1 — What Spotify taught me about letting go
My Spotify Wrapped came out, and as I feared, one of my top songs this year was “Amsterdam” by Nothing But Thieves. I feared it in the same way that you fear coming face-to-face with your childhood best friend, and the constriction of your chest that follows when you can think of nothing at all to say. It represents to me an entire class of music that spanned my life from January to April — upbeat, alt-ish rock with lots of drums and an angsty tang. Whatever genre you call that.
Part of me is embarrassed because I think the songs someone likes are reflective of who they are as a person. For a while, I was really into the angsty-indie-rock vibe, sort of angry and numb at the same time. I liked them because I was angsty, because I wanted to feel subliminally angry, to yearn, or maybe I wanted to be more outgoing, or hopeless, or more uniquely sad — and listening to those songs helped me feel exactly that. So that’s one selfish reason I sometimes feel embarrassed to be reminded of the people songs I used to love. To borrow from Paul Graham, just as there is nothing so unfashionable as the last, discarded fashion, there is nothing so cringeworthy as the preferences of your most recently deceased self.
I remember when I first realized that I didn’t like this song anymore. I knew there was something off about it, but I didn’t know why and I struggled at first with deleting it from my playlists.
I spent so much time with that song. You know that feeling, a few days after you meet someone and you click, that it’s as if you’ve known them for as long as you can remember? You begin sharing straws and stories from your separate pasts, fascinating each other with time and attention, and it’s not always clear whether this spark will turn into a flame or a dumpster fire. You see yourself in the song, and that is why you like it. That is why it burns.
What is a dumpster fire? I think it could be a song who knows a distant version of you such that whenever you interact, you are invariably dragged into the past. It could also be a song with whom you’re never quite sure how you feel, never quite natural. Dumpster fires make me uneasy.
I knew my song had become a dumpster fire, so the correct thing to do was to remove it, right? But I was stressing out. What if I started liking this song again? I didn’t want to just throw it into the void… and had it really gone sour in the first place? What if this was just a phase?
When I look through my top songs from this year, the feeling I find in each song is the result of what happened to that initial spark. Some songs burned hotly and then fizzled out. Some extinguished without reason. Some unlucky sparks became scalding dumpster fires. Yet there are others who continue to be steady flames, radiating warmly as they had always done.
And the thing about the steady flames is that they never used to be dumpster fires. None. Not one. For some, there may have been a flicker or two, but that’s a far cry from the instability of a dumpster fire. I think dumpster fires are the hardest to let go of because, in contrast to dead sparks, they are still burning. It’s tempting to hope that they would simmer down to something calmer, but that almost never happens. And it’s why even when you do cut them from your playlist, you can’t help but wonder how they’re doing, whether they’ve eaten today and so on.
The satisfying solution came from my friend who watched me struggle with removing this song. She told me that first, if I do start liking it again, then that would mean I get to rediscover my love for it, which is pretty great. And second, it was more important to consider how the song made me feel at the present moment, instead of leaning on the sentiments of my memories from before. Yes, there used to be a spark, maybe even a flame, but now I didn’t want to hear it. It wasn’t doing me any good, and it was tainting the entire playlist to boot— so there was nothing to be missed, really.
Since then, I’ve forced myself to be vigilant about pruning songs that have gone bad. It’s hard, but I think the difficulty of deciding whether or not to keep a questionable song speaks volumes compared to how easy and natural it is to make the same decision on a song that I unequivocally adore. There are always so many things that are a better use of my time, and it’s really freeing to not ever have to worry about whether song X is mad at me or guess at song Y’s intentions.
Of course, people can change and it can be worth the energy to try to improve the relationship, so I decided that a good rule of thumb for deciding whether a situation is good for me is to ask whether or not it feels like high school. If it does, then chances are that someone isn’t making a good-faith effort to make the situation better. In high school, I got tangled up in several “dumpsterfireships” where I was stuck constantly ruminating about the state of our relationship. If I had a time machine, I’d tell my younger self: No. Stop. Why are you fighting for something that is so easily given, and that is so freely abundant elsewhere in your life? And when he protests, saying that he’s already invested so much time into this person, I would again ask — then why waste more?
High school kids are not always mature enough to give you clarity, compassion or kindness, but everyone should know better now, so there’s no reason to put up with any of this.
2 — Dolce, a piacere
There will be snow soon.
Would you see it too?
& think softly
of me?
3 — Refrain
After my first relationship ended, I spent a long time (I won’t admit how long) still glued to its grip. I thought that after some time, the dust would settle and we’d be in each other’s orbits again. I kept some of his songs in my playlist and heard them from time to time. They were good — a good mix of despair and yearning that I wanted to feel back then. We spent a lot of time together, and certainly, there was a flame.
I kept wondering how they were doing, whether they’d eaten today and so on, thinking that maybe it would die down to something calmer. What if this was just a phase?
Over, and over, and over again.
I think I’ve seen this movie before (the ending is a bit of a dumpster fire).
Sometime around the seven-months mark, it occurred to me to question whether there was a stable relationship to start with. We’d met and started dating pretty much the week after. “Love at first sight” is one way to put it, but in hindsight, I would opt to call it “rushing into things.” I realized that even early in the relationship, there were red flags that I should have seen, would have seen if I took the time to look.
In a playlist and with acquaintances, it’s relatively easy to add and remove whenever you want. The difficulty is only in recognizing that something is dead and should be removed. But in a committed relationship, it’s not so easy. To really know a person, you have to set aside some time and listen intentionally.
It was important to look, and to resist the temptation to run in without looking.
I have a playlist called “Inbox,” where I put songs that I think I like so that they get a second listen before being sorted into one of my many playlists. I treasure these listens a lot. It’s a rare feeling to set aside some time, perhaps an evening, for only listening. Not the sort of half-assed attention like putting on Netflix while doing homework. It’s during these listens that I really get to know a song intimately. Some nights, when I’m propped up with a good album, I feel that I would be content to spend the rest of my life doing this. And I’ve learned to look for the same feeling in people, as well.
Obviously I can’t put people into playlists, but I guess the point is that it would be good quality control to give my attention completely if I actually want to know someone. This way, if I’m more strict about what kind of songs I let in, I don’t have to remove them as much. Because no matter how much I might consciously recognize a song to be bad, it still hurts to remove it and kill the hope.
So it was equally important to remind myself that I can’t control dumpster fires, and to stop myself from trying because I get burned every time. It wasn’t worth the energy that I would rather spend tending to the many other warm, peaceful flames. Love (of anything) doesn’t have to be dramatic or difficult.
MiC Columnist Kenneth Sun can be reached at sunken@umich.edu.