GHOSTS OF CHRISTMAS COMPILATIONS PAST
Like insects preserved in amber from the Jurassic age, frozen emotions of yesteryear are embalmed on the playlists of Christmases past, and as I play them now, I feel a little like Scrooge peering through the frosted windows of old memories from previous chapters of my life. There are friends and family I've lost in those music selections, loves that vanished out of sight.
Music compilations distill emotions and protect them in a sort of immortal form (unless, like some conspiracy theorist warned me, that one day all information recorded on Compact Discs will suddenly vanish). I hope not.
However, the philosophy behind a Christmas compilation can get a little political if you talk to others who also like to end the year with a track selection to share with their friends and family. For some, it's about encapsulating the feeling of the festive season itself, with no shadow of darkness to cloud the holiday vibes.
As for me, I see it as a state of where I'm at in relation to the world around me. Sometimes it's not pretty, and I throw some grenades amongst the tinsel, and of course, there's a vanity in thinking anyone cares about what tracks you choose to close the year out.
The truth is, we make these compilations for ourselves deep down. Listening to a Christmas compilation from 2013, I was taken on a rollercoaster of emotions of that year, and I could step back into the time and place like a seamless teleportation from now into my past.
Compilations are time machines, and the music we choose for them may seem random and arbitrary to others but is often subconsciously deeper than they, or even we, realise at the time of putting them together.
As for the Christmas 2013 compilation, a few tracks in particular stand out to me, including Natacha Atlas’s You Only Live Twice, Leonard Cohen’s Going Home, Chaka Khan’s Through the Fire, and Grayston Ives’s Listen Sweet Dove.
But if I’m choosing one as a taster of that vintage year, then it’s got to be Bon Iver’s Beth/Rest, which explores the notion that true love is bigger than our conventional measure of space and time. Something eternal like a star in the night.
Perhaps that’s why I had to pause when I played this compilation of Christmas past. It was like a ghost reaching out to me beyond time, reminding me I'm not alone.