Track 1: Citizenship
Track 1 is chosen most often on Monday mornings, after a restorative weekend at home. You’ve likely meal-prepped for the week ahead and woke up at 5:30am for the Ashtanga yoga class at a local studio. You feel glowy and confident that you’ve done enough self-care to engage with a little social justice. You are assessing your rights to global citizenship after reading the Washington Post article about the war in Ukraine your friend texted you the night before. You listen to The Daily. Michael Barboro speaks at 1.5 speed about the Post-Roe Era and suddenly, you feel very aware that you live in Tennessee.
Track 2: The Catch-Up Call
Track 2 is typically an evening selection, but depending on schedules, it can be opted for in the morning. You open your “Favorites” in your iPhone app and play cell tower roulette with your family and friends. Your brother receives a call most often, while he walks his golden retrievers through the streets of Los Angeles. Track 2 attempts to inspire meaningful connection with the ones you love most, yet you always find yourself repeating, “Sorry, what did you say?”
Track 3: Dissociation
Track 3 is never chosen, but it plays often, equally split between mornings and evenings. It occurs in the mornings when you didn’t sleep well, the magnesium gummy failing to do what the health and fitness TikTokers promised. It self-selects on your drive home from work after your co-worker sends you a passive-aggressive email about designing the company t-shirt and how you have made the mistake again. Track 3 plays out most often when the absence of your Dad (vacationing in Florida once again!) is most apparent and your shoulders are knotted into your ears.
Track 4: Daily Mix
Track 4 is your favorite track on the album, it is the one that skips from overuse so sometimes you find yourself suddenly listening to another track, most often 3 or 5. Track 4 is filled with explosive pop-synths and the lyrics of Taylor Swift. It’s red and bright and releasing. It’s cathartic and youthful – and undeniably your most joyful commute. The speakers in your Toyota RAV4 tremble and your fist becomes a microphone. It’s the track that lets you breathe and make room for the rest.
Track 5: Cry
Track 5 was added as a selection only two years ago, the morning your Dad called to tell you, “we’re putting the dog down today,” and asked if you wanted to join him at the emergency vet to say goodbye. You thought you were listening to Track 3 that morning, but your commutes continue to surprise you. Track 5 appears again when your 25 year-old cousin passes away unexpectedly – on Christmas Day no less (from an overdose no less) – but you only cry three days later on your way home from work. The tears spring forth from the silence of your car while you imagine what it would be like to lose your own brother. You imagine your older cousin and the guilt he must be feeling in the absence of his sibling because you feel it, too. You feel the aching and growing in your shoulders and hips. Track 5 makes you miss the turn into your apartment complex because you are too busy driving to your childhood home.
Track 6: Disassociate With Humanity
Track 6 begins with the same chords as Track 3, but it changes tempo part way through. You start watching other cars go by, pinpointing the drivers and wondering how – just how it is fucking possible – we are all truly alive in this one moment. You think of the word “sonder,” a term that you stumbled upon one day on Tumblr while sitting cross-legged on your twin bed in your freshman dorm room – the word is a creation of John Koenig as part of his Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows – defined as: the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own. Sonder suppresses your mind, it nuzzles your fears and overwhelms your bloodstream as your heart rate spikes and you remember that you really do need to schedule your annual.
Track 7: Catch-Up Call (Reprise)
Track 7 plays on random occasions – most often after a good day at work – when you can actually focus on the person you love at the other end of the telephone line. You hear about babies and birthdays, dogs and dementia. You think about the board game LIFE and wonder where the spinner has landed today for your friend. It’s a therapeutic call, but so often you hang up, whispering “I love you,” and wonder if this is really what we’ve all been waiting for?
Track 8: Silence
Track 8 sounds like a John Cage song, but really you just forgot to connect your phone to Bluetooth so you’ve been listening to your glovebox shake and whine that it’s about to fall off its hinge. The closing song of the album isn’t as silent as it advertises itself to be because it’s the first time you’ve heard yourself breathe in weeks. Track 8 is both suffocating and cleansing. It encourages a handful of meditative moments, until it forces you to slide your tailbone further down in the driver’s seat, burrow your spine into the linty fibers, dig your toes into your sneakers, and push ahead to continue the drive.
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