playlist: To Kill A Goldfinch
It’s been a long time since I made a proper playlist—one that wasn’t just a random collection of songs to accompany a morning run or a commute to the grocery store. A proper playlist requires effort, and it unfolds like a conversation between friends across different decades.
This one is for fall, again. I’ve made the most playlists in the fall season. There’s something about this time of year that brings out the curation bug in me. I blame the overcast skies and the wool scarves purchased from small, online clothing boutiques in Amsterdam.
Sign me up.
My daughter is about to turn seventeen, and she and my wife are taking a weekend trip to Seattle. The genesis of this curated effort was to gift them a playlist for the flight. Like everything in my life, I took it way too personally. So, what started as a thematic playlist quickly evolved into an idea about what we carry when we leave home, even for just a few days. So naturally, I spent weeks interpreting that idea into songs.
Goldfinch is curated not by genre or trend, but by a feeling. Like most playlists, I try to avoid including overplayed and overpopulated songs by select artists. Like, if I were to include a song by The Cure, I’d automatically avoid “Pictures of You” and “Just Like Heaven.” Both of those songs are great, but they’re too easy. Additionally, Goldfinch is intended to be listened to in sequence, without skipping around. If a song is already overplayed, it may prompt the listener to press skip.
Somewhere in the middle of making this playlist, I found inspiration to finish a poem I started in 2023, so this now lives here:
The Fountain in Versailles
In the garden of Versailles,
There is a fountain,
Older than memory.
Some say it sings,
But only when the tide has pulled,
Far enough from the coast.
The water there moves faster.
No one knows why,
And those who find it will often stay awhile.
In the stillness, a breath is held,
as if a pilgram just remembered
something he almost forgot.
I don’t know what this playlist will mean to my wife and daughter, or if it will mean anything at all. Perhaps it will serve as background music for takeoffs and landings, hotel lobbies, or rainy night walks to get sushi. That’s fine. That’s enough.
Still, I can’t help but hope that one or two of these songs stay with them a little longer than expected and that something in the sound will tie itself to this trip. We all carry songs with us when we leave home, and without realizing it, they find a way to carry us back, like a bird that never quite leaves the branch.
So this playlist is for fall. For travel. And for two people I love.
