19 Comments
User's avatar
Diana M. Wilson's avatar

As a "there's a playlist for everything' sort of person--the thing that popped into my head (rather surprisingly--as in, out of nowhere) was the soundtrack to Out of Africa--there's something expansive about it-and calm....It's probably that sense of "wholeness" that I get when I listen to it. Thx for asking us to play along!

Expand full comment
Jonathan Fields's avatar

Ah, nice. Going to have to pull that one up, it's been a long while.

Expand full comment
Lisa McLaughlin's avatar

Oh goodness. Yes! That takes me back.

Expand full comment
Diana M. Wilson's avatar

And reminds me that it's a movie (a glorious one) that is ready to be watched again!

Expand full comment
Lisa McLaughlin's avatar

‘Wildflowers’ by Tom Petty and ‘Southern Cross’ by Crosby Stills & Nash. The latter is my everything right now as the soulful human in my life who loves it is in the fight of his life against stage 4 cancer (at age 44). We will sail that reach on a following sea.

Expand full comment
Jonathan Fields's avatar

Southern Cross takes me soaring back to a particular moment in 1983 just a few months after it's release, sitting on the grass with friends as I learned to play it on guitar the summer before heading off to college. I remember Stephen Stills sharing the meaning, it was about "using the power of the universe to heal your wounds.” May that energy be headed to you and your soulful human.

Expand full comment
Lisa McLaughlin's avatar

He just leaned over my shoulder to read your comment and says thank you--he didn't know that. We both teared up a bit.

Expand full comment
Kim K Gray's avatar

Love “Into the Mystic”. I tend to fall back on Coldplay’s “Sky Full of Stars” for that full of live feeling. It used to be The Samples “When It’s Raining” and, more recently, I’d add CHVRCHES “Clearest Blue” in there.

Expand full comment
Jonathan Fields's avatar

Nice. There's a cool Hardwell remix of Sky Full of Stars that keeps the soulful vibe, and adds a bit of a transcendent Ibiza dance feel to it, too.

Expand full comment
Kim K Gray's avatar

I’ll have to check that out!

Expand full comment
Lisa McLaughlin's avatar

We have a very similar taste in music. I have Samples "Everytime" on repeat (a happy reminder of my college days in Boulder) and my tween & teen girls now often join in. "I'm not going home the same way I came..."

Expand full comment
Kim K Gray's avatar

That’s a good one!!

Expand full comment
Linda Zachariah's avatar

Lately I’ve loved the vibe of Beautiful Life by Lost Frequencies. I feel happy when I hear it and the first five or six times I heard it I had to find out what it was.

Expand full comment
Jonathan Fields's avatar

Love those songs that seem to haunt us in the best of ways!

Expand full comment
Michelle Carpenter's avatar

Chi Mai by Ennio Morricone has held me in its grip since it hit the British top 40 charts in the early ‘80s.

Expand full comment
Courtney Daniels's avatar

I’m into “Into the Mystic” again, too. And “No Hard Feelings” by the Avett Brothers. I think you’re so right about music bypassing our conscious mind and going right to our soul. Well expressed!

Expand full comment
Jonathan Fields's avatar

Yep, No Hard Feelings has such an airy groove to it.

Expand full comment
The Practical Mystic's avatar

What a beautiful ode to music. My 23 year relationship ended last year, and I do not know how I would have coped without music. I made a ‘Moving On’ playlist filled with gorgeous angry songs and some days I imagined my car turned into a fiery ball of heat fired down the freeway as I sang/roared/cried my way through those songs. I’ve recently become a choir singer, and those evenings are like therapy without the analysis. Honestly, music is such a gift. I grew up listening to all those songs too, and I love your choice of Into the Mystic. Gorgeous.

Expand full comment
Madeleine Ann Eames's avatar

Right now I am entranced by Ludovico Einaudi “Experience” and “Adieux” are my favourites. His music transports me to a place of beauty I rarely visit.

Expand full comment