Survive - Autumn 2022

Nineteen years ago I created my first seasonal playlist (the tracklist lost to time as I recorded it to cassette from my computer back when I drove an original-condition VK Commodore). Some time during the next fifty playlists I realised that these snapshots of musical preference, if curated expertly, could act as a time travel mechanism and transport me to the autumn of 2004 (in my VK Commodore) or the spring of 2016 when the simulation really started to fall apart at the seams.

Alas, I’m now reaching my brain’s tolerance to hear these same songs on a semi-regular basis and not instead be transported back half the distance to some other time between now and then when I listened to the playlist. Clearly I should never listen to these songs or playlists again after the season has passed and instead reserve them behind a panel of glass that says break in event of time-travel-requiring emergency.

Speaking of breaking and emergency, autumn 2022 was a season I hopefully never have to travel back to it again.

Many of these songs were enjoyed during periods of sitting in pain, or walking in pain, or just generally being in pain.

With the leaves nearly gone from the trees and a few weeks of post-op recovery coming up now is about the right moment to finalise the order and punt this one into the archives adjacent to the Summer 2022 soundtrack that I aborted like that fateful bike ride - halfway through.

Anyway that all reads a bit negative, but there is a vibe to this playlist that I noticed around the first morning my breath was visible. It was a theme of surviving, carrying on, persisting, and loving life.

It’ll be hard to finish a winter playlist if I need to keep finding songs that are upbeat and also cozy and atmospheric.

The other unintentional theme of autumn 2022 is the large amount of collaborations, features and duets. That’s a big part of how I survived autumn 2022 for sure.