I’m currently working on a creative memoir project. Though, in all honesty, playing / fooling / fiddling / exploring might be a better selection of verbs… It feels less like work and more like play, pure and simple, as well as joy, lightness and melancholy. The project is only recently begun and will consist of essays, collages and other artistic work. Part of the project is sharing the process of the project in the hope that this inspires and encourages others to do the same (or similar or different!)
The music I listened to growing up has shaped me in so many ways. Creating a playlist from childhood is a magical way of processing and feeling through the complexities of our pasts. Check out my playlist for 1988-1994 on Spotify (me aged 12-18).
There are other playlists in progress for 1994-2005, 2006-2013, 2014-2021.
The process will be unique for everyone. I chose songs based on discrete periods of time that made sense to me based on my life experience. Identifying these chunks of time was interesting in itself. For example, I noticed that I definitely listened to a lot less music in my 20s. This aligns with that decade being a period when I felt less like myself and was into more mainstream music and radio. The time chunks are listed above.
The songs I chose were mostly albums or individual tracks that I recalled enjoying or hearing a lot. Some of them are the hits of the time (looking at lists of tracks of the [year] by genre is a good way to search on a music service). Others are songs and albums that I remember listening to a lot, either because they were of the period or were from bands I was in to. I’ll add some more detailed thoughts on the actual playlist in another post.
Do let me know what you think 🙂 ~ Anita
