Bonus Pieces

This playlist holds as much meaning to me as Les Misérables holds to Mrs.Oliver.

I enjoy making a playlist that places the listener in a narrative.

A quick summary the playlist is curated in a way that when listened to in order the listener finds themselves navigating the mental process of reflecting on life and their place within it. The playlist opens with two songs that should sound like the beginning of a question. The beginning of contemplation, and finally, the beginning of pondering. The first portion takes a look at how as people we experience a plethora of hardships. Whether that be with our own minds or the conditions that surround our day to day lives. The songs go from the acknowledgement of these hardships and obstacles and wishing for a "fix" to our problems to the acceptance and conquering of these issues. Taking our lows and rising against our own odds to reach the highs in our lives, emotionally, physically and intellectually. There's a momentary slip in the content where fear, hesitation and regret find their way. After all we are not perfect and rarely can we find ourselves making it from point A to point B without a few pit stops in between. In the second portion of the playlist we reach confidence. Now in this case the listener will have a sense of confidence in their purpose, or their existence. Romanticizing life and forgetting about their current issues but rather being empowered by the life they have lived, and the battles they have overcome. This one song portion, the third portion, is reached at the song "Death and all his Friends" by Coldplay. This portion the listener has settled down from their confidence high and has begun their path towards questions on avoiding the inevitable. Questioning "what happens now?", "where do I go from here" once they have realized they no longer have to put up with the life before them and they can seek something greater for themselves. Following the song we hear snaps the listener back to a problem filled reality, however this time they make the active decision that it is time to move on. This begins our final stretch of the playlist which is taking all that has been presented before (self pity, fear, hesitation, hope, overcoming, reflecting on the past) in order to allow the listener to move on in their discovery of how they can live for themselves and not for the ideas perpetuated for them. Gratitude, love, and appreciation for life. Peeling back what makes you, YOU. "Excavate" by Macklemore offers a view that allows for the listener to have an inner dialog about who they are when no ones around. Are they proud of who they are. If they were to die tomorrow what is their name worth to those who knew it. What is their name worth to themselves. The playlist ends with the listener being sent back out to their current life. No longer in this made narrative but a life that is their own. Much like the intro the last song leaves the listener with a sense of completion. To fall to the "Corners of the Earth" and to fall back to the point in which they arrived. The song ends with the same tapping noise that had brought them into the narrative as a means to close the chapter and let them write the next.