Now my service of choice is Spotify. The playlist I am employing right now, "Songs for A Dark Room," is the closest to what I think a new writing playlist might resemble. After all, I am in a dark room, my son asleep next to me.
The original concept of this playlist actually started in my mind a couple years ago as "Songs for A Dark Road." The idea was these songs would accompany and guide me as I traveled east on a dark northern Colorado county road with only my headlights and the cosmos lighting the way. It was mostly an intellectual exercise, maybe even a romantic one. I never truly thought I would ever put the playlist to the test. At the time, the playlist was only about four or five songs deep.
Over the past year or so as the idea has found its way home from a dark road to a dark room, the number of tracks has increased, but still only to 11. They are all songs I love in the light as well, but there's something in them, a hidden magic, that is released in the dark. Take a song like "Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space" for instance. Already a fantastic song. But now turn off the lights and play it.
See what I mean?
I suppose the oddest entry is "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" as performed by Peter, Paul and Mary. It's a Dylan song and is perhaps not as sonically dynamic as some of the other selections, but it works for me. Maybe because it fits the original idea of the list, to be played on a dark road. In the case of this particular song, a dark road taking someone away from a life chapter just ended.
Anyway, the list seems to be working for this little endeavor. This is the most I have written in quite some time. I cannot see myself ever growing tired of these songs, so if I can use writing a little here and there as an excuse to actually visit these songs in a dark room as I intended, with only the glow of the screen lighting the way, I'll take it. And perhaps as the list grows, so will my output.
"Where Will I Be" is playing right now. Fitting I suppose as I wrap this up.
