To Be Forgotten.
What does it mean to be forgotten? What a thing to fear, but when you realize, it happens to every single person, every single day. A brush of someone at the supermarket, holding the door open for a stranger, the death of someone on the other side of the world, even a world arriving further upon its own timeline.
While this is a playlist of acknowledging what it means to be forgotten, it more depicts and evokes a world in which we need to embrace the time we have with the people we have. It’s about what it means to fight yet have fun. What it means to despair yet certainly hope. What it means to long for yet be hugged immensely. What it means to love. What it means to have a place you yearn for but not really sure what that looks like. This is a playlist that may help you along that journey of the insignificant into the deeply significant value your life has brought, is bringing, and will bring.
I have revisited this album cover of Phony Ppl’s Yesterday’s Tomorrow album for the past 5 years and it continually evokes a sense of awareness of myself and the world around me through each listen. For me it’s important to curate with the intent to fully understand and fully immerse in the offering from the artist. Showing the intersection here has involved selectivity, yes, but at the same time I try where I can to fully offer the work of artists instead of shorter cuts you may get from the radio or from djs and mashups/remixes. Those creations certainly have a place, but I’m navigating a different path here. I think it’s important to train our minds to be patient, to be open to the end of the production before making a conclusion. Nonetheless, moving into this space, try to really empty your mind and take it how the playlist sits with you.
In a world that will never rise and among dreams that will never be reached, a life holds. Perplexed yet in understanding of the inevitable, they take the space. For years of suffering and silence and thinking, they have grown impatient though vigilance is inescapable. In taking the space, the life assumes the imprisonment of time and daily life amongst the others. There is beauty, there is love, there are tears, and much to serve for the betterment of a willing number. To be holding on is a gift in a world that often strives to strip away pieces of your eccentric, eclectic, and extraordinary nature. You are worth every eye that meets the horizon, but many may not share what it means to them to cross your timeline or even lifeline. In a world that moves, how do you find meaning in your placement…and how do you eventually recognize your replacement…
Arriving to see the things that consistently show up in the face of this inevitability are the people and places within your heart. Within that which holds you aflame in the in-between and down-and-out places are those that feel like home. Home as in the places where you are received and recognized as you were, as you are, and as you will be. What does it mean to you to arrive and be within these spaces?
Think on that for a second…I hope it fills your cup a bit.
Recognizing, understanding, and becoming is quite a journey. One that I think is worth living for and one that I believe strongly is better that you are a part of it, even when there is a significant facing of loss and forgottenness. Remember that even when you are away, your presence may not be there, but your essence will. The people a part of you will always hold that.
When I write my playlists, it is an act of love for everyone in my circle. I am often trying to find ways to make sense of the points that feel indescribable or infrequently stated, the ways that card makers seem to fill the gaps in our difficulties to explain how deeply you really love someone. Sometimes you love them just because you love them. Sometimes something specific feels at bay and it helps to have direction.
Within this playlist “To Be Forgotten.” I am not trying to be “your” guiding voice, but I do understand what it is like to not always have that voice in your life and to search for it when you’re too tired to lift yourself to your feet. I hope that listening to this can lift you up a little, even when it can seem a bit saddening to consider the idea of being forgotten. It is both an aim to face what the world can do but doesn’t directly voice AND an aim to help you remember or arrive closer to that which gives you a sense of home, love, and value.
A rundown of the songs and why I selected them:
Someday:
Within one of my favorite albums of the 2010’s, Yesterday’s Tomorrow. This interlude of sorts has always set the scene for their album cover for me (maybe in a close tie with Take a Chance). It has consistently transported me to what it may be like to stand on this mountain and look off into the horizon trying to grasp what I’ve done, my fixation and difficulty with feeling like I need to have a bigger “impact” on the world or I’m a failure, and what is in front of me. It is an arrival of both the ups and downs Elbie sings about, and the ups and downs of confronting that which life has brought me into.
Air:
Off of the Sault album, Air (Art in Reality) can evoke that feeling of the wind pushing you up into the sky and what it is like to navigate something bigger than yourself. For me, I think the placement at #2 here is really important for listeners following Someday as it can guide you into a deeper reflection than maybe you intended with the instrumental focus. Or maybe just allow you to sit in thought for a bit more time. It’s an internal gauge on helping the listener understand where their mind sits at the moment.
The Rapper That Came to Tea:
I wanted to have a narrating piece - you may find this in several of my playlists. I have a difficult time lifting myself up some days, and I feel maybe people can sometimes benefit from a guiding voice. Simz here addresses the world of SIMBI (her 2021 album - Track 11 of 19) and I think it works here to confront the thoughts from the prior song, as well as face the level of potential you vision for yourself. I think many of us are capable of working our dreams into reality, though there are some things out of our control, and I believe this song helps listeners arrive at what it means to be honest with yourself and your true value.
