Like last year, and for many years past, I take a look at my most played songs each year within iTunes, and now also Spotify, and note the pivotal songs that are associated with pivotal experiences and memories, and I commit them to a good old-fashioned compilation. As my understanding with photography and visual language matures, I have learned that, preceeding any photographic sensebilites that I have or have a developed, is a sense of emotionalism, which is indifferent to any particular medium of human sense. The torn photograph in my wallet of my wife in the canoe is equally as potent as the song Mountain Child on this list that quite literally makes my little sister’s long blond hair materialize in my mind. The reverence I devote to work is not because of it’s medium, but in how ardently it is forged.
To be aware and fluent of one’s own sentiments may not be prerequisite to interpret the meanings of other’s works of music, literature, or visual art. But for me, to make sense of the external world and all it’s forms and languages, it is mandatory that I also work to order, archive, and recognize my own influences and sources. The music on this short list is a collection of respected artists who fuel my drive and give me sonic stakes to drive into the ground as landmarks within the topography of my memory over the past year.
I try to mail them out to friends each year who I hope would appreciate it. Those discs hit the USPS this week. For everyone else, a Spotify Link is here for those interested.