I was walking the beach yesterday. Which was a bit emblematic of most of my relationships...it started off hot and beautiful, followed by a relatively long period of easy, then without warning, the clouds moved in and the wind picked up. By the time I was able to get off the beach, it was absolutely nuts. The waves all white capped and whipped, the sand stinging your legs, and my hair looking like it was caught in some sort of outdoor blender. I can’t tell you how many times I chased my hat down the beach. If you ever want to feel totally ridiculous, chase a hat in a wind storm. I was embarrassed but couldn’t help laughing at how dumb I know I looked. I felt vindicated though, because I caught it each time before it blew into the ocean. So while I may have looked stupid, at least I got it back in the end. (I will stand silent on the part of me that kept putting it back on, thinking that somehow this time it would magically stay on my head...that is a blog for a different day, oh wait, I have already written that blog like a million times - it is called alcoholic thinking...”this time it will be different, so it is ok to do the same thing over again...”).
Before I became too occupied with chasing my hat or exiting the once lovely, calm beach, I was walking and thinking. Two of my most favorite activities. And I am not sure why but I thought about my playlists. (Playlists are the mixed tapes of our youth, right?) I mean I have quite a few. Ones to lift me up, ones to bring me down. Nothing atypical there. But I also have this long standing habit of creating playlists for the significant men in my life. If we dated, and you meant something to me, regardless of how long we dated, you have a playlist. Future suitors beware.
Most of them start off with fun songs about sex and chemistry and almost all of them end with sad songs about loss, lying, longing and loving. Not all of the playlist men ended badly, but they did all end. And I do not regret one of them. They were all vital relationships in my life to grow me into the person I am today. I needed the relationship to level up. And apparently I also needed a soundtrack.
It is kind of cool, and just a little creepy, that I can now revisit any of my past lovers and immerse myself in our ups and downs by listening to the soundtrack of our connection. I don’t really do that much, but every once and awhile I will get nostalgic for a particular man from my past, and I have a rule that before reaching out (If I was so Inclined...) I have to listen to the playlist all the way through if I am tempted to reconnect. Many of the playlist men are still in my life to be honest. Lovers turned friend. Which is the best thing a lover can be if the moniker of lover cannot withstand time.
If I dated you and there is no playlist, then you just didn’t hit me on an emotional level. It doesn’t mean I didn’t care or you weren’t important to me, it just means that music (which is vitally important to me) didn’t mesh with our tryst. Our relational fabric was not overlayed to a soundtrack of our connection.
I have been tempted when things ended to send the guy the playlist so he too can have the history of us in lyrical form. But I never have. When it ends, I just want to move on and have usually severed contact for both our healing. Sending a playlist that is filled with the good, the bad and the ugly seems confusing and, well, vulnerable. And I am not sure about anyone else, but at the time of breaking, I really do not want to feel more vulnerable than I already do.
Perhaps this is a strange practice. Perhaps this is commonplace. Perhaps it is some bizarre manifestation of my personality. I don’t know. I have checked with others, and no one, so far, will cop to doing this. They might have a few songs they relate to a person but not an entire playlist.
I will also own the more fucked up the relationship was, the more involved the playlist. I mean that makes sense right? When confusion and pain are mixed with rock and roll, there is a lot of fodder for playlist making. There is a lot of stuff out there that can adequately describe the feelings of love gone wrong.
I also do something else that is weird and a bit ritualistic. After it is over, I listen to the entire playlist once more while walking the beach. Then I write their name in the sand and watch while the ocean wipes them away. (To be fair, I do this with everyone I say goodbye to...with or without a playlist). And then I do not listen to the playlist again until years later. Or if I might have another chance to make the same mistake again. Then I listen to recall what I likely have forgotten to even consider such a choice.
I know true healing has occurred when a song from the playlist comes on the radio or Satellite and I do not have the urge to turn it off. The song that was so poignant with meaning returns to just being a really cool song. And all its meaning and emotional baggage gets vaporized by the passage of time.
I have considered ending this practice but I can’t. Music being intimately tied to my access to my emotions. I am a thinker and a doer. Feeling comes harder for me. It isn’t that I am not capable of deep feelings, it is just that I am not great at expressing the intimate, emotional and often confusing things I feel. And music is one way I am granted access. The other is writing, but I think you already know that. There is safety in both; the musician writes the lyrics and music and we experience it at a safe distance. Removed from the artist and their artistry. We experience their emotional turmoil or elation but removed from their immediacy. And I kind of need and love that.
I listened to no playlists yesterday which is good. Means I am officially and totally healed. I do not have the desire to revisit that which is just past, or even more distant. I do not long for a time where I was embroiled in a love affair that long ago died which is progress for me since I have a tendency to revisit the past far too often.
I love the playlists for what they represent, an attempt at connection, love, interest, intimacy and metal. I may have loved and lost a few times but fuck if it wasn’t all a grand adventure! And now, if I ever want to revisit that relational place, I have a soundtrack that can take me back there anytime I want. Although, I will say, that most of the time, I do not want. It is still nice to know I can go there if I so choose.
Sometimes, when I review my current status, I am confused by how much I currently resemble a teen. Did I grow up at all? I mean I am 54 and still creating playlists! But it is just my thing. And while I can see the immaturity in it. I can also see my healing. And I kind of like the fact that when the love story ends and the friendship remains, I can share the playlist and then they too can keep a piece of us which survived the breaking apart. A kind of final wrap up of love that just wasn’t strong enough to survive us as individuals. Love may have died but a fucking playlist remains. (I have only shared the playlist once with lover turned friend...to be clear).
So as I walked the beach yesterday feeling light and airy and peaceful and calm, I relished in the fact that I have no playlists currently under construction. Except the one I started about a decade ago for myself. Songs that make me feel good and like I am worthy of music that is unrelated to love, sex, heartbreak or loss. Just a playlist of songs that I feel get me, this person I am, in all my many and varied forms.
And I am grateful, so fucking grateful, that I rank enough to do for myself what I do for others, build a bridge of musical anthology that chronicles my life, my love, my loss and myself. Which is also mixed with lovely songs and heartbreakingly sad ones too. Because in the case of the couple or the individual, we are all the things, all the time. The best, the worst, the beauty and the beast, the predator and the prey.
Again...still.
To clear up any confusion, I have no playlist name Rich...
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