I have about three or four thousand songs on my phone. I’m pretty sure I listen to the same few hundred over and over again. I have maybe twenty or thirty playlists – they have a lot of overlap between them. When I was younger I loved to make mix tapes. I suppose my playlists are similar, though hopefully more thoughtfully curated. I have playlists for when I want to work out or run. I have several for the drive from Philly to Penn State and back again (usually about seven or eight hours in length). I have playlists that are songs I’m into now and playlists with songs that I was into at some other time. Snapshots of a time, mood, people, and the geography of my life.
When I listen to certain playlists, bands, or albums, I’m transported to other moments and places. Some albums make me think of my walks along the Mississippi, some remind me of particular relationships I’ve had. I have one playlist called Jams – it was something I made for a woman I was dating in Philly – we’d often swap songs – her son liked the song “Lochloosa.” It’s mostly slower songs, some sexy, some wistful. When I moved to Memphis I made another playlist called Home Again. It too was mostly slower songs – songs of loss, longing, and home – an out of place wandering type of vibe. There’s a lot of overlap between those two playlists. So many songs about love are also about the loss of love – tenderness and it’s absence. Stephen Dunn writes of the word tenderness:
I can’t remember
ever saying the exact word, tenderness,though she did. It’s a word I see now
you must be older to use,
you must have experienced the absence of itoften enough to know what silk and deep balm
it is when at last it comes
For as long as I can remember I’ve been this kind of happy sad sack in search of depth, of feeling, of understanding. (By the way sad sack is defined as an inept blundering person and was a WWII comic about private in the military – not at all how I’ve heard it used). For as long as I can remember I’ve been the melancholic romantic who appreciates the returning home, the looking back, as much as the initial high of falling for each other – the person who believes in two people finding an against all odds type of connection (though I never cared for that song). My music choices on these playlists, (Michael Kiwanuka, Wild Child, Ben Harper, Norah Jones) reflect a lot of these sentiments. I think the best slow songs are deeply appreciative dances of holding on, recognizing what feels right, or reconciliation – the coming together after having let go.
That was what I was writing last night. I was listening to music – I don’t remember which playlist or where I was going with it. I know it started with the Ben Harper line “First time that I saw her, she had white doves in her eyes.” I just wanted to write something, anything – and music was on my mind. I’m falling further and further out of practice with my writing. Half a dozen times today I sat down to write, half a dozen times I scrolled twitter or Facebook or found some other distraction (make cookies, eat lunch, exercise, clean a countertop, mill about, text a friend). I get pretty bored with myself when I get this way. I tell myself I should read something or… I don’t even know what.
And I don’t know if it’s the music, the nostalgia, or the stir crazy feeling of not having explored much in the past few months, but several times today I’ve had the strange urge to travel or mentally revisit trips I’ve taken. At one point I found myself looking at google maps – first it was a hike a little north and west of here, and then I scrolled up towards Wellsboro, PA (a place I loved to hike), and then further up to New York and Niagara Falls (I’ve never been). I followed the Canadian border to Vermont and then to Mt. Washington (a road trip hike I did with a friend) then over to Maine and Bar Harbor (where my wife and I went for our one-year anniversary). As the snow fell outside, I thought about walking through the snow-covered streets of Philly to Bishop’s Collar – a great corner bar… or the night I tried to meet up with my girlfriend down by her bus stop, and we missed each other – both of us ending up back at her place cold and wet from the slushy streets. The other day I bought a mix 12 pack of IPAs from Stone Brewing – I’ve been thinking about the trip out to San Diego when I visited Stone and a handful of small towns north of the city (Vista, Escondido, Encinitas) – my favorite hoodie is from Mother Earth a brewpub out there. Other songs made me think about my road trip down to Tennessee – an attempt to disappear for a few days of blues, bbq, and hiking. At some point I saw a picture of a friend visiting the Jersey Shore and I was reminded of a winter day-trip to Asbury Park.
Maybe it’s the plaintive and yearning playlists that have made it difficult to write. Maybe this is what happens when you stop making memories – you find yourself retreading old ones – looking for inspiration somewhere. When you can’t go anywhere or meet new people, you find yourself appreciating the places you’ve been and the people who have come and gone. So many people who in many small ways have made lasting impressions – and, of course, the music that so effortlessly transports me there.