Have you ever been in such an inexplicably unique situation that simply no one would ever understand?!? Have you ever told your friends about that one time in that one place where you were talking to that one person, and they’re like “Yeah… can’t relate…”
Frustrating, isn’t it?
Luckily, we’ve all been there, and done that. As we transition from spring to summer, our Digi-Press writers deep-dived into their core memories, telling us their stories through insanely niche playlists that somehow perfectly encapsulate their memories.
Anna Faubus: Trying on a blazer for the first time and fumbling through your W-9
Clementine Daniel: Songs for making peace with the worst customer at the restaurant I work at
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lost af rn – ali
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As the years pass by and the flame of my youth dies, I hope I will look back on my life with the same awe I look back on 19 from the vantage point of 21. In the two years I have been in college, I have watched myself dance and grow from nights wasted and ones never forgotten. I think back to my gap year before college, when the world was in apocalypse mode (2020), and I reminisce the sheer panic and yearning I had for my life to begin amidst the immense stillness my life had suddenly taken.
As I watched friend after friend leave for college in the States, I was left behind with no clear idea of how I would get where I needed to be. I thought day in and day out of my creative ambitions and how far off they seemed, and I clung on to the air around me while my breath would swim to the shallows. Amidst the anxiety, unlike any I have ever experienced, I would catch glimpses of light as an inner voice told me that it would all fall into place. I would drive past the sandy moors for miles and fill it with stories I wanted to witness. I did not know where my life was headed, and now, with most of my weeks planned out, I can appreciate the vastness of that uncertainty and thank younger me and the universe for allowing me to take a step back and pause. I wish I could hug myself and tell that person they deserved everything they felt so scared to pursue.
Playlist:
https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/lost-af-rn/pl.u-MDAWedNue4jzpv
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it’s been a year, seven months, and twenty-one days, and you still can’t believe you finally left your childhood and brought it to california – jes
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On the track field, the finish line is the same as the start. From the moment the horn blares, you leap from the white line on the ground, and run in circles until that same mark delineates the end. On the field of life, it’s one and the same. At what point do you stop sprinting, stop living, if not to reach the end?
Humanity is reactive. We hit the ground running and never stop. We leap over hurdles of heartbreak and pass batons of love. We put one foot after the other because if we don’t, where do we go? Certainly not backwards.
Yet, ever so often, there is a moment – a moment where the longing to pause time overpowers the need to continue our myriad of movement.
You see, the gaze is a transient, singular act; to look at what’s taking up the space in front of you – even for a brief moment – is to let it fill your whole life.
On the top of bursting yellow super blooms and an endless line of cars on PCH, I gaze from the Palisades Bluffs and let it fill my whole life. Time finally stops. I can finally stop running.
Growing up in Michigan, where my version of the “beach” was a 200 meter strip of sand and lakewater, the ocean terrified me. Crashing waves, the impending doom of megalodon sharks, that one scene from the Titanic – I was scared.
Yet, 2000 miles away from my 200-meter world, watching the sunset from the fenced-in cliffs of the Bluffs, I feel like I’m invincible. Blasting music that makes the lavender flowers dance, watching the clouds stroll alongside the families walking their dogs, laying next to best friends who were strangers just one year, seven months, and twenty one days ago. I think – if it ever was the ocean versus me – surely I would win.
Picasso, Van Gogh, Matisse. If you told me they painted the California skies every day, watching humanity from the heavens, I’d believe it. When the golden sun kisses the sapphire sea, it must be them scrambling to adorn the world with a canvas of orange and pink.
It’s been one year, seven months, and twenty one days. When I’m sitting at the Bluffs, I still can’t believe I finally left my childhood and brought it to California. I finally stopped running.
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Trying on a blazer for the first time and fumbling through your W-9 – anna
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I’m starting my first real job this summer – the type where you have to wear a blazer and your skirt has to cover your knees. This indeed is a privilege — the chance to engage in such work as well as the education that prepares me for it — however, the start is intimidating to say the least.
