Isolation Playlist
1. "Where Or When," Peggy Lee
I sometimes listen to this song on loop when I'm deep in a writing
project, and had it on repeat during much of this year of social
isolation. I first heard the song in Miranda July's movie The Future,
and fell in love — my favorite songs often come, magpie-style, from
stealing others' good taste. The song has something deeply haunting and
sad about it, which is the mood I'm often trying to cultivate while
writing. The piano first tinkles in, then a muted horn — it's full of
warmth, nostalgia, and loss. I love Peggy Lee's sweet, smoky voice and her
hushed intimacy. There's a sense of mystery in this song about the origins
of love and how we're drawn together. Peggy Lee hums quietly about the
small miracle of human connection, which seems rare and precious and
fragile as she sings it to life.
[Blair Hurley]
2. "I Put A Spell On You," Alice Smith
2021-01-15
Ontario has issued stay-at-home orders. We're allowed to leave to
exercise, so I can still go for my hour-long midnight strolls. Lately,
there is a pristine layer of snow coating the empty streets so when I turn
around and look down, I can trace my steps all the way back home. The
weirdest thing happened tonight though, I put my headphones on and as
Alice's howling started, my body left the ground. I floated above my
little condo, above the sparkling city and higher.
I had a moment to look down at it all; it didn't look angry or confused,
just really quiet.
[Sacha Bissonnette]
3. "Make Art Not Friends," Sturgill Simpson
This song noodles along for the first minute and a half, slows, drops off
a sonic cliff and then takes flight. And while I'm up in the air with it,
I can see a whole city. I want to do everything I can't and spectacularly
so, to run drunk and trailing smoke into an 18-car pile-up of other
humans, not caring whether anyone walks away. The instrumentation is all
wattage and neon lights and euphoria, but Simpson sings like he's alone in
his room, reading from his diary. The world's abuzz, see? But you're not
in it. "Think I'm gonna just stay home and make art, not friends" is the
refrain, is where you land when you come back down.
[Kara Vernor]
4. "Storms," Railroad Earth
I have a very distinct memory of this song: I'm walking home from a party
near my place in Baltimore. It's the end of my MFA, I have no idea what
I'm going to do for money starting in about five weeks, and this song
comes on shuffle and hooks into my mood. You know that feeling when you
are drunk but not too drunk, and you feel light, like the stars are closer
and the breeze is cooler and the city is beautiful and the unknown is
suddenly exciting instead of scary? (I'm a horribly cheerful drunk. Be
warned, at parties I'll tell you how glad I am to be your friend.) I
listened to this song and thought, right, storms. It's lucky that I have
people to bunker down with, even while it's raging outside! (Again, I was
in the very loving period of tipsiness.) During this pandemic-storm, I'm
still listening and still (Zoom-)bunkering down with the people I love,
waiting for the storm to pass.
[Gwen E. Kirby]
5. "This Year," The Coup
After Death
After they buried me in the earth and I became a tree, I grew tall enough
to scrape the clouds and my roots reached so deep into the earth, I could
peek at its core. Some time passed and a copse grew around me. Great
friends, all of them! About two hundred years in, I turned to my right and
said, What I miss most, I think, is flight; my feet no longer touching
earth, wind in my hair. My tree friend replied, When you were a person you
couldn't fly; people can't do that. You have imagined flight so intensely
that you remember yourself in the skies, but you've allowed imagination in
that life to become delusion in this one. Don't worry that you
couldn't—that you can't—fly. Even the birds who soar and circle the blue
can't bore into the earth and become friend to the subterranean depths as
your roots have. They can't stand in the ground and at the same time
converse with the clouds as you do. You have such nostalgia for the wind
in your hair that you forget the wind in your leaves. To think of
transcendence as only flight is to still think as a seedling.
Transcendence isn't becoming a thing that you're not. It's not conjuring
abilities that defy logic or the laws of science. Magic is only illusion
and the unexplained is not inexplicable, only unrevealed. Trees fly only
during the most vicious storms. Transcendence, my sapling, is mastering
your current form before your impermanent self becomes something new.
That's all.
[Rion Amilcar Scott]
6. "Siamese Dream," Smashing Pumpkins
During the pandemic, I've listened to the album Siamese Dream by
the Smashing Pumpkins quite a bit. In fall 2020, I finished an essay I'd
been drafting for on-and-off two years about the album. While down my
research rabbit hole, I ended up spending a bit of time with the 2011
remastered deluxe album containing 31 songs. I already had many of the
B-sides memorized from when the singles were released back in the day. But
I was surprised to find a few new-to-me songs on the remastered version,
including the one I chose for this playlist.
Although the song "Siamese Dream" didn't end up on the album of the same
title, it definitely registers much of the loud-quiet energy the group
embodied circa 1993. Billy Corgan's caramel thin voice layered over
electric guitars has been a familiar comfort to me in isolation. Around
the 3:11 mark, the mood of the song takes a contemplative, vulnerable
turn, much like the shift all our lives took in March 2020.
