We're VERY excited to share a guest list from our friend Jules Lee, a talented photographer, caring friend, lover of musicals, music listener of prescient taste, and an all around delight to be around.
Music can transport you anywhere, and one of the most convincing places to be taken is the entrancing portal of nostalgia. Certain songs can construct a lingering vacuum for your memory to live inside, conjuring secondary senses like taste and smell that make a memory feel like it breathes. Through the powers of song, you get to return the past for a moment before your physical surroundings become more compelling again and dissuade your line to the past–but nevertheless sometimes affording you enough time to learn something before your return. Like Kendrick's momma's van, Jules' conduit to the past is her childhood suburban, except her memory world is one of peace before the consequences of growing up seep in. Let this playlist take you there and relax.
Art by Matthew King.
By Jules Lee:
Driving down interstate 70, speakers blaring, my dad doing his best James Taylor impression, my sister and I fighting over what song to play next. Going to COSI, baseball games, and vacations, music filled those long car rides. Music has shaped my childhood, my memories, and my experiences. Listening to an abundance of songs in my family's beat up 1994 firetruck-red suburban has held an overwhelming sentimentality in my life recently. Not getting accepted to my only college choice in mind has left me angry at the idea of adulthood, wanting to go back to a time where things were easy. No college applications, no divorced parents, no fighting with my best friend. Easy.
Although growing up is inevitable, I never want the songs that shaped me to fade away. This playlist has songs from my suburban, to my earbuds on bus 4, to my very own car speakers. These songs all have a piece of me. Newer moments, older moments. Bad memories, happy ones, these songs know me by name. If I can hold onto these songs, I know where I come from. I know that no matter what happens, no matter what obstacles I face, I will always come back home to sing these songs in that suburban, blaring the songs out the window for the whole world to hear.
Tracks:
- Amazing Grace - Jars of Clay
- Take It Easy - Eagles
- Can't Buy Me Love - The Beatles
- Aqueous Transmission - Incubus
- Dust in the Wind - Kansas
- Heaven - Los Lonely Boys
- Need You Now - Lady Antebellum
- Fat Bottomed Girls - Queen
- Carolina In My Mind - James Taylor
- Down On The Corner - CCR
- Rivers and Roads - The Head and the Heart
- It Is What It Is - Blood Orange
- There's Hope - India.Arie
- How Can You Mend a Broken Heart - Al Green
- Head Over Heels - Tears For Fears
- Come Under the Covers - WALK THE MOON
- Flesh Without Blood - Grimes
Apple playlist here.