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A playlist for homes Words by Jadine Ngan Visuals by Nick Schloessin
1. There’s a place I’m going / no one knows me The first time I hear the only Matt Simons song I know, I am sitting on the floor of my childhood bedroom. A girl I have only met twice has punctuated an Instagram montage of coming home from OCAD—landing fresh from Pearson Airport, driving across the Lion’s Gate Bridge towards purple mountains, greeting friends with hugs and tears on Robson— with the beat of a Catch and Release remix. That night, I get my first sense of what missing Vancouver might taste like, and it makes my throat ache.
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2. I went out looking for love when I was seventeen “Seventeen”: I play it on loop all of my first month in Toronto until the words taste like freedom. Troye Sivan sounds like summer, I always say; I am learning that this city is forty degrees in early September—unapologetically, bewilderingly so. The Chinatown restaurant I find myself in with five other first- years charges for extra plates, so we split our pad thai into tiny ceramic teacups and laugh about how this is it—the college life. That night, I fall asleep in a city where fewer than ten people know my name; after that first week, I never see most of them again.
