Discovery.
behind the scenes of a five year audio project.
I’ve built playlists for a long time. For driving. For reading. For meditation and prayer. For writing sermons. For having a drink by the fire with friends.
December 31st, 2017 I had a thought.
“What if I saved every song I found or enjoyed, new to me in that moment, and went back at the end of the year to find my favorites.”
So I did. I wrote about it in 2018, while I still have those playlists, I no longer have those posts. I really should have saved them as there are memories there that are joyous. At the end of 2018, sitting by a fire, I listened to every song, at least a few snippets to then shape an end of the year favorites playlist. What I realized is that it was a journal of sorts. In fact, the website, I built still has the tagline “A Multimedia Journal” and I could recall different moments in my year marked by how songs had impacted me and helped me to process the world.
If you spend any time around me in my more upbeat moments, you’re likely to hear a tune or a hum, or one dang line from a song that just won’t leave my head. Sometimes, its that new TikTok, and that’s when I start to suffer too. We all know the Lord’s love is bussin’. ;)
I don’t think I am alone in having music help process moments of my life, but there is times I “see” a song in a photo come together. not quite a video, but more like what Instagram is now allowing you to do with a single picture post by attaching music to the image.
I kept going. Kept processing. Kept learning more of myself and my musical taste. Last year marked 5 years of this project, and it was a fun one. I went back and saw so many changes and yet so many similarities in my listening patterns, and my archiving habits. One year I was great about compiling the playlists into quarterly favorites, others not so much.
I suppose I may write a few words about my favorites soon, but I just wanted to share the why behind the playlist you can listen to below. Discover with me.
In Love, with Love, and toward Love,
Hex