the felt sense of summer
The beginning of each season is always full of nostalgia for me, when memories associated with all the familiar smells and colors flood back and bend time a bit. There’s a rich history to the felt sense of summer, returning on a breeze. Playlists are like that too. They send me back through space and time, to being a child, or a particular teenage feeling, or a cool night drive last May on the tail end of a sunset.
In Becky Chambers’ book The Galaxy and the Ground Within (I promise one day I’ll stop talking about these books so much…maybe), one alien tries to describe what listening to music feels like to another non-hearing alien whose species communicates in color, not sound. He says listening to a good song is kind of like the feeling you get when you have to say goodbye to someplace you love when you’re setting off for someplace else that’s calling to you.
I think healing is a little like that. When we change in our healing process, we often have to leave something behind— a way of thinking or being, a behavior, a friend, a lover, a place, a drug, etc. Music tends to be a powerful thing that carries us through and helps us feel along the way.
On that note, here’s a playlist I made for us to remember right now:
Jammin — RUBII
Encerrada — Reyna Tropical, Y La Bamba
Stay So — Busy Signal
Desde Dentro — Buendia
Throw Me In The Lake — Jen Miller
Puppy and a Truck — Jenny Lewis
I Like It — DeBarge
Like I Say (I runaway) — Nilüfer Yanya
Dance Yrself Clean — LCD Soundsystem
T.H. — SAULT
I Got Heaven — Mannequin Pussy
Omega (feat. Ralphie Choo) — ROSALíA, Ralphie Choo
I.L.T.S. — SAULT
Night Ride Home — Joni Mitchell
For The Summer, Or Forever — Halftribe
Yours truly,
Katie
art by Katie Hackett