Playlists, Poetry & Other Quiet Obsessions
“How odd I can have all this inside me and to you it’s just words.”
It’s wild how people can have such a big impact on you—and never know. There’s those days where you get out of bed like it’s a chore, where everything that can go wrong does, and then someone pulls you out of that fog just by being… themselves. Whether it’s a compliment from a stranger, a song that lifts your mood, or a book that transports you somewhere else, even if only for a page or two. I often still think about who those people were for me. If you’ve seen my Instagram post where I talk about plane girl, she’s the perfect example. I still remember her smile. And she radiated love, which might sound strange but if you met her, you’d understand. I hope I’ve been that person for others even if only once, but I guess I’ll never really know.
When I was younger - maybe around 13? I realized that some of the things people told me in casual conversation, or things I overheard on the street or the subway, would hit me really hard. They just stuck with me. Some made me smile. Others made me sad. Some shifted the way I saw the world entirely, and I didn’t want to let them go. That felt wrong—like forgetting something that was meant to be held onto. So I bought a notebook and started writing them down. Little lines from friends or strangers. Fleeting phrases that struck something in me. Somewhere along the way I stopped (late 2023?) because that’s what we do as we get older, right? We slowly let go of the things that used to hold us together. But I still have that notebook. It’s tattered now, soft around the edges, and filled with pages and pages of words that have never really left me. People who impacted me in ways they’ll probably never know. I still remember those moments like it was yesterday. Here are a few:
“Just tearing up roots and repotting”
“Compulsory, do you know that word?”
“This is the perfect song for just listening to your lovers heartbeat”
“Do you know the brain reacts the same to emotional pain as it does physical pain? The body doesn’t distinguish, only society does.”
“You’re so bright you burn”
“…I think you can bring me back to life ”
And the beauty of it is that it doesn’t stop there. Real life interactions are a gem, but then there’s the books I’ve read that are covered in highlights and underlines:
“..when they love, they love bodies rather than souls;..”
“Great companies don’t hire skilled people and motivate them. They hire motivated people and inspire them”
“To ask whether it’s nature or nurture, says Kagan, is like asking whether a blizzard is caused by temperature or humidity. It’s the intricate interaction between the two that makes us who we are.”
“We can no longer ignore that voice within women that says: ‘I want something more than my husband and my children and my home”
Or the articles I’ve come across where either the contents or the comments leave me feeling something I’m happy to have felt:
“‘You set your own desires aside for your kids,’ he said. ‘You didn’t lose, you gave.’”
“As broken as I feel I am, let me recycle what is left and simply try again”
“It isn’t surprising to find a vineyard in what may seem to be an unpromising spot. Wine grapes are fundamentally different from other crops. If you grow peaches, you will probably want to give them plenty of water and fertilizer, so the trees bear the most fruit. But the primary consideration in wine grapes is character, so the vines are often planted in places where they can barely survive and have to fight for nutrients. The grapes gain depth in proportion to the amount of work the vine must expend to survive. Harrison calls this process “suffering.” But even given that practice, this place was extreme. Why would someone plant anything in a foot of topsoil above solid rock?”
And then there are the songs. My god, the songs—where you feel the words in a way you never could if someone were just saying them. I don’t think artists have any idea how much their work inspires, and uplifts, or provides a sense of comfort. Gregory Alan Isakov will never know that some nights when I go to bed I listen to his music because it quiets something in me, in a way nothing else can. He’ll never know I listened to Sweet Heat Lightning as I wrote this.
Some days I still overhear things on the street, or listen to a song that feels like it was written for me, have conversations with friends where I think “oh wow, I like that”—and I feel her. That version of me who couldn’t bear to let a beautiful moment pass without writing it down.
Maybe I’m not scribbling in a notebook on the subway anymore. But I’m still collecting. Still keeping. Still letting things move me and letting people impact me unbeknownst to them. What a crime that should be though, to help someone feel things so deeply and go on never knowing.
I hope plane girl is having the best year of her life, and even if she doesn’t know it, this complete stranger is rooting for her.
Until next time friend xx