A Playlist

June 13, 2025

Today is my 30th birthday and I am going to talk about playlists. Specifically a really long one I made (here). I’ve realized my experience making them has been so deeply cathartic and truly fundamental to my growth through my twenties. It is a thread within the fabric of my becoming, that connects my family, my friendships, and my inner world. The soundscape that has shaped my perception of what I’ve experienced. Over the years I have made hundreds of them, and so I’ve spent the last month digging through and pulling out the standout tracks. That represent the lessons I’ve unveiled over the last decade, places and people that have changed me, and moments of self-reflection that were held within these songs. And as I started making the playlist I really wanted to reflect all of the different me’s and same me’s and step back into those times where I would, for example, listen to American Dream by LCD on repeat. I hadn’t listened to that in years. Or revisit an old favorite that I had forgotten the translation of, Metamorfose ambulante:

I prefer to be

metamorphosis in person

Than hold that old opinion

about everything…

About what love is

About what I am and not even have known

If today I am star [in the sky]

Tomorrow I will disappear

If today I hate you

Tomorrow I will love you

There are those songs that you loop for days or weeks and obsess about until you’ve had your fill. Maybe you listen again years later. I think they’re doing some sort of pattern rewriting, some kind of brain scrub. I try to remember where my mind was at, where my life was at. Why was I so attached to Promise Me by Misun spring semester of my senior year? I remember it waking me up. I was in a haze of stress and trying to just finish. It felt like spring, it felt like being on the precipice, a moment where your eyes get wider maybe. It’s been interesting to see what songs have stayed in my rotation, which ones I totally forgot I loved, which artists have shaped the music I write and what I love to listen to. It made me think back to where that started. Because I used to “not make anything”. I opened up my old laptop and found old voice notes. One from 2015 Happy and Sad:

If you told me then that I would be sharing that to my closest family and friends via an e-mail newsletter I’d be mortified. You can hear how closed up I am :’) I kinda like it too, now. But then, I had such a deep uncertainty within myself. I would make a lil thing like this, and listen back and be like this sucks. I didn’t think I was good. I couldn’t take it for what it was in the moment, I wanted it to be something else. I wouldn’t let myself sing out. And now I know, and it sounds cliche Iiiiii iguessssss, but it isn’t about that. It is about the freedom felt through self-expression. Not attaching a good or bad to it. Trusting and letting yourself refine and distill naturally. What a gift. And I held out on myself for way too long. I could think about that as a regret, but every thought is a choice. So when I think about that, I choose to be glad I took my time discovering because now I have so much more fuel to create.

When I was young, it came in the form of mix CDs. I remember this mixtape my Aunt Karin made for my Mom and we’d listen to it in the car with my Mom all the time. Said CD sparked my love for the song Jane Say’s by Jane’s Addiction. Among others. In high school, I signed up for Spotify after my quirky, soap-and-toothpaste-making and Australian Sheppard owning AP US History teacher told the class about it one day. I didn’t really use it much at first because I had a fixation and familiarity with ripping music off the internet using a youtube to mp3 site. I’d then download the album art, and enter all of the song details, track by track. I’d burn CDs for my friends and family.

When I think of all the music I’ve enjoyed over the last decade, it honestly brings me to tears. I say this because I know there are people who don’t really care about music that much or just aren’t interested in exploring it. For me, cataloging all of this music has painted such a clear picture of how my music taste grew into itself. And, how I’ve grown into myself.

At first, as I was digging, I was pulling so much music that I was just gonna let it be a shuffle playlist. Rare for me. You could never really listen to it all in a day anyways so it didn’t matter. And that way, I was able to keep it fairly chronological. Starting approx. June 2015 and ending yesterday. I can scroll down and see the little album cover icons and different people flash into my mind. Every single song in this catalog holds a meaning for me. Memories! Moments! So much music I found whilst in my first relationship. Music friends sent me. Music that I listened to in the car, on good days, on bad days. While walking to work. While driving to work. While crying, while laughing. While moving across the country and back again. Different forms of myself sitting with different songs and the same ones. The crazy thing is that I could add more. I had to give myself some parameters so every song is pulled from the playlists I’ve made since entering my twenties. And every song holds a feeling I felt, or lesson I started learning in my twenties. Times when I didn’t give a fuck, or felt shitty, or let someone down. And the moments of pure bliss, enlightenment, JoY. It’s all there. It’s the greatest gift I could have given myself and so I wanted to share it with you.

Oh, and since I am obsessed…I did dial it in. I didn’t want to mess with the order toooo much since it’s somewhat chronological, but for the most part. Every song moves, flows to the next sonically. You could shuffle it - but the story is in the order. Anyways I gotta go cook a big ol birthday dinner now.

THANK YOU FOR BEING HERE! ENJOY THE MUSIC + ENJOY THE LIFE!

^click any of the underlined text to listen