Soundtrack to Your Life

Your head is resting against the window. The landscape rushes past in a flurry of people, places and things. You can see it all – but just for that split second before it disappears out of view, out of your life. It’s the sort of sensory overload that makes the mind become a blank canvas and entices the imagination to emerge. As everything around you becomes perfectly synchronous, it’s time to turn within. The tape rolls and the music begins its slow crescendo. Cue Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons: Winter.” The record is now rotating. 

You call it escapist, I say it’s main-character energy. There’s something intoxicating about basking in those small, detached moments when you watch yourself from afar and imagine the way your life would play as a movie. Does it look like an A24 film? Does it have that golden tint and subtle grain, the calling cards of every indie Sundance film? Are you the hero, the lover or the one who needs saving? It’s so inherently human — to create beauty in the mundanity, tragedy and ecstasy that is our lives. 

Strike GNV’s editorial team now presents you with our very own soundtrack: Our biopic. Bump this playlist of curated bops to inspire the best of cinematic daydreams. 

Somewhere over the rainbow

Walking around with a rapidly melting ice cream cone, dripping faster than you can eat it. Going to the beach and getting excited about seeing a dolphin breach the water. Watching a rainbow appear and disappear with inexplicable awe. Some things will always feel childish in the best way possible. Moments of pure, unadulterated joy and nostalgia.

Curbed

Unrequited young love when you haven’t yet loved is confusing. It’s filled with newfound lust, excitement and cardiac arrest-inducing anxiety over a singular text. Everyone is suddenly a literary analyst when it comes down to scrutinizing the minutia of subtleties and implications of a “wyd?”  Is this love?  Is it an obsession that needs to be studied by a licensed professional? You say you hate it, but that adrenaline is addicting, and you live for it. As you bury your face in your pillow, do you ever catch yourself letting a little smile escape? 

A loner

Sometimes your own presence is anything but lonely—it’s almost overwhelming. There are times when you desperately need to just sit outside and feel the sun envelop you as it gently beats down. You lie in the grass, look up at the clouds and dissociate from the world for a minute. You sink into yourself and run simulations of situations. Processing who you were, who you are and imagining who you’ll be. 

Fatal attraction

Is love transcendent or does it ground you? Is it a flurry of ecstasy or a steady calm? It’s intensely intimate, yet universal. An all-consuming tension. Every moment feels like an eternity, but it's somehow not enough. 

Inner monologue

In film, the story often begins here. The camera pans, we become immersed in a setting, and then hear our protagonist's voice. They aren’t talking to anyone in particular, not themselves, or any other character — they’re talking to no one and everyone all at once. 

A whole world exists within us. One that’s vulnerable and authentic. One that belongs solely to us. 

The beginning of the end

We’ve all passed a stranger and made eye contact for a singularly intimate second. Your eyes graze one another, and there’s a genuine cosmic connection. But then you both go along because life isn’t a movie. People don’t usually stop you in your tracks to tell you you’re beautiful. They rarely ask what book you’re reading. Or pick up the ticket you dropped on your way to the train. In reality, we live in those moments in which the story begins and ends within the frame of passing. We gratify ourselves by wondering about the “what if’s?”. What if I had stopped him? What if she turned around and tapped my shoulder?

And then we move on.

Character development

Art strives to embody, celebrate, or cope with the human condition. It seems we are particularly obsessed with suffering — painting, literature, poetry, film and music all aim to embody its nature. Despite its universality, it's uniquely difficult to express. Sometimes it rushes over us and floods us in waves of grief. Other times it’s a sudden, acute pain that we could never have expected. But this pain is usually portrayed stunningly in film. Perhaps, it's because there is something significantly beautiful in the way we are wholly vulnerable in those moments. It's in those moments we are confronted with what we value and who we love — and they serve as a testament to who we are. 

We are infinite

The finale – at least of the film. Finally. For those moments when you’re driving around at night in the car with your best friends. The deafening stereo, your out-of-tune screams out the window, your best friend in the front seat turns back, and you both sing the chorus in sync. When you’re out dancing and you feel simply transcendent in the most indie-main-character way possible. These are the songs that embody that unique feeling that is simply being young. For those moments when you feel everlasting. 

Playlist link: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4zVx5SvU0CkCuvbdtqYjxp?si=e5175eb58ff646b4

Strike out,

Writer: Naina Chauhan

Editor: Kate Corcoran

Graphic: Rachel Frenchman

Gainesville