Soundtracks and playlists
Music and mood
‘I read a lot. I listen a lot. I think a lot. But so little remains,’ Jonas Mekas, the poet and filmmaker wrote in I Had Nowhere To Go. ‘With me, everything is mood, mood, or else – simple nothingness.’
Over the weekend, we watched Lost In Translation, the Sophia Coppola movie from the early 2000s starring Bill Murray and Scarlett Johannsen. I remembered the atmosphere of the film, and the expression on Murray’s face in one particular scene, but otherwise very little.
It was the mood that stayed with me.
I am always a little afraid to return to something that meant a lot to me in case I find it puerile or pretentious, but I re-enjoyed every quiet minute of this study on dislocation and unexpected connection as much as I did twenty years ago.
Today, I put my music on shuffle in the car, and a song from the soundtrack of Juno came up. Did you ever see that movie? It had one of the most perfect soundtracks ever, featuring a lot of Kimya Dawson’s songs, ‘A Well Respected Man’ by The Kinks, and other jaunty, quirky, folksy amusements.
Soundtracks were the playlists of the decades bridging the century. These were my favourites, and formed a layer of the basis of my children’s musical education:
Pulp Fiction (1994)
Romeo + Juliet (1996)
Trainspotting (1996)
City of Angels (1998)
Everything is Illuminated (2005)
Juno (2007)
The coherence of a soundtrack that captures the feeling of a story from a movie is a special thing. Yet, I don’t find myself rushing to a music-streaming platform to download a soundtrack after watching something on a movie-streaming platform, the way I used to plan to go to the CD shop after I’d been to a movie theatre and had seen something that left its mark.
I wonder why that is.
I do tend to playlists quite lovingly though.
To playlists and to plants and to bookshelves.
There is a short documentary on Jonas Mekas on Louisiana Channel.
Lost in Translation is currently showing on Netflix. It’s soundtrack is pretty ace too.
With love,
as always,
K.