#17 - fire
You can listen to the playlist on Spotify or scroll to the end.
I started this nearly a year ago, in Cairo back in July 2022. I don’t remember why I never finished or sent it out, but here it is.
I was in a long Uber ride the other day when the driver asked me “is the tunnel okay?”, referring to my preferred route home. I’d heard versions of that question (“nafa2 wala kobri?” / “tunnel or bridge?”) countless times. No one wants to be blamed for inescapable Cairo traffic, so they make you decide. But when this specific driver asked me if the tunnel was okay, and I said yes, yes, the tunnel is fine, I silently joked to myself about how, wow, I did not tell this complete stranger my 15-year-old story set in that tunnel I’ve since passed through hundreds (thousands?) of times. How impressive.
If you know me, and maybe even if you don’t, there’s a good chance you heard the story of me running away from a fire in that specific tunnel (Al Azhar) when I was in 4th grade (I won’t tell it here, but that’s the gist.) Making fun of myself to myself about how many times I’ve told this story over the years, I thought about the fact that it isn’t actually that significant of an event in my life. We tend to attach a lot of meaning to repetition, often for good reason, but really, I just tell it because I think it’s a good story. And I’m a sucker for a good story.
This playlist has some great stories, and it’s also about fire, though not my own fire stories. I actually started it months earlier, when I removed one of these songs from an earlier playlist but still wanted to send it at some point.
The opening track, Dave’s In The Fire, is best accompanied by this BRITs 2022 fire, fire-full live performance. Though Dave [only] played the guitar for much of it, he’d actually only picked up guitar fairly recently, which is one of the reasons I love him as an artist. As a rapper and lyricist, he could have easily hired a guitarist or just used a track. (He did have a whole cast of great supporting acts here: Giggs, Ghetto, Meeks, Fredo, and a choir.) But his commitment to learning and playing new instruments live well into his career is a testament to his own growing love for and dedication to music.
Kodaline’s Follow Your Fire is, or was, best accompanied by the misery of Spring 2018 and the joy of my friend Soaad’s homemade banana pudding and a speaker blasting a little too loudly at NYUAD’s Arts Center as we pretended to do work, haphazardly following more hazardous fires than Steve Garrigan probably meant to write about.
I first listened to Adrian Orange’s Fire Dream because of an interview where Phil Elverum (of The Microphones, Mount Eerie, and more) called it the song he wished he’d written. It’s hard to think of what the song I wish I’d written is when I haven’t written any. Perhaps the answer is too many songs, but maybe it’s also none. Perhaps I’m just grateful to get to listen.
I don’t have a good explanation for why the playlist goes from Adrian Orange then Kevin Morby to a rap song by a fellow Politics PhD student. But sometimes a good story needs a plot twist that ties back to where you started.
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Where this playlist starts, and ends, is a rap song. Where this newsletter started was nearly a year ago, when I made fun of myself, and decided to do so in front of more people. Or it started fifteen years ago as I ran from a fire, destined to then place a little more emphasis on fires for the rest of my life. Not necessarily traumatic, not necessarily scary, not necessarily daunting. But a story that lived on nonetheless, so maybe it is significant after all. I suppose I get to decide which memories are most meaningful, and sometimes the memories decide for themselves.
10 songs
(Spotify)
In The Fire - Dave
Josie’s On Fire - Glassio
Fire - Jungle
House on Fire - Tall Heights
Follow Your Fire - Kodaline
Playing With Fire - Brandon Flowers
Fire & Sun - Mina Tindle
Fire Dream - Adrian Orange
Campfire - Kevin Morby
Fireproof - Merrimac, Dying Proof