nostalgia with a melody
a playlist of the songs that score my life
i’ve always had this thing with music.
not just liking it, not just listening to it ~ but feeling it in a way that rearranges my insides.
before i had language for emotion, i had songs.
music provides a medium in which life experiences are stored…
a way to tap into my favorite feeling: nostalgia.
before i knew how to process anything, i made playlists.
it started in my preteen years, back when the family computer lived in the corner of my parents’ bedroom and the internet made that little dialing sound. i used to sit there for hours, burning mix CDs like they were secret spells.
each one its own story: the slow dance i hoped someone would invite me into, the ache i didn’t yet have words for, the summers that smelled like sea salt and burritos.
i’ve always been nostalgic by nature.
music is still the quickest way back to who i was … nostalgia with a melody.
a time machine disguised as a chorus.
one note and suddenly i’m twelve again, or fifteen, or standing in my childhood bedroom pretending heartbreak meant something to me.
and in those early years, i had this dream… to create soundtracks for movies.
to shape a feeling, a scene, an entire world with a single song.
i didn’t know how to name it then, but something in me already understood that music is another kind of storytelling.
funny enough… i guess that dream came true. i may not score films, but i’ve been scoring my life and now classes for over two decades.
i don’t make mix CDs anymore, but i do have 7,235 playlists on spotify.
each one a little doorway into a moment i’ve lived or a moment i needed.
my own ongoing soundtrack.
recently, i went back through some of my very favorites…
the messy ones, the cinematic ones, the ones named after people i no longer speak to, the ones that smell like nostalgia so strong it almost hurts.
and from all of that, i started something new: a single playlist of what i believe are the most beautiful songs i’ve ever collected.
right now, it holds about 260 tracks…
and it’s a living playlist… i commit to continue adding to it as i hear or remember the ones that move me most.