This week I thought I would take a departure from my usual cynicism and discuss a slightly more cheerful topic: your favorite song, aka the song you want to hear while you die.
your favorite song, aka the song you want to hear while you die.
Of course, I have ranted on the internet about the uselessness of having a favorite song in the past, and it just makes no more sense to me to have a favorite song than it does to have a favorite pair of socks; sure I might wear some more than others, but that doesnt mean I dont appreciate them all in their own. Yet eventually I will find myself with only moments of consciousness remaining before slipping into the netherworld that can only be described as the world's longest Glass Animal album.
At that point, I will have no choice but to request but a single song be played from the bedside holographic gramophone meaning I will essentially be asked to give "my favorite song".
Now as I have spoken about in an earlier article 98% of all new music I listen to is from my personalized DiscoverWeekly algorithm. For the past 5 years I have been cutting a playlist, generally between 10-20 songs, from the 30 songs given on a weekly basis. If this keeps up, Spotify will be adding between 750-1,000 tracks to my library on an annual basis. Even if my poor life habits catch up to me and Im dead by 50, that will still be a list of over 20K songs divided over 750 playlists. How the hell am I going to look my nurse in the eye and request a specific playlist, much less choose an individual song, to play at the moment of my demise?
Currently when I make a playlist I tend to collect the songs one week, set them into a playlist, and give them a title that is pertinent to my current life events, or maybe just sounds cool. I have made around 200 playlists this way over the past 5 years. I will generally listen to the playlist under somewhat sublime conditions (for example having a relaxing Friday shower or taking a drive to a hiking spot) to solidify a specific memory with the playlist. While I re-listen to playlists, and often, only once will I make an extraordinary effort to create such a transcendent experience.
It would seem it would make the most sense for me to follow the same pattern on my deathbed. Hopefully I still have the strength to press "like" in my final weeks, though perhaps I can have the nurse sit with me and select the songs when I tap their leg with my feeble finger. If they are a female nurse, they may fall in love with me in those final weeks, but that cannot be helped. This way, my favorite song, will come from the same experience I had cultivated for the entirety of my life, listening to my recent DiscoverWeekly finds compiled into a semi-constructed playlist from the ether. In this way I would not be doing anything I do differently than if I planned to be alive the next week.
If they are a female nurse, they may fall in love with me in those final weeks, but that cannot be helped.
Now that's a bit of a scary thing. The songs to be played at the hour of my death would be songs that I had only heard for the first time a few days prior. No memories, no associations, no past. But to me that would be fitting. I've never liked living in the past, certainly not repeating the same unique experience more than once. What better way to die than following the same cycle should you have lived?
In the meantime, DJ queue up your favorite song, we're all dying to hear it.
🔥🔥🔥