Sweet Disposition:
I think this is one of the most beautiful songs of the 21st century. Every time I hear it, it somehow focuses me but also releases me. For others who know this song, I have a feeling it may evoke something similar to that. It felt so right to place it here following Simz discussing what it means to have a seat at the table and to stay put in reaching for the purpose you know is true to you.
White Winter Hymnal:
The atmosphere, the layered voices, the community, the strumming, the hymns. It feels like home. The song itself visits points of reckoning with childhood, but also in a bit of a morbid way. This song provides the lightheartedness of what can be a household hymn, while also confronting something darker in your life and the world.
Not Waving, But Drowning:
No explanation needed. Just check out Loyle Carner’s work, his debut album Yesterday’s Gone has made me cry dozens of times.
Finding My Way Home:
One of my favorite EPs of all time, Between Days, is such a confrontation of trying to find your bits of strength, navigating the scape of time, and putting yourself out to trust you can find your way home. The simplistic strumming and play are super digestible to many ears, so I feel this has a deep connecting and thought-provoking essence.
Collapsed in Sunbeams:
The album introduction acting here as the transition to the second half of the playlist. A beautiful moment and experience that I find so emotionally attaching and beneficial to transition into Metamorphosis.
Metamorphosis:
This is a tribute to my guy Jarrett who I worked with for a few months out of college before moving into Brooklyn. I worked in the kitchen at this winery, and while it was chaos on the weekends, Jarrett and I were the only ones on shift in the kitchen on Tuesdays. Few people usually came, so it was us in the kitchen sharing deep conversations about our lives, as well as playing music that I think we trusted each other in opening up to more. It always felt like such a vulnerable, safe, trusting space. I really care deeply about him and I think of him every time I play this song that he shared with me a few months after leaving the winery. He has such an incredible ear and taste in music. In fact, he also introduced me to Sault. Having a good ear for music I value VERY HIGHLY because I think it informs your attentiveness to the world around you and the interconnectedness to things other people can overlook. It is a gift. This song is included for Jarrett and the idea of home, as well as deeper into what it means to have that “metamorphosis” of finding your place and facing your insecurities.
June Child:
This song hones in on the concept of time. I find the creation of this song brilliant and the works of a visionary. Sault has taken on 11 Albums and two EPs in 6 years, like WHAT? In their third album, Untitled (Black Is) released on Juneteenth 2020, the inclusion of this track met the address of the George Floyd protests and the timelessness of this album, addressing the generations of issues of the country in putting value to all lives, especially Black lives. What this track did is make a recent 2020 release an instant classic, unfortunately because of the pattern of devaluation and disposability the powers in this world seek to uphold. In relation to this playlist, I find the passage of time, the issues we are consistently confronted with, and how some are intentionally more forgotten than others to have a necessary presence here.
Powerlines:
Tapping into an alerting atmosphere with the sirens and different sort of thought-provoking piercing soundscape this creates, the inclusion of this comes from how incredibly powerful it hit me in the listening to this for the first time in January 2024. Cuts of it first appeared in my discovery through an Ari Faraooy video and learned about the song through some digging. I ran into the B-Sides & Remixes release of Tame Impala to the Currents Album and really became a fan of that EP. Ultimately, yes this playlist is about thinking through the themes addressed in my descriptions above - and your own interpretations - and while vocal narration is incredibly valuable, I also think certain sounds can provoke certain thoughts. Powerlines for me has always created this near goosebump setting of something either incredibly informative or incredibly dangerous happening in our environment. And honestly, much of both of that is happening in our world, where it seems things that were once untouchable or veiled are on our front porch.
Home:
Home. Man I just have this vivid memory of junior year in college having this on repeat looking out from my window in the middle of the night. Tom Misch is just incredible. His complexity and simplicity is so immense across his music. It always felt like this journey and it made me feel so happy yet not satisfied. Like it was bringing me to the thoughts of reminding myself that I had so much potential and if I just continue to be open to the world I will find my way and the people I longed for would be brought closer.
SYRE:
SYRE, the album, was an integral listening experience for me in high school. While I didn’t always know what Jaden was getting at in his music, I did find that a lot of his music seemed to harp on the idea of trying really hard to find his place in the world and the difficulties of navigating that. Certainly his life across his youth is different than almost anyone else given his parents and his own exposure, but at the same time, these thoughts of belonging and placement echo throughout anyone anywhere. It was something I treasured and have revisited every year since. I value the slightly suspended closure of the song, and wish to leave listeners with such to follow likely because of the gravity of their thoughts.
***Cover photo is a filtered view of Yesterday’s Tomorrow Album by Phony Ppl, 2015. I do not own the rights to it, all credit goes to the original owner.
