Assignment 23: The Perfect Playlist- Samantha McGehee

I love music and believe it should be listened to throughout all kinds of events in life. The ups and the downs. Through the past year or so I created a kind of grieving playlist that I listened to whenever I lost somebody I loved or was feeling like I needed words to express that loss. These are some of the songs from that playlist. I creatively called it Funeral March.

Hallelujah- Jeff Buckley: Yes this is the song from Shrek, but I love its simplicity and its depth. It has a calming effect but incites a really strong emotion for me. My favorite lyric is when he says "love is not a victory march, it is a cold and broken Hallelujah." Losing someone you love doesn't feel like a victory march, he feels much more like how he describes it. I chose it as an opening song because it is not necessarily about death but it is about the pain involved with love which I think is felt the most in death.

Somebody Loved- The Weepies: This song really just celebrates how somebody can take you from just a person to somebody loved and how truly magnificent that is. More than anything I see it as a thank you to the person who turned you into somebody loved. I chose this as the second song because its really just honoring the relationship you have with others.

Through My Prayers- The Avett Brothers: This song talks about all the emotions that you experience through losing someone, especially the regrets and the desire just to somehow let them know you loved them, no matter what you may have said or did that you regret. The solution in the song is that now your only option is to tell them through your prayers. Its begins the acceptance process of death, and trying to say the most important things in the only way you can now.

World Spins Madly On- The Weepies: Death causes a pause in the world and it seems to slow, but eventually our worlds begin to spin again because we can't stay in that death paused world forever. This song talks about the difficulty in that world when it keeps going when you feel that great loss. But the world keeps spinning and eventually you will too.

Every Age- Jose Gonzales: I chose this song to end this playlist because its a very calming and reflective song about life as a whole. It emphasizes making the best of this short lived stay and that every age has a life and death, change and consistency and that we have to find the important things in all of it. We  have to try to make the best of this world, whatever world it is to us.