manipulate into music would exist with or without our interference, so too would time march. We find in those sounds the notes and melodies and rhythms that we dance, kiss and cry to. Music has made our lives richer and our numbered days more valuable. The right song can stop time, or transport us back to memories good and bad in ways no other human invention has been able. So as I wander across my past, and down each alley of memory on this playlist, I can only be grateful about what I’ve learned and be excited for what I might learn. When songs I haven’t yet heard let me catalog all the moments to come.