Is a playlist a clock or a mirror?

For many, this year felt like floating through endless space. With a sense that time was suspended, the signposts we use to map out the days passing became especially significant. For me, those signposts used to be playlists. I used to make one weekly, curating them with a mix of old songs and new ones I wanted to give a listen to. My old Spotify account is a crowd of these weekly curations. I thought I would be able to make a new faction of memory, that if I could adhere a week to a song, recalling that week would be as easy as listening back. As it turns out, it isn’t that easy. Memories are made up of more than background music. This is probably why I gave up that devotional curation for a more emotionally charged and occasional sort. My playlists have grown shorter and more precise. Maybe this means I feel the time that has passed differently, or maybe it means I want to remember things differently. Overall, I think everything nowadays feels more vague.

There’s a lot in a name when it comes to a playlist. What does it say about me if I set certain songs side by side, and call them “happy”? Even when it’s just a fitting lyric, a date, time, season or some nonsensical inside joke, the title we give to a playlist is always telling. They reflect the mood we were in when we picked those songs and might hint at where we will be emotionally when we revisit the playlist again. In choosing a name, we have acknowledged that by putting these songs together, we have made something that could almost be called new.

Honestly, I think playlists are another surface we can see ourselves reflected in. It used to be mixtapes with names scrawled on in marker, now they are an abundance of playlists to scroll through endlessly on Spotify. A playlist at its simplest is a collection of what you like at that moment in time. It is the same as collecting particularly nice stones on a beach, or bright leaves on a walk. It says simply: I’ve gone through life, and here are some of the best things I’ve seen so far. I’ve picked them up to keep them close to me. Here they are, set out side by side. Here is the name I’ve given them. It’s a fairly simple act of expression, but one I feel is built on an enduring love of collecting small moments that affected us. The act of putting them together is to make something that reconnects us to places, people and moments that we have passed by.

WORDS BY RÓISÍN FINNEGAN ART BY LINDSAY LEACH