Spotify and bedroom dance moves only do so much – this was not the summer we hoped for.
I had grandiose plans for the summer. I chose to enroll in the Cornell in Washington program. The program would have let me work an internship throughout the week, while taking a Cornell Government class, and live in a dormitory a few blocks from the White House. If I couldn’t find any good music in DC, in late August I was scheduled to watch Alicia Keys take the outdoor stage at the Budweiser Amphitheatre in my hometown of Toronto.
But those plans never materialized. Instead I scrambled when the pandemic hit. I secured a remote internship at a radio station in Ithaca. I returned to Ithaca in June with the hopes of getting into the station, which never materialized. I spent hours working from my bedroom in Collegetown, spending most of my day behind a computer with headphones on.
Listening to the same playlists every day gets old. We all have a few slump-busting songs, but how many times can you go back to the well? Is there a rule for how many times you can play Thunderstruck before noon? After all, the rock anthem is best suited for a packed arena, thousands of people screaming “Thunder!” Peaceful Ithaca seems like hardly the place to let out this kind of energy.
Its hard for music to lift you out of negative thoughts, especially when stress keeps piling on. I have songs to workout to, songs for studying, songs for driving. What is the song for “a new ICE policy might mean that all international students get deported?” When I looked through the moods section on Spotify, the “crushing anxiety for losing the best years of your college career” playlist was curiously missing.
And yet the worst case of all was when I would really find a great tune, like Juice WRLD’s Come and Go. I couldn’t stop playing it. But it was almost worse to have a great song. I had nobody to enjoy it with, and nothing to do while listening to it. Fist pumping aggressively at my desk only provides so much joy. COVID will not return life to normal anytime soon. Dancing in the mirror is fun in the same way that a dog has fun chasing his tail. Once you get let in on the joke, the game loses its magic.
Image Credit: MTV / Jersey Shore: https://giphy.com/gifs/jerseyshore-mtv-jersey-shore-YUkqHUi8Y6HqGuBQN0