[Ursula Villarreal-Moura]
7. "Heavy Balloon," Fiona Apple
This past summer during quarantine, I grew and harvested vegetables in
pots on my porch. Some days, tending to these plants was the only reason I
had to step outside my apartment. Other days, I went on foot to the
grocery store, taking a shortcut across an open field. There, the weeds
sprang up and were mown down, then sprang up again. Kudzu took over the
woods at the edge of the field. Some of the leaves grew as big as my face.
As I walked, I would listen to Fetch the Bolt Cutters on repeat. A
refrain caught in my head like a spark: I spread like strawberries. I
climb like peas and beans. A friend texted me; she was also
listening to the album. Just wait for all those teen girls getting tattoos
of strawberries and beanpoles, she said. I'm no teen, but as far as
feminist anthems go, that one felt right. Perfect song. Perfect time for
it.
[Jen Julian]
8. "At the Jazz Band Ball," Bix Beiderbecke & His Gang, 1927
I don't really have much to say about this song, other than I'm pretty
sure it singlehandedly got me through the pandemic (assuming I
actually get through the pandemic). It gave me the energy to get out
of bed in the afternoon... the energy to stagger into the kitchen and
make coffee... the energy to dance around a bit in the living room... and
the energy to go back to bed. It's a furious, spooky, playful
celebration. And best of all... no words!
[Ben Loory]
9. "I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)," Whitney Houston
I've spent the past seven months losing a pretty significant amount of
weight. I did it by doing all the usual things—calorie counting, walking,
etc., but once winter hit I had to find an exercise alternative, and what
I decided was dancing on repeat to this song. I have no rhythm or sense of
movement. It's pretty much a flailing around type of situation not unlike
Alfonso Ribeiro's iconic Carlton Dance from Fresh Prince of Bel Air,
but with the music turned up I try not to mind. I move to the song's poppy
beat while wishing like Whitney I had someone else to dance with. Yet, I
have myself, and I've been learning lately how that can be enough.
[LaTanya McQueen]
10. "Amateur Night," Dream, Ivory
Every morning, I drive to work. The grey roads, the blue-frozen sky.
Every night, I drive home.
In between there is this, sometimes: soft crying from the visitation
rooms, inarticulate wails, tears, shouts, whispers, pleas.
In between there is this, sometimes: quiet, quiet, quiet.
Every morning, I drive to work. Every night, I drive home.
I've been listening to this song a lot lately. I like you, it
ends. I like you. I like you. I like you.
I miss that soft feeling of a crush, that soft feeling of having someone
whose presence makes your hands tremble. That soft feeling that, maybe
tonight, you might not be alone.
That feeling I get when I'm beside you.
I've been listening to this song a lot lately when I drive to work, when I
drive home.
I like you. I like you. I like you. I like you.
[Cathy Ulrich]
11. "Spit on a Stranger," Pavement
In late 2019, I was reading Tokarczuk's Flights and, finding
myself in Philadelphia, took a fieldtrip to the Mütter Museum. Known for
its collection of medical oddities, the Mütter was not as obscure, judging
by attendance, as I'd anticipated. The halls of warped human skulls,
conjoined fetuses in solution, and paper models of history's most
grotesquely oversized colons were packed tight. The air was heavy with the
breath of several thousand Thanksgiving hangovers. It was damp, and far
too warm, but if I'd missed the coat check, so had most everyone else. At
length, I found a temporary exhibit (mercifully, it was deserted), Spit
Spreads Death, which covered the social history of pestilence going
back to the Black Death and featured, more specifically, the so-called
Spanish Flu of 1918-19 that ravaged Philadelphia. The city had waged a
campaign to stop public spitting (banners flew, spitters were shamed),
meeting much the same results as today's mask mandates. Rampant, flagrant
failure to comply, anger in every beating heart, death, despair,
bitterness, etc. A panel at Spit Spreads Death's exit dared
visitors to wonder whether the next great pandemic had already begun. I
knocked, ignorant as a 14th-century peasant, on the first length of wood I
met. Now here's Pavement with "Spit on a Stranger."
[Charlie Sterchi]
12. "Cloudbusting," Kate Bush
This song feels like an incantation to me. I just know that something
good is gonna happen. I don't know when. But just saying it could even
make it happen. I listen to it walking, compulsively walking, trying
to banish some of the frenzied sadness inside of my body. Can saying
something good is going to happen make it happen? I don't know. Still, I'm
trying to cloudbust.
[Kyra Baldwin]
13. "Easy (with Kacey Musgraves feat. Mark Ronson)," Troye Sivan
My emotional modulation has been completely off during this last year.
Almost anything can bring me to laughter or tears, and pop music is one of
the few things that allows me to recalibrate myself. It's as reliable as
good fast food, and just as comforting.
