Music | A playlist for July

This month, I made a playlist. 

I have never really been a playlist person, not in the mix-tape meaning of the word. I have playlists on Spotify, but they tend to be little more than large repositories of music that fits a certain genre. "Indie Rock", "Bossa Nova", "Opera",... Things like that. And that has suited me for a long time. For one thing, I seldom listen to new music releases. Even for my favorite bands, it will sometimes take me months before I give any new album a try. I never thought too much about it, I don't really know why. My taste skews towards older music - which sometimes means the earliest albums from a favourite band, and sometimes means music from the 30s, 40s and 50s... And once I find songs that I like I listen to them over and over again. All of this means that I never really needed  - or wanted - to make monthly playlists. Until now. 

It happened on a bus ride to the lab. I was listening to "I'm a Cuckoo" - number one on this playlist - and it dawned on me that there were fragments of the lyrics that translated my thoughts better than I possibly could, and it occurred to me to put it on a playlist. Then, another song came along and I added that... And another. And I kept adding songs that fit this patter until the very last days of July, and I went back to this playlist, again and again and again. These are not just songs that I listened to repeatedly this month, though... My heart, my vulcan heart, sometimes feels like a wild dragon, that is particularly difficult to ride. These are that songs that spoke to the twists and turns of that dragon's flight. 

1. I'm a cuckoo, by Belle and Sebastian

 On the tail of what was easily the best concert I've ever been to in my life, I was listening to a lot of Belle and Sebastian, earlier this month. Mostly I gravitated to Dear Catastrophe Waitress (2003), which has my top Belle and Sebastian Song, "Piazza New York Catcher", but it was "I'm a cuckoo" that captured my heart. The final line ("There's something wrong with me,...") was easy to enough to relate to, and there were bits ("I'm glad that you are waiting with me / Tell me all about your day") that reminded me of a time when I wasn't entirely on my own. But it was these lines in the end that turned out to be things that I had in my throat the whole time, but couldn't bring myself to say to one person who should really listen.

"I was there for you
When you were lonely
I was there when you were sad
I was there when you were bad
Now it's my time of need
I'm thinking, do I have to plead to get you by my side?"

 

 2. Bus, by Travis

 

 

Before I moved to Oxford, I came across new music more often. It happened mostly during car rides, and though I never really enjoy having to "break in" a new song, some of those became some of the favorites I listen to all the time. Since I've been here, though, that connection ceased and I am the poorer for it. But this one song came to me, and at the exactly right time. "Bus" captures the bittersweet feeling of thinking you have something, only to realize that nothing was ever like what it looked like in your heart and in your mind. There is a theme to this playlist - as perhaps it was inevitable, because there was also a theme in my mind and in my heart. An absence, that dominated my thoughts more than anyone I know could understand or even believe. And processing this absence, much like the lyrics say, I too "lost a little bit of trust"...

I thought it was just us
Waiting on this bus
Darling, I have lost a little bit of trust
I thought it was just us
Waiting on this bus
Waiting on a gust of wind to blow us away
Away to better days, away to better days

 

3. Will anybody ever love me, by Surfjan Stevens 

 

 

I first listened to Surfjan Stevens in the soundtrack of Call Me By Your Name (one of my top ten movies ever), but I didn't really get into the rest of his stuff after that. I don't even know how this particular song came to pop up on my Spotify. But it did. And it spoke to the questions that arose in my mind when I understood that my best friend had grown weary of my friendship. Because if this person had become sick of me, I have to wonder - a wondering that is yet to be met with an answer - will it ever be any different? Or, in Surfjan's words, "will anybody ever love me?". Becuase it this person couldn't, perhaps it means that no one ever will....

Will anybody ever love me?
For good reasons, without grievance
Not for sport

Will anybody ever love me?
In every season pledge allegiance to my heart
Pledge allegiance to my burning heart

 

4. Trains to Brazil, by Guillemot

 

 

 The title of this one is perfect. I have no idea what it means to the people who wrote the song, but it means something to me, something difficult to put into words. And the rhythm, the music, the style, everything is just about... Anger. Anger about the waste of it all, about having to watch this beautiful, precious, rare thing fall through my fingers like dry sand, unable to do anything about it. And it you replace "cold winter" for "hot summer mornings", yeah...  The do remind me of that all the time. Only there's no place for that memory to go now.

 

And I think of you on cold winter mornings
Darling they remind me of when we were at school
Nothing really mattered when you called out my name
In fact Nothing really mattered at all 

5. Somebody that I used to know, by Gotye

 

 

I listened to this one at the peak of the hype, but I had never really thought about the lyrics. I had never thought, for instance, about the reason why there are two voices, and about who these characters are, what story are they trying to tell. But now I listen, and I can't help but pay attention to the girl, and to what she's saying. Because it seems to me that the guy is complaining that she is too harsh for cutting out all contact. But then she speaks, and she talks about what he did. And you know what? I understand her. The guy says that she "didn't have to do that", but I think that she kind of did. The worst moment for me is when she talks about him gaslighting her, because yeah, that's heavy. Thinking that someone has your best interests at heart and trusting them completely, only to realize that they were only doing what was best for them, and using your shortcomings against you, making you believe that you are even more broken than you really are... That hurts. 

Now and then I think of all the times you screwed me over
But had me believing it was always something that I'd done

And I don't wanna live that way
Reading into every word you say

 

6. Gota d'agua, by Chico Buarque

 

 In the last days of the month, I decided to listen to one of Chico Buarque's albums (which brought to mind a lot of complicated thoughts, that perhaps should inspire their own post), but in doing that, I came across this old song for the first time. There is a story here in these songs... A story of loss, of anger, of trying desperately to do something about it. Then fear and sadness and anger at realizing nothing was as it seemed before. A weariness of pretending that nothing is wrong. And this song captured it all. Which was comforting... It reminded me of a universal truth: that even though I know no other human beings whose hearts have the depth of my own, not personally, no one who could fathom who I really am, there's not a feeling I can experience that haven't been felt by a kindred spirit in the past, no pain whose remedy I can't find in the classics, be that an old novel, or this very old song (which is, for better or worse, a Brazilian classic). And though the pain and the bitter-sweetness have not left me, it is good to know that at one point, there was someone else whose heart was "full of mágoa". And that that is okay 

Deixe em paz meu coração                                                    (Let my heart be
Que ele é um pote até aqui de mágoa                                   Because it is a put full of hurt,
E qualquer desatenção, faça não                                         And any lack of attention, don't do that
Pode ser a gota d'água                                                          It could be the last drop)