Being an intern looks a lot like this: new responsibility, uneasiness, and lots and lots of learning. When faced with unfamiliar territory, it is easy to forget that I have already navigated countless beginnings successfully. What I have learned so far is that the part where you’re feeling your way blindly through a new experience is always the part you look back on longingly. So, I’ve been working on mastering the discomfort and transforming it into a driving force — rather than letting fear and trepidation hold me back.
This playlist is an ode to any thrilling beginning. Let that imposter syndrome and novice adrenaline rule your world for a bit, and linger in it. I hope these songs remind you that you’re not alone and encourage you to get a healthy dose of new beginnings.
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Songs for making peace with the worst customer at the restaurant I work at – clem
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This is a playlist of emotional upheaval that helps me to reckon with the worst customer at the restaurant I work at. He never fails to take things one step too far when his seemingly endless supply of expired gift cards are not registered in our system, ensuing a fit of yelling, pointing fingers, and asking me to do things that I simply don’t get paid enough to do. Though I don’t know if I’ve made peace with this character quite yet, this playlist in my ear helps me maintain some composure as I count down the minutes to the end of my shift. I hope listening to it takes you through my emotions as I endure these interactions week by week, and perhaps helps you to cope with your very own “worst customer”, whoever they may be. Some tracks uplift, some knock down — it depends on the day.
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take off – ella
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Cold stale air blasts on my nose and cheeks.
But it’s better than the stickiness that’s starting to form between my legs and my sweatpants. Nerves?
I’d expect to be in complete panic, but a numbing calmness has washed over my thoughts. I feel blank, if blank was a feeling.
Somehow my brain and I decided that any anticipatory anxiety could be put on hold for the next five hours and forty-one minutes. Until I landed in Philadelphia.
The shade over my window is already pushed up to reveal the jutted edge of the wing. I turn away from the person next to me and push my ear-buds in — the ones that are still connected to a wire and plug into the charging socket of your phone. I’ve already switched my device into airplane mode, before the doors even close.
This is my time. My time to zone out, to tune out the rest of the world. Forgetting every excruciating aspect of reality while existentially questioning everything as I’m jostled in a suspended metal container, ascending into the sky. Oddly, I’ve always loved planes, I used to squeal as a child when the wheels first touched down, my eyes opening widely in awe as we gently lifted off. I wonder how that little girl would feel right now, I wonder if she knew that this escape was ahead of her, that she would get out, that she’d get to truly, fully, get to run away.
As the plane starts to roll back from the gate, I press play. The keys slowly drift into my conscience, a sequence I know so well, from the first album I ever loved. I let my head fall back and settle into the seat and move my gaze to the window…
“There’s something about the way, the street looks when it’s just rained…”
It’s been a year now. A year since I somehow got on a plane and flew across the country to a place I didn’t know, where I knew no one and had no idea what to expect. Where I found solace in a red brick building built in 1799, where laughter lingered through the halls of students turned teachers generations and generations, over and over again. I had no idea what was going to happen when I got on that plane. To be frank — I have no idea how I did it. Maybe if I knew what I know now I would’ve never stepped my right foot through the hatch, touched the side on my way in (for good luck). I don’t believe that though, something in me knew I had to go, and the difficulties of the past year were my own. For the first time I felt roots, roots that I planted, that I grew from my own two feet. My heart still aches for the canopies of green trees that surround that red brick building in the middle of nowhere Pennsylvania.
In the background I hear the captain announce,
“Ladies and gentlemen, please fasten your seatbelts as we begin our descent into Los Angeles. The local time is 9:31pm, its 68 degrees with semi-clear skies. Once again thank you for choosing American, and welcome to Los Angeles”
I slide up the window panel and the lights of my city start to come into frame. It always amazes me, how Los Angeles glistens like a solar system. The city is so alive from up above, flickering constant vitality into the dark. It is comforting to know I am surrounded by life that exists beyond me. My stomach drops and my heart skips a few beats — but in a good way. For the first time in a long time, I’m going home. I’m pulled home. As much as I miss that red brick building, my roots are here too.
The piano keys start — a pattern I know all too well. The city comes fully into view….. and the sequence starts..
“And I always find, yea I always find something wrong…”
It took running away to realize how much I needed to go back.
