Playlisting as Practice

For the last 10+ years, migrated across multiple music platforms, I’ve created a playlist every month that I iterate on and listen to repeatedly. It consists of a mix of old and new music that I’m attending to and that reflects my daily life and emotional state, both current and desired. In a given month I will add and delete songs, rearrange order, and then listen to repeatedly until the month passes.

I’ve discovered that this practice deepens my awareness of my current state and allows me to skillfully shift that state. Depending on how my daily lived experience is reflected in the music contained in the playlist, and whether that is, say, leaning too slow and depressive, I can adjust accordingly.

These monthly playlists act as highly associative portals to my lived experience at the time they were created. When I pull up a playlist from a decade ago I can tell you about where I was in life and what was going on. Rather than acting as an explicit journal of that time, they are evocative soundtracks moored in time, providing a breadcrumb trail back.

The playlists also highlight the cycles and seasons of life — there is a consistency to the mood of fall and winter playlists that give way to the energy of spring and summer. To keep them consistent and easy to organize, each one is named Month Year, so in a given month I can pull up the playlists from that month in past years and compare.

If this is an idea that appeals to you, I encourage you to give it a try and let me know if you found it fruitful.