In Tune With the Past

Given the current state of the world, there are mornings when I simply delete my New York Times Newsletter. I can't always face the insanity and mayhem that have come to define the cultural climate in this country.

However, weekend topics tend toward the more frivolous, so I opened today's newsletter and read on.

The lead story was about music as the playlist of your life. I was intrigued.

The gist is that you create a playlist for a particular time period, a season, perhaps, like Summer of 2024. It isn't necessarily current tunes. It can be music you've rediscovered, for example. Songs that you'd long forgotten about and played over and over as you were working or hobbying or driving around town.

I can certainly relate to this idea. There are songs that define certain times in my life. The Beatles carried me through my early years. Carole King's Tapestry has popped up again and again as I've struggled with life. Graham Parker, Dave Edmunds, and David Bowie are some of Mr. Ginley's favorites artists, and their music set a "when we started dating" watermark in my life. There's music from old loves and painful partings. Tunes that even now can have me tearing up or laughing aloud. 

It's funny how music can evoke so many emotions. 

So, maybe that's a good project for me to think about. Sorting and categorizing the music that helped me get through. 

More likely, I'll just do what I've always done – pull out random musical selections, and let them carry me back to a lost time and place.