If there’s one thing that makes each of us different, it’s the ability to make sense of how we see the world.
Our minds have a network of patterns and behaviors that indicate what aspects of the world fulfill us the most just by what we like to do. However, we probably see our self-identity less like a clinical database and more like a breathing universe of traits and quirks. What is important to us can be complete nonsense to the person next to us.
I would like, for a moment, to let you into my universe.
If there’s one thing that’s influenced me since the very start, it’s music. I won’t say my knowledge is encyclopedic, but I was raised around it and raised on a lot of it. Judging by the 11,500 songs in my Apple Music library, that extensive mindset has definitely carried on today. It’s enough that I can say the way I experience the world is definitely tied to what I feel when I’m listening to music.
For that reason, I have playlists. A lot of them.
As in, 190 that I currently update out of the 500-some that I’ve made.
Everything from 20 different kinds of parties to 30 specific moods to 26 select eras in my life – it’s all in my library somewhere.
No, I haven’t written a massive AI that sifts through metadata for me – yet). I do everything by hand and by feeling with as much intuition as possible, and I have done so for the past five or so years.
Out of the various techniques I’ve tried, my most current and trusted method of sorting a song is envisioning the setting and scenario that I think that song evokes the most. Of the various parts of a song I take into account, some very essential ones are its tempo, its sense of space and its mood.
For example, when I hear The Postal Service’s “Clark Gable”, I pick up on the light tone of the synthesizers, and the firm, driving tempo, and deduce that it’s prime “morning highway cruising” music. However, listening to something like Childish Gambino’s “Urn” makes me pay attention to the relaxed beat, the roomy reverb on the instruments and the cool, mellow vibe they bring out together, which brings out a definite “lounging in a bedroom at night” feel.
As a matter of fact, one of my most frequently updated projects is a 70-playlist catalog of music for the entire day. I work to convey different settings through rhythm and ambiance (example: the gentle pace of a leisurely walk, the driving energy of a highway drive), and use melody to discern which time of day best suits it. I currently have a playlist of music for beds, bedrooms, downtown benches, cabins, clubs, forests, highways, houses, patios, porches, streets and walks.
I honestly don’t really see what I do as excessive; I see it as quite essential to how I see the world.
Each place means something different to each person, and through that, we already elevate the objective reality of these environments in our minds. The right song can justify that extra work we do by externalizing everything we feel with sound and giving a reality a reasonable boost to feel realistic. I just like to cover a lot of bases, and therefore a lot of places, so that if I ever wind up at a beach party or in a London club, I’ll have a playlist ready for that perfect moment.
That being said, it does make me a bit wary at times. Nothing fulfills me more than having the perfect mix at the perfect place at the perfect time, but until I get to that ultimatum of stars aligning, it feels like mental ramblings. It’s a constant struggle to not lose myself in this elevated reality of sound, and still stay connected enough to reality as it is, in its natural state, to understand what brings such a rise out of it in my mind to begin with.
My playlists are not only an invaluable reflection of my inner universe but an invaluable bond to the world around me.
The best meaning we have in life is what we create for ourselves, and these mixes are the captured moments in time that I too often move past and only acknowledge once they’ve been assimilated. The vocabulary might be different for whatever governs your universe most, but what’s undeniable is that we can all find a way to make all of those feelings come back again – and for me, I just have to press shuffle.
