um, hi there…
i have no excuse for not keeping everyone updated on my exploits over the past month, apart, i suppose, from the exploits themselves, which have kept me rather busy.

but that’s pretty lame.

i am writing today from palm beach gardens, FL, where i have spent the holidays with my mother and grandmother, and actually, i don’t have any updates for you beyond that skeletal announcement, sooo… maybe i should skip this part and go with more of a distraction-oriented technique…

is that a new sweater you’re wearing? because the color really suits you. you look ten years younger. i hardly recognize you. in fact, have we met? i think you need to send me your bank account information and the last four digits of your SSN, just so i can be sure you’re really who you say you are… and by the way i’m going to tahiti next week, can i send you a postcard?

:)

(don’t really send anything, grandma…

…but i’ll still send a postcard)

ok so anyway, a year ago i wrote a post describing a potential new end-of-year tradition – the compilation of a playlist; a soundtrack of sorts for the year gone by; a record, as i put it at the time, of “the songs that happened to stand out for me in a given year, be they new discoveries or old favorites that are somehow heard anew.”

i like this idea for lots of reasons, not the least of which that i have always found the compilation of mixes to be hella fun, and it turns out that picking out songs that trigger memories of the key events of the year gone by is a very enjoyable activity with quite a bit of reflective potential, so… good new year’s game! i did it again!

this year, however, i finally abandoned all pretense of ever intending to actually burn the finished product onto CD, and as a result there was no very strong incentive to limit my choices to a number that would fit easily within the memory requirements of antiquity. whether that led to a bloat of laziness or a blossoming of potential i shall leave for you to decide, but, whatever the verdict, if you decide to play along i shall increase your mp3 collection by 44 units, so i hope that there are at least one or two selections that help you kick off the year with a smile.

fwiw, 6 of the songs are actually the movements of one cello suite, so that kind of skews the tally, and in a few cases there are several songs in a row because they have been inseparably fused together in my memory as components of some pastiche of imagery and sound that i heard in my head at one point or another during the year, but have not yet fully discovered how to translate into this shared domain we know as the physical world. that is quite possibly a project for the year ahead, so… stay tuned for volume 3! :)

as it is, i offer you my year in music, 2007, zipped up for less frustrating downloading (but still passively time-intensive… go read someone else’s blog! drink tea!), ordered with one ear to a rough chronology and the other to pacing and flow. whether any of it shines through the cracks of my tinkering or not, i hear a story when i listen to these songs, and i am privileged to have the chance to share that story now with you.

enough words.

1. Ain’t Got No/I Got Life – Nina Simone
2. Superman – REM
3. Sneakin’ Out the Hospital – The Beastie Boys
4. Chapter 24 – Pink Floyd
5. Babe I’m Gonna Leave You – Led Zeppelin
6. Look at Miss Ohio – Gillian Welch
7. The Gloaming – Radiohead
8. The Only Difference Between Martyrdom and Suicide is Press Coverage – Panic at the Disco
9. Lotto – First Coat
10. Suite No. 1 in G: 1. Prelude – Johann Sebastian Bach/Boris Pergamenschikow
11. Find the River – REM
12. Suite No. 1 in G: 2. Allemande – Johann Sebastian Bach/Boris Pergamenschikow
13. Intermission – Panic at the Disco
14. Suite No. 1 in G: 3. Courante – Johann Sebastian Bach/Boris Pergamenschikow
15. delicate – damien rice
16. Suite No. 1 in G: 4. Sarabande – Johann Sebastian Bach/Boris Pergamenschikow
17. Hook – Blues Traveler
18. Suite No. 1 in G: 5. Menuett I + II – Johann Sebastian Bach/Boris Pergamenschikow
19. Fourth Time Around – Bob Dylan
20. Suite No. 1 in G: 6. Gigue – Johann Sebastian Bach/Boris Pergamenschikow
21. smaller rivers – Sam Prekop
22. I’m Free – The Who (Tommy)
23. Where Do They Make Balloons? – They Might Be Giants
24. Measuring Cups – Andrew Bird
25. cold water – damien rice
26. Chinese Translation – M Ward
27. April Come She Will – Simon and Garfunkel
28. Alpenglow – Victor Hanson Smith
29. Weatherman – First Coat
30. Singin in the Rain – Gene Kelly
31. Across the Universe – The Beatles
32. Saturday Sun -Nick Drake
33. Nude – Radiohead
34. Greetings in Braille – The Elected
35. It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding) – Bob Dylan
36. Is It Wicked Not To Care? – Belle and Sebastian
37. volcano – damien rice
38. I Am The Walrus – The Beatles
39. Such Great Heights – The Postal Service
40. Ramon – Laurie Anderson
41. Life in a Glasshouse – Radiohead
42. Fuel – Ani DiFranco
43. Blackbird – Bobby McFerrin

happy new year.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008 at 11:50 pm and is filed under introspection, music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.