Songs to Learn and Sing
ISSUE #185
Karaoke playlist. It’s my birthday!
Slide off your hammock and into the waves. Submerge and you’ll hear the tinkle of pearls. Sink farther to reach that ancient orchestra—the Sunset Philharmonic Paradise Symphony, nestled in the belly of time.
With cracked hands and bleary eyes I bring you a playlist comprised almost entirely of songs that came out on this very day, pulled from every stage of the artistic career arc—from veterans like Built to Spill still releasing new albums after decades of fantastic work to mid-career millennial masters like Father John Misty and Arctic Monkeys, all the way down to flag-planting newcomers like Jockstrap and Sudan Archives.
A lighthouse is built of two supreme comforts: the light divine and the house mundane. Stolid it sits amidst the clouds, until the night brings forth its flame. It remains, like a lover, both a beacon of safety and, at the same time, a siren of warning. It depends on the condition of each passing ship.
You get to visit the Georgia Aquarium for free on your birthday, so I went yesterday. It was fitting, as one of the first Pisces; I felt like I should climb into the tank myself. The ocean has always been a haven for the cold and lumpy and weird.
For a long time I've wanted to send out a playlist of my very favorite songs, unrestricted by any theme except that of self-indulgence. It will help lay some ground-work for the point-of-view I can never fully remove from a project of curation such as this, and I can't think of a better time than now.
Last Saturday, I attended the most beautiful wedding, full of friends. One, who oversaw an important music cue, had a brief crisis of confidence under the pressure and couldn’t think of the right song to play before the first would abruptly end.