“Running From Mercy” – Rickie Lee Jones ( Traffic From Paradise, 1993) “Albert” – Ed Laurie ( Meanwhile in the Park, 2006) “Solace” – Scott Joplin/ Richard Zimmerman ( Scott Joplin: His Greatest Hits, 1974 ) “No Mermaid” – Sinéad Lohan ( No Mermaid, 1998) “Held Down” – Laura Marling ( Songs For Our Daughter, 2020) “The Charade” – D’Angelo and the Vanguard ( Black Messiah, 2014) “Maiden Voyage” – Herbie Hancock ( Maiden Voyage, 1965) “Freedom Rider” – Traffic ( John Barleycorn Must Die, 1970) “Baedeker” – Gabriel Kahane ( Book of Travelers, 2013) “Try to Remember – The Fantasticks (featuring Jerry Orbach) (Original cast album, 1960) “Spinning Away” – Brian Eno & John Cale ( Wrong Way Up, 1990) “Can’t Fight” – Lianne La Havas (single, 2020) “Love You To” – The Beatles ( Revolver, 1966) “Cara de espejo” – Juana Molina ( Halo, 2017) “Everybody’s Gotta Learn Sometime” – The Korgis ( Dumb Waiters, 1980) “Praise Song For a New Day” – Suzzy & Maggie Roche ( Zero Church, 2001) “Keep On Keeping On” – Curtis Mayfield ( Roots, 1971) It’s what humans do.įull playlist and extra notes below the widget: There’s a rainbow above me that the storm clouds hide I’ll let the musical current of this latest mix pull us eventually towards Rickie Lee Jones’ world-weary grace, in the elegiac “Running From Mercy”: I am simply here to say that we can and must do this together.
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The best I can do is offer a mix of songs this month, similar to my usual efforts, some of which you may find thoughtful and relevant to the present moment, others of which have no particular connection besides being intangibly part of the flow I put together as someone striving to observe and feel into this fateful hour. But here’s what I can do: I can put myself in the position of needing to learn, needing to have new conversations, needing to have new responses to this world we’re in, this congenitally damaged country that looks much better on paper than it does on the streets where we live.īut: there’s no doing this with a playlist. Of course I’ll never know, experientially, what it’s like and what it’s been like to live as a person of color in this pseudo-democratic and deeply hypocritical country of ours. I mean, I knew about it, and was in pain about it at some abstract level-but at another level, I can see that I simply went about my (privileged) day, unable and/or unwilling to let the uncomfortable reality sink in. I’ll save you time: you can’t.) I recognize that for all my liberal ideals and progressive tendencies, I have lived a long adult life without deeply considering the lived experiences of people of color in America. (By the way, name one honorable and effective person in the history of civilization who claimed always to be the best, who could confront detractors only with insults. First and foremost, at this consequential moment in time, I recognize, in my own humanity, many flaws and failings. I’m not here to preach, but I am here to try to be a human being, however lost a mere human being has become in the chaotic sea of systems, policies, memes, propaganda, and brutality that characterizes life in 2020.