This song sounds like applying to college
Music memory, career plans, and life trajectories
Hey, how’s it going? Schön, dass du da bist. I’m glad you’re here. I have all this stuff I’m trying to say, but I’m a bit out of practice with writing. I have to work out my writing muscles to get stronger. I wrote the first draft of this Substack newsletter in September 2018. I’ve written several other letters since then, and I didn’t publish any of them. It feels weird to have all these words building up, so I’m going to publish my old drafts and then start writing new ones.
One of Spotify’s greatest features is the time stamp that tells you when a song was added to a playlist. I can usually remember when a song was released or when I started listening to a song because music takes me back in time.
Imogen Heap’s early discography takes me back to late 2011/early 2012 because that’s what I was listening to during my college application process.
I know Soulja Boy’s “Crank That” became popular when I was in 8th grade even though it was released when I was still in 7th grade. I remember that Coldplay’s “Lost” came out my freshman year of high school.
Sometimes, however, my song memory is fuzzy. I thought I discovered Porter Robinson’s “Flicker” in the spring of 2014. Spotify tells me that I saved it on September 6, 2014. I know this is correct, now that I’ve been reminded, because now I can envision the various on-campus study rooms in which I listened to that song in September 2014.
2014 was one of the most important years of my life.
In the spring of 2014, I came out to myself as a lesbian. I came out to my friends and family shortly after.
Fall and winter of 2014 was a nasty time. The day that I returned to St. Louis to start my junior year, Michael Brown was shot and killed by a police officer. What followed is what international media call “the Ferguson Unrest” or “the Ferguson Uprising,” and I was right there living it. I went to protests. I had to make an in-case-you-get-teargassed-by-the-police kit. I was angry and afraid. I was reading anonymous racist remarks from my schoolmates because the app Yik Yak was still a thing then. My college environment felt toxic.
In November 2014, I went no-contact with my mom. I also started dating my first girlfriend, a bright spot in an otherwise gloomy timeline.
But before 2014 turned cold, I had a nice summer. Summer of 2014 was when I interned at a music supervision studio in Beverly Hills. Music supervision is the act of choosing and licensing music for film, television, video games, etc.
It all started with Teen Wolf. The MTV version, not the 1985 comedy film. If you’re not familiar, Teen Wolf is a show about a bunch of hot high school werewolves and the monsters they fight. I started watching in the fall of 2013 and became obsessed not only with the story but also with the music.
The Teen Wolf soundtrack moved me so strongly that I switched careers tracks. I was a computer science and linguistics double major at the time, but I decided I would become a music supervisor.
Becoming a music supervisor was a dream of mine that I took very seriously. When I watched a movie in the theater, I’d stay and watch the credits until I saw the name of the music supervisor. I started networking heavily and eventually got a music supervision internship.
The internship was a cool experience. I still have all the promotional CDs that the studio let me keep. You’re supposed to learn things from internships, and I learned that I didn’t want to work in Hollywood. I still like the idea of music supervision, and I’d like to do the music for an indie film or web series someday. But being in Beverly Hills weirded me out.
Summer ended. I went back to school and decided I would become a journalist.
It’s 2019, and I’m a Ruby/Rails and front-end developer. It was a very windy road, but my career path took me to exactly where freshman year me thought I would end up—working as a programmer at a tech company. The fun twist is I’m doing it in Berlin, which I definitely did not see coming. I thought I was going move to Portland or something.
I love Berlin so much. I plan to write some letters about how I ended up here and how to get settled here.
Ending with some music links:
When I watched a fan-made movie of Porter Robinson’s Worlds tour, I cried at the end. I cried because seeing him dancing on stage, I was so proud of him. That album is a gift, and the live performance even more so. Porter Robinson isn’t that much older than me. People who are a few years older than me and doing great things give me hope that I can do great things too. Then a few years pass, and I get to the age they were at, and I’m like, “Welp, here I am. Nothing yet. Maybe in a few years.” Speaking of great works, check out Giorgio by Moroder. It’s a documentary song by Daft Punk about how Italian musician Giorgio Moroder grew his career.
Computiful was my most-listened-to song of 2018, according to Spotify. Unendlichkeit was the first song by Cro that I ever listened to. This song is a big part of why I moved to Berlin. That’s a story for another time.
I went to a concert at Haus der Kulturen der Welt last night. It was Concert of Trees, by Pantha du Prince. I’d never heard of them before; I just found the event on Facebook. The show was wonderful. It started out feeling like a meditation. I dozed off in my seat a little bit. When they came out for the first encore, I had to get out of my chair and join the group of people who couldn’t help but dance. Then there was a second encore. After their final bow, the crowd was still hoping for a third encore. That’s how good it was. I posted some videos on Instagram if you want to take a look.
That’s it for now. Subscribe if you like. I know, personally, I’d like it if you did. But would you? I mean, I haven’t even told you what this newsletter is going to be about yet. And that’s because I don’t know. But it feels good to be writing :)
What was spring of 2014 like for you? What would you say was the most important year of your life, and why?