Monumental events in the history of our lives leave un-erasable memories in our minds and press an emotional imprint onto our hearts. For me, March 2020 was a month that felt like six; pieces of the hopeful future and secure lifestyle I had come to rely on (admittedly, too much so) were ripped away one by one in quick succession. I can remember the exact dates when everything in my world started to turn upside down, and these negative memories have manifested themselves both as an emotional and physical experience at different times over the past year. There was one week in mid-March where I found myself floundering amidst a rapid succession of changes, under which lay an unstable foundation of anxiety and fear about the new and uncertain threat of COVID-19. In the course of that week I had several major concerts cancelled, had a trip to Montreal for a choral conducting symposium cancelled (I still haven't redeemed that travel voucher), started working my day job from home, started teaching music lessons online, moved out of my basement suite and in with my parents an hour out of the city, and found that my immediate plans for professional development as a singer and conductor (with grad school as a long term goal) could be brushed away as easily as a light drifting of snow.
It was a month filled with many losses, followed by a similar pattern in April (this was the month that I was told I was losing my stable job and lost a friend/fellow TWU choir aluma to an unexpected heart failure, which is a blog post for another day). The result of all this sudden loss, combined with great fear surrounding the state of the world around me and the well-being of my family and friends, was the attack of a whirlwind of emotions. Grief, doubt, anger, fear, helplessness, hopelessness, indifference, exhaustion, longing: all of these colours common to the human experience blurred together in various shades until I could no longer see the forest for the impressionistic trees painted on the landscape of my heart.
It was at this most vulnerable and confusing time that I found myself urgently seeking a means to make sense of my bewildering, pain-filled experience. Prayer, I knew, needed to be part of this process. But any Christian who has experienced the low moments of desolation in the spiritual life knows that there are times when words simply will not come, when silence feels oppressive rather than restorative, and when grief is so all-encompassing that hearing God’s voice and finding peace seems despairingly impossible. For me, this is where music becomes so essential. It is one of the ways that God speaks to me in those seasons when my well has run dry and I am wandering in the desert thirsting for living water but unable to find the source (John 4: 10-14). Beautiful music never fails to reawaken my soul to Beauty himself, and the lyrics of a well-crafted song are often how God restores hope in me, bringing my dry bones to life (Ezekiel 37).
March 2020 was the first “time capsule” playlist I ever created, but it has inspired me to create more (my 2020 and 2021 “A Year in Songs” playlists will likely be shared here in the future). Most of the songs were added in March and April of that year, but I have continued adding songs up to the present day. It is a long playlist (many of mine are), but one that I return to time and again when I need something that probes the depths of human experience. The description I put into Spotify sums up the reason I am finding this to be a timeless playlist to return to: it is "melancholic, reflective, cathartic, and hope-filled music that speaks to the heart amidst a time of change and uncertainty."
I hope this playlist speaks to you as it did to me. Let me know in the comments if you have any favourite songs or discover new artists on here that strike a chord with you. I look forward to sharing more of my favourite playlists, songs, and artists here with you, and I hope you will return the favour.
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