#5 - pushing through
You can skip to this week’s playlist on Spotify or scroll to the end.
In Appointments, Julien Baker sings “maybe it’s all gonna turn out alright, and I know that it’s not, but I have to believe that it is.”
The way I think of it, there’s a blurry line, sometimes more of an overlap, between “be hopeful, everything will be okay!” and “everything actually seems pretty grim, but we have no choice but to figure out how to get through it.” I do often like to consume media that says the former, but this playlist is for the latter.
I think we sometimes present this massive, glamorized idea of hope. That hope is constant, determined, continuous, all-encompassing. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about, questioning, chasing, and running away from it. I’ve come to love the idea of “hope as a discipline.” To quote abolitionist author Mariame Kaba, “hope doesn’t preclude feeling sadness or frustration or anger or any other emotion that makes total sense.” It’s a decision you have to keep making. But I’m also not sure that the framework of hope is sufficient. Even if you fully believe, for many good reasons, that the needed outcome isn’t possible at all, you often have to keep pursuing it regardless. And in that pursuit we need to be anchored to more than the big hypothetical win at the end.
As usual, the playlist varies in style, genre, mood, and content. Some songs are more positive and upbeat, and some are more bleak and defeated. But these songs don’t make grand declarations about the future. They don’t tell you that, actually, everything would be pretty great if you just adopt the right perspective, do the right math, look in the right directions. They’re about acknowledging failure and sadness while celebrating success and joy, holding on to less ambitious ideas of hope.
These are songs about pushing through, sometimes hardly, sometimes slowly, sometimes inconsistently, sometimes badly. But pushing nonetheless.
10 songs
(Spotify)
Living Proof - The War On Drugs
Flyin’ Overhead - Tall Heights
Light On - Maggie Rogers
Lovin’ Me (feat. Phoebe Bridgers) - Kid Cudi
Get By - Maverick Sabre
Save Your Day - José González
Appointments - Julien Baker
Hate The World - Gordi
Look at the Sky - Porter Robinson
Getting Started - Sam Fender