A quick explanation:
The idea here is to make a compilation album charting the course of a particular month—October, in this case. Part of the idea is having a good arc to it—this is why it’s an album and not a playlist; there’s a Side A and a Side B—and part of it is trying to capture the different emotions of a month in music. The biggest part, though, is that songs are a good jumping off place for writing about things that aren’t songs, at least for me. Consider this the on-site creative writing gym for The Barking Crow.
This month’s tracklist is as follows, and if you use Spotify, you can listen to it in playlist form here.
Side A
1. “Highwayman” – The Highwaymen
2. “My Oh My” – Macklemore, Ryan Lewis
3. “Human” – The Killers
4. “Spaceman” – The Killers
5. “Cover Me Up” – Jason Isbell
Side B
6. “Don’t Change Your Plans” – Ben Folds Five
7. “All My Days” – Alexi Murdoch
8. “A Dustland Fairytale” – The Killers
9. “Friday I’m in Love” – Phoebe Bridgers
10. “I Can’t Stay” – The Killers
Track 5:
***
I’ve been putting off writing this. “Cover Me Up” was our first dance at our wedding, up in the hills of Georgia, with rain pouring down all around the pavilion. Our first anniversary came two weeks ago, and I wanted to sit down and write something that could pass for poignant, either sometime in its anticipation or sometime in its wake. I didn’t find the time. Or I didn’t find the headspace. I guess, really, I didn’t find either. I couldn’t find either. I still can’t.
The song talks about hunkering down for winter, among other things, and that’s not exactly where we, the big we, are at in the year, but we’re close. We can see winter looming. Holiday plans are being made. November is just more than a week away. But we, the small we, aren’t ready to hunker down. We’re scrambling. Alternatively swimming and drowning in work, both in what there is to do (me) and the environment in which it must be done (her). Waterboarded by life, looking for just a gasp of air, the thought of a quiet, solitary room unfathomable.
I’ll have to write about the song another time, or perhaps it’s not one about which I can write. There are things of the song that elude my experience, things that—while it is moving and of grand personal import and strikes me in deep places—make it impossible for me to make the song about me, or about we—the small we. But I do think this:
As we scramble, as we gasp, as we cannot fathom the luxury of hunkering down. We are not really approaching hunkering. We are not before the song. We’re after it, when the magnolias have bloomed and faded again, when life has continued. That’s what life does, reliably, hand-in-hand with time. It continues. Sometimes, we can’t pause. Sometimes, we can’t escape. But sometimes, there are a few minutes on a dark night up in the hills of Georgia. With rain pouring down all around the pavilion. And the memory of that.
