What does your music playlist say about you?
100 Things #30 - Curate
When you were growing up, did you ever keep a collection?
I was a trading card kid myself, and so was my brother. I liked playing with them, and he liked sorting them, which I always thought was odd, but in hindsight, I feel like those traits held up pretty well into adulthood.
I find that collections of anything really hold a unique potential to represent their collector in a way that little else can.
What is there to learn about someone who collects gemstones over stamps? And what about those gemstones is unique to that person?
I believe the way that a collector is reflected in their collection is rooted and ingrained in this idea of curation.
What do I mean by curation?
Curation as a practice can often involve a great detail of care. I mean, just think about some of the things that people curate regularly.
Sure, some of the first things that come to mind are maybe book collections, art pieces in homes, or even souvenirs, but I think the practice of curation extends far beyond that.
Music playlists, clothing items, home gardens, recipe cards, social media feeds, wine racks, Substack subscriptions…
I mean, the idea can really be extended to most things that people put effort into looking after on the regular.
And that idea there, of putting effort into the practice, is exactly what I think I’m trying to get at here.
Simply by virtue of putting effort into a curated collection, a small piece of us gets wrapped up into whatever it is we are collecting.
This might seem more apparent with collections that we know a person is more likely to be looking through later, like a vinyl collection, or maybe a scrapbook, but I think it extends beyond that as well.
What do you think?
I think this is something, though, that I still have more questions about than answers. I usually plan these posts out a little further in advance, but this week’s is being written just a few hours before it goes out, when I was really struck by this idea of what a collection says about its curator.
I think I’ll leave today’s post a little more open-ended, because I’m really curious to hear from readers.
I’ll add a few more journaling prompts than usual, and feel free to take one with you to-go, or answer it here in the comment section and start/continue a conversation!
Reflect on any collections you had as a child or have now. What do these collections say about your interests and personality? (Interpret collection however you please.)
Write about something you put a lot of effort into curating. How does this effort enhance your connection to the collection or activity?
Think about how your collections have evolved over time. What changes in your collections reflect changes in yourself as a person?
Reflect on the effort you put into maintaining your collections. How does this effort contribute to your sense of connection to that collection?
Imagine a future collection you might start. What would it be, and what would it say about your future aspirations and goals?
Reply of the week:
This comment was in response to last week’s 100 Things #029 - Build a Community.
Really enjoyed the personal anecdote. Always interesting to see the Hollywood perspective on something like this. I didn’t include the full comment, so you’ll just have to check out last week’s post to see the rest of it ;)
Thanks for responding
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I feel like I have started collecting so many things and fell off. This is a pretty inspiring post to help me get back into it!
I grew up in Tijuana, Mexico and the way most people collected music was through piracy. The only good music shops were available to those who could cross the border to San Diego.
As reprehensible as it may be, burning CDs was the way we "curated" our playlists. The kids would select specific songs from different albums across multiple musical genres, creating a unique blend of sounds that we all believed represented a piece of us. Playing your disc to yours friends felt almost like getting naked in front of them.
In my case, I had a lot of film soundtracks. I noticed very early on that my mind would ignore lyrics (something I still struggle today). I would play them to my mother and ask her what film and scene this piece of music belonged to. Those were fun times.