When Troye Sivan's song "Easy" first dropped last summer, I enjoyed the
lope of its synths and the lilt and smoothness of Sivan's voice. But I
didn't really hear the song until a new version of it was released
in December, with vocals from Kacey Musgraves.
I've probably listened to this new version of "Easy" about two hundred
times now. The magic in the song lies, for me, in how Musgraves' plaintive
"I know I'm not easy, darlin'" intersects with Sivan's joyous "This house
is on fire, woo!", illustrating how the line between pleading and
celebration is sometimes as subtle as the difference between a laugh and a
sob.
"Easy," an anthem about confronting one's share of blame in a dying
relationship and admitting that it was you who set the fire all along,
reminds me that nothing can be taken for granted, and that nothing that's
really worth it ever comes easy.
[Gina Chung]
14. "How Long Do I Have to Wait for You?" Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings
I first heard this album (Naturally, 2005) with my
older brother, probably while driving around in his lavender 1990s Honda
Civic. He has always introduced me to great music, starting when we were
teenagers listening to cassettes through tinny car speakers. But we've
lived on opposite coasts of the United States for almost two decades, so
we don't have the chance to drive around together very often anymore. And
sadly, Sharon Jones passed away in 2016.
Still, her voice and these guitar riffs are just as beautiful and
immediate now. The lyrics feel apt while I'm doing so much waiting during
the pandemic. Until I can see family and friends again, listening to music
that we enjoyed together makes me feel closer to them.
[Elizabeth Hart Bergstrom]
15. "The Way Things Are," Fiona Apple
I am the fighter jet but also the bomber and the bomb crashing into you,
exploding your bedroom, your bed, your mind, your goddam life; I'm the
kind of girl that men call awful things and can't get enough of and won't
fathom committing to and I don't care.
You are ten or fifteen years older or occasionally, like me, somewhere in
your 20s. After this is over—us, I mean—you'll apologize when I call you
out for this or that bullshit you pulled. Or if I'm the one apologizing,
you'll tell me, "Whatever. You were a great lay."
In a decade and beyond, what I'll remember about these years—my 20s—is the
solitude. The weightlessness: airy, sure, but also hollow, resonating the
men whose fingers strum me like a guitar. Always, though, I hum my own
song on the way home, my home, I always go back home where I never let the
men I date enter. Not once. Lying in bed beside a stranger or a guy I hate
or the ones in the bands was clean isolation.
The secret I learned in my 20s—and which I've spent the years after
unlearning, unloving—is that in order to be lonely, you have to want
somebody there.
[Emma Smith-Stevens]
16. "Down Down the Deep River," Okkervil River
Is there any isolation quite like childhood loneliness? During lockdown, I
found myself thinking a lot about my coming of age during the 80s, about
8-bit video games and sleepovers, but also about real and specific
yearnings and sadnesses, the particular bafflement that comes from not yet
knowing who you are, from wondering just who you'll be. Though not even
from the 80s, this Okkervil River song somehow manages to conjure those
liminal moments just right, to open doors to exquisite lonely places in my
own memory. To me, these lyrics are burns from a sparkler held too tight
at a party where nobody talks to you. They are the shock from an
ungrounded outlet, the breathing on the other end of a call. They are
wearing the wrong shoes to walk past the house of someone you think you
might like a little, maybe, and worrying blisters until they pop. They are
the way you'd described yourself, if you'd only been able to see yourself,
standing right there, "a solid ghost."
[Alyson Mosquera Dutemple]
17. "Ten Years Gone," Led Zeppelin
She got me this wolf calendar. Every month a different wolf. February has
two hairy hunters leaping over a log in unison. In high pursuit of
something maybe. Serious eyes. Sharpfanged. But the tails are pointed
straight up behind them like exclamation marks and they don't look very
menacing because of it. Snowing here. Snowing in Wolfland too. I've been
in the house so long. Yesterday I spent two hours staring at these wolves.
Maybe they weren't gallivanting off to kill something. Maybe they were
running away from their families so they have a chance at love. A
forbidden love. My wife was from a town called Silverton. I was from
Bayville. The people in Silverton were not permitted to kiss anyone from
Bayville. And vice versa. There were two scrolls. One in the town hall of
Silverton and one in the town hall of Bayville. Punishment: death. Or
worse. One night she kidnapped me. Drugged and dragged me off. I woke up
in Jersey City and she was saying our lives were going to be a lot of fun.
What did that mean. She attempted to give me a Valentine but my hands were
cuffed. I said, unstuffy me, pretty please. Later on it was snowing and we
walked half a mile to the UPS store and I carried her sister's birthday
present. Afterwards we got fried chicken and got married. On our honeymoon
we razed both city halls to the ground. That was a long time ago.
Everything was a long time ago. It could even be that the wolves are
racing. No, most likely they are three things. In love. Hungry. Trying to
be the first one to get the neck of the thing. Latch on. Murder it. Offer
it as a dead red gift to their sweetheart.
[Bud Smith]
The Isolation Playlist can be streamed
here.