6 years older feels like a big gap but also not much of one at all. I took this moment of change in your lives as a mirror to think through the path I’ve trod, and have pulled out music that’s carried me.

The notes below shouldn’t be read ahead of time, they’re intended to be read concurrently with each song or after.

Italics denote a transcription from the audio.

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• SLOOPY COOS CANYON – SNACK FOR THE ROAD

I took this recording of my friends’ band Sloopy Coos Canyon during our senior fall in college, which similarly to you, Natalie, was a period when I was unbearably heartbroken.

I uncontrollably/unabashedly sobbed while listening to my recording of their concert on the metro in Paris at the start of my version of the trip you’re all preparing to embark on, and even now while putting this mix together for you, I cried pretty much every time I played through it. I recorded as many concerts as I possibly could my last year and thank god because those recordings have become some of the dearest forms of my memory.

It was their last time performing together and you can hear Erin and Nicole break down before the line ‘and you, my sister.’ I don’t think they stayed friends, last I heard they’d had a falling out. but the music they made together during that time was so beautiful.

It’s interesting being at a remove of 6 years from you all – just enough time to be firmly in a different phase of my life but close enough that I can clearly feel how we’re on the same continuum. These are songs that have carried me through it all; maybe some will carry you too.

• JONI MITCHELL – ALL I WANT

While obsessively listening to this album when traveling by myself for the first time in 2015 and in the midst of an existential crisis, I could not stop thinking ‘how the hell did Joni know this is EXACTLY what this all feels like!!!’ every high and low and combination of the two. even just this single song! have learned so much from her lyrics

Joni Mitchell tracks those ups and downs of change and loss and freedom and love with such piercing accuracy throughout that album, so I tried to take some cues from her in this mix.

• DIAMANT – KIWI

This song came out last year and I first heard it a couple months ago, could not stop listening to it. It’s become a reference point between me and Jesse, who also fell in love with it when I sent it to him.

• STEVIE NICKS – WILD HEART (DEMO)

I watched this video so many times while procrastinating on all my essays and finals. Stevie Nicks is so young and just singing her heart out with this fresh and full joy while getting her make up done in her dressing room.

• RILO KILEY – PICTURES OF SUCCESS

When I told Gabe I was making this mix for you all, his first question was if I was going to include a Rilo Kiley song. I didn’t realize their music was so emblematic of my ennui.

I quoted that favorite line of mine to you, Austen, when we were walking back from the farm, I forget if it was in October or February: ‘it must be nice to finish when you’re dead.’

It’s been just over 3 years since you and I first met and from the start it’s always felt so natural to orbit each other, I can’t wait for the years to come.

• YATTA – DESERT SONG

I always loved this song and this isn’t the first mix I’ve put it on. Yatta was a peripheral friend who was a couple years above me in college. We recently had a sweet reconnection, since they moved to LA not long ago.

• SLAVEI – IZRASLO DURVO

Stella+Mag, I tried to show you this song over my weak computer speakers when I was at your house before graduation.

Slavei was a Balkan singing group that several of my friends were in, some of them are singing in this recording. I auditioned 3 times and didn’t get in but they always invited me to their supras – elaborate dinner parties that also included a lot of singing. The main rule was you couldn’t pour your own drink, which prompted you to always keep an eye on the [beverage] needs of others, generously refilling as needed.

• MAL DEVISA – OBITUARY

Angus showed me Mal Devisa, they knew her a bit growing up. She’s quietly a legend in the northeast. Obituary is one of the most haunting songs I’ve ever heard.

• ARTHUR RUSSELL – LOSING MY TASTE FOR THE NIGHT LIFE

There are a few different Arthur Russell songs that have encapsulated important moments for me (nearly put this one in instead, the first song I heard of his, coinciding when Angus and I first fell in love).

• PARTY 1999 – PARTY

self-explanatory! celebratory and a little sad

• DINA MACCABEE – EVEN WHEN THE STARS ALIGN

Dina Maccabee was a music grad student when I was in school. I saw her perform this song many times, and in my big creative growth spurt post-college, I screenprinted her postcards for her tour of this album.

The last verse is my favorite: ‘Even the trees in the snow / remember the leaves they’ve let go. / Perfect and tall / and ready to grow. / Even for trees in the snow / the spring still feels like miles away, still a million miles’

Listening now to this song, I of course can’t help but think of what my mom was saying to you all a few weeks ago at Natalie/Mag’s birthday, about together making up a constellation with one another. I’ve loved watching you all triangulate off each other over the years of your friendship. Soon you’ll be spreading out in the world and depending on how you look at it, each of you in the constellation may be a million miles away or from another perspective, right beside each other, always in a formation.

• MARY CLARK – TAKE ME I’M YOURS

Even in preparing this mix, I couldn’t really listen to this song all the way through. It holds SO much for me, all tracing back to the spring of 2015, which was maybe the most devastating/euphoric time of my life so far, at least in that kind of concentration.

I feel like the song’s power is self-evident, but when I finally shared this precious track with Jesse, he said it didn’t really hit him so hard, so maybe that’s just the entwinement of music and memory for ya.

• JENNY HVAL – SPELLS

I listened to this song so many times in my first apartment. Hannah and Keira you’ll remember that one, the duplex on Norton that was WAY too nice for a first home. Natalie still pines for it.

• THE BLAZE – FACES

Jake showed me this album, he was one of the first real friends I made after graduating. Last year we had a joint birthday party (Austen you met him); this year I’ve only seen him a small handful of times.

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Okay so the thing is, scarcely any of these songs actually come from the period around my graduation. It’s weird to have a culminating moment forced on you, it didn’t really work out like that for me. I think ceremony is beautiful and important, but any actual reckoning that I’ve gone through has happened in either imperceptible, glacial movements or in surprising, spontaneous bursts.

I guess that’s the whole thesis of this project/letter to you all. I hope you don’t feel prescribed to move through this time, or for that matter any time in your life, in a particular way. And same with this mix – come to it as you need or want, these songs are here for you as a resource, like I’m here for you as a resource.