for the joy of it: playlist sequencing
My ice-breaker question of choice is rarely ever, “what do you do?” As someone who studies labor, I surprisingly don’t care for talking about work in social situations unless I am intentionally working or the conversation organically flows to it. This for me, as a contract worker, is a hard line to tip-toe because my work and my life often blur into one another. Much of this has been by my own design, but even I have my limits. On a personal level, I am most interested in learning about how people spend their time outside of the work they are paid to do. My ice-breaker question of choice is typically, “what are your hobbies?” This question has opened up some great exchanges where I’ve been able to learn more about new people on a slightly deeper level.
What counts as a hobby these days varies depending on who you ask. I have a lot of opinions about this personally. I love to travel, for example, but I don’t count traveling as a hobby of mine because I don’t travel as much as I’d like to. For this reason, traveling is an escape. I don’t profit monetarily from my hobbies or special interests nor do I employ them as escape routes from my everyday life in the way I may think of a vacation. For me, hobbies are activities that keep me rooted in my own Anuliverse. These are activities that I engage in on a regular basis, depending on the activity in question, simply for the joy of it.
I’ve previously shared on here my appreciation of a good cocktail. Cocktail making has become a creative hobby for me since moving to Atlanta. One day I will share on here a recipe for my favorite cocktail, an espresso martini. Special thanks to my friend, Taylor, for gifting me the most beautiful cocktail glasses as a moving gift.
Another hobby that I’ve taken up as a creative practice over the past months is playlist sequencing. This is like album sequencing, but I direct my efforts toward Spotify playlists. Sequencing in this context, whether for an album or a playlist, is the process of ordering songs. It’s a method for curating the presentation of songs by defining the relationship between each song. You may be thinking, “Oh girl, we all make playlists, what’s new about this?” Okay, cool, but hear me out.
The way my mind works is that I naturally identify patterns between things. I can’t help it. One day I started to make up this game while listening to music on Spotify. I would start with one song and then think of a song that the initial song brought to mind for me. It could’ve been a connection between the artists, the melody, the lyrics, the tempo, or anything, but something specific. I find that the best creative works often happen under constraints, so I then challenged myself to create a playlist through this kind of “song association” practice. The playlist could only be twenty songs which I’ve found to be around an hour (and, some change) of music. That initial playlist has now become a series of different playlists rooted in the art of music sequencing that I call “Continuum.” I’ve made twelve Continuum playlists to date and subjectively speaking, they all hit (translation: they are great listens).
What I love about this creative practice is that it allows me to think deeply about the big picture and the small details all at once. They are full bodies of work, but the details that make up the flow are what makes each playlist special. I’ve shared some of these playlists with friends before and I enjoy hearing people guess what the connections between individual songs are because sometimes the connections are obvious and sometimes they are not, depending on the guesser’s ear for music. I can get really granular with the connections and the flow at times, so these playlists are a great entryway to understanding how I think as well.
Another thing I love about the playlists is the rule I’ve made to never listen to them on shuffle. The whole purpose is to listen to each song in order of sequence, so no skips are allowed. If this concept excites you or inspires you to try your hand at creating your own “Continuum” playlist then please share them with me on social media, so I can listen to what you come up with. I’m @anuliwashere on Instagram, Twitter, and of course, Spotify.