The Playlist Brought Me Back
My daughter Archer, at 24, is a music aficionado. Authority. Savant.
She’ll tell you that she knows every song ever written, and it’s not much of an exaggeration. Not only does she have encyclopedic knowledge of songs from the last 60 years or so, she can usually tell you on what album each appeared and make a pretty good guess as to the year it was released.
Oh, and she knows most of the words. Hence her 50 and counting Spotify playlists.
She keeps telling me to listen to more music. She sees me wavering and she knows it’s music that will settle my soul.
When I was in my twenties, I listened to a lot of music. Now that I’m older I tend to listen to people talking to me; NPR, podcasts, and mostly, usually, almost continually, audiobooks.
I hand my brain over to authors to keep from thinking so goddamn much. Thinking has gotten me into a lot of trouble over the years. Thus the constant procession of British murder mysteries, celebrity memoirs, YA fantasy and literary sci-fi marching through my headphones.
But I keep forgetting about music. When I do manage to turn off the narration and let music take over, my mind can finally drift. And the right playlist? It takes me to a place of pure feeling. It’s the greatest vacation from thought, judgment, perseveration, doubt, and worry.
It’s the deepest kind of muscle memory.
Any song from the “Grease” soundtrack will take me straight to the evening I saw it, in the tiny movie theater on the main street of my tiny town. The last day of sixth grade, my girlfriends beside me, the boys who’d just finished seventh grade right behind us. The intervening 45 years are but a dream.
Every interminable Grateful Dead song puts me behind the wheel, embarking on yet another drug-fueled road trip. I never even liked that band, but that didn’t stop me from going to dozens of shows. I feel sunshine, friendship, the freedom of my unencumbered youth…
The opening of “What Goes Around… Comes Around” gives me chills. I can’t concentrate on anything else until those seven and a half minutes are over.
“Africa” will never not make me cry.
I try to let my body make my decisions. Tapping into my intuition has become second nature. Feeling emotions as physical sensations, managing dysregulation, practicing allllll the breathing exercises - I do it all, on the daily.
My body knows that it’s time to pack up and leave this city. It rejects anything that smells of injustice. It instantly spots the men that will be intoxicating, delightful trouble. My body is the keeper of memory, the well of wordless knowledge.
My brain is what talked me into staying with the wrong man, applying for that terrible job. It convinced me that struggling was my lot in life. Why does the stupid part of me think it should control the part that knows everything?
So, despite Joe Rogan, I guess it’s time to trade in my Audible membership for Spotify Premium. I mean, either way some way too rich, way too white tech bro is going to get my money, right? May as well protect my fragile peace.
I believe in the power of words. I mean, obviously. Literature is my first and final love. But music might be the connecting force that will drown out the shouting for all of us. It’s hard to argue with the sheer human potency of 65,000 people spontaneously singing “Bohemian Rhapsody” together.
I mean, who but a bunch of musicians could even GET 65,000 into a single place at one time? Don’t talk to me about football. As far as I’m concerned, that’s a stand-in for modern warfare, not community.
What if we all spent less time talking and more time immersed in collective musical experiences? Just an idea.
It’s been a rough week, at the end of a challenging year. I had a rotten birthday the other day; among other things I was stuck reflecting on all the ways life and I have gone at each other. I’m going to put on Toto and let the tears flow for a minute. No thoughts, no ideas. Just my body feeling its truth.