On Synchronicity and Spotify

Spotify speaks to me like Tarot at times. The app is set to shuffle, but Teyana Taylor’s Try Again has been lulled by the magic twinkling within the algorhythm from the depths of my playlist to swim, again and again, to the surface like a mermaid with a message. I’ve heard the song dozens of times these last few weeks. I let it play through in deference to what needs to sink in.

Now, I know Ms Taylor is ostensibly singing to her boo, and for sure, whether in surprising slo-mo or at a pace that gives already sensitive hearts whiplash to boot, we’ve all engaged in those stuttering bouts of romantic second-guessing. But I also tend to think, like the misbegotten love child of Carl Jung and Casey Kasem, that all the love songs are sung between Self and our broken and exalted parts. So for weeks, my meditation, my mantra, sung in Ms. Taylor’s sultry alto, has been:

I said things that I don’t mean

You did things you can’t take back

Maybe we should let it go

Or maybe we should try again?

Try again, try again, try again, yeah

Try again, try again, try again, try again, yeah

Try again, try again, try again, try again, yeah

Try again, try again, try again, try again, yeah

My Self leverages what’s at hand to coax baby ego back into her loving arms.

I love the song (still, after the dozens of plays this month) not only because Taylor’s talent overflows in such a ridiculous and unfair way, but in particular because of the way she plays with the purposeful iteration in the structure of the chorus. First her pitch and intonation poses it as a question. Then a statement. A proposition? Thus is the nature of our own purposeful, iterative lives no? Riddled with doubt or fueled forward by caffeine (or lust or whatever). Hesitant because of hurt or shame or embarrassment. But always the same question. The same requirement, really: try again.

My own private newsletter archives and internal playlist libraries barely start to catalog the falling downs and falling offs, the failings, the self-ghostings, the fade outs, shut outs, rejections, the distractions. Consider this newsletter. One simple outlet. A single-paned window. One small bowl where I can mix metaphor and meaning like a new (or old) recipe. And yet.

It’s not writer’s block. More like life block. There’s a too-muchness to it right now, still. Newsletter writing, dreaming, cake making, long wandering walks seem to keep getting squeezed out. But, after six months stagnant, my soul is clearly asking what it might feel like to consider trying again. I’m listening.

And it’s not the newsletter specifically. In its soft and thoughtful way, speaking my musical love language, my soul is letting me know that it’s safe to come out of the dimly lit room. To try for a connected life again. To start making shit. That it’s time for the grief to shapeshift. The elf orpine are budding. They remind me too.

And here’s what else I’m reminded of. The Self doesn’t just sing ourselves love songs through Spotify, but also through our friendships. I am lucky to have some people around me who, when I am in the dimly lit room  staring alternately at a glowing TV and at my feet like an exhausted rabbit, will reach out an arm, pull me up and gently suggest, maybe you should try again?

Tiny prayer: In a world obsessed with followers, platforms, and ranges of influence, may this little newsletter be a record and reminder to myself from myself of every time I fell, failed, or retreated inward and then decided, with the help of a friend, to try again. May I always move, even in stuttering, grief-heavy steps, towards my connected, making self.

*My friend Robin has pulled me up and back in this time by writing a lovely piece about my work for another gorgeous substack, The Food Section. Please check it out here. Thank you, friend! And if you are reading this now, because of that—thank you too.

Without delay, subscribe to The Food Section follow Robin and please—send me your most thoughtfully curated playlists or at least the song your Self is trying to sing to you these days. What are you listening to? What are you hearing? xx