A Break, And a Small Request.

Help me finish this playlist.

I’m taking a break this week, but I thought I’d ask you for help.

When I was in my early twenties, I must have thought playlists were currency. I made them for everyone. They were my ultimate show of gratitude and love. So much of my life feels like it comes with a score, and I think it’s because I listened to albums for ten hours a day as I made coffee for almost ten years of my life. Playlists act as a measure of a period of time. I’m sure I’m not unique in this.

In 2010, I met Sean. He worked at the shop I got my very first coffee job. I had just quit my teaching job and had no idea what to do next, and I remember sitting with him while he was on his lunch break and deciding I liked him. We had a typically young love romance fueled by the intensity of both of us just having moved to New York. Within the first few weeks of dating, he made me a playlist. It was called “You Iz Beautiful.”

Sean died in 2014. We had long since broken up, and it felt like every memory or feeling I tried to push away after a breakup needed to be lassoed back. I tried to find the playlist he made me, but I couldn’t. I’ve been trying to recreate it ever since.

me and sean together at a mets game. this was the first time i met his parents. we were very hungover.

I know there were 69 songs because duh, we were 23 and thought that was funny. I have around 30 songs on this list right now. I still listen to the radio in anticipation that one of the songs from the list might play and jog my memory. It’s happened a few times in the last eight years. Just weeks ago I had to ask my former co-workers if Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill,” was on a work playlist we were forced to listen to on loop. I hadn’t heard it for years and suddenly felt a slight tickle of recognition, but I wasn’t sure. Kate Bush didn’t seem like Sean. I was right, it wasn’t — it was from the work playlist.

I’m hoping you can help me figure out some of the other songs.

I don’t really have any sort of criteria for the songs. Just that they had to have come out before October of 2010. Here’s what I’ve been able to put together so far:

Down below, I’d love for you to suggest possible songs that could have fit on this playlist. I know this post is a little off-script, but so much of my life in coffee has been marked by playlists and people like Sean — people who came and left an indelible mark I’m still not totally sure I understand yet. Sometimes it feels weird that I don’t talk about him more.

If you can’t think of any songs, please make a playlist. About anything. For anyone. Share it with me if you’d like. I still think playlists are a rad way to tell someone you love them or to remember how you feel at the exact moment you made the playlist.

I’ll see you next week.