When I get home after a long day, I like to take time to sit in my car. This can be a few minutes or it can be 30, but it’s a form of mindfulness for me. 

I like to take this time to sit and let myself breathe. My car is a safe space. No one is there to tell me what I’m doing wrong or what I should be doing better. 

There’s no reason to think about assignments since the wifi from my house doesn’t quite reach and the service is inconsistent. This being said, my Spotify functions perfectly. 

It may sound cliche, but one of my favorite ways to relax is to listen to music and let myself feel as if I’m in a music video. I feel like the world has become such a cynical, pessimistic place. 

I may be a verified cynic as soon as I get out of my car, but in my car, I’m an idealist.

My repertoire of regularly listened to songs has been more on the sad side lately. I love sad music, even when I’m happy. I listen to music for its sound first. If I like the way the noise the music creates makes me feel, then I’ll delve deeper into the lyrics.

I want to share with everyone who stumbles across this piece the songs that have been playing in my personal music video lately. 

A song that’s stuck with me for a few months now is “Vienna” by Billy Joel. I loved it first for the sound, and the lyrics were catchy, but when it really started to grow on me I decided to dig deeper.

I realized the way Joel feels about life is a more optimistic version of the way I’ve been feeling lately. If I asked him if he was an existentialist, I think he would say yes. 

Another song that I can’t get out of my head is “Star Shopping” by Lil Peep. I went through a huge Peep phase my senior year of high school, and the way I felt about the songs then changed a lot. 

I don’t relate to them as much anymore, but I can look back as more of an outsider and understand why they made me feel the way I did. Now I appreciate the artistry and the vulnerability Peep put into his music, especially in “Star Shopping.” 

I was searching through random playlists on Spotify yesterday, trying to find a song that scratched my brain just right, and I found “And i’d go a thousand miles” by Montell Fish. 

This song is pretty simple and straightforward — and that’s what I appreciate about it. Songs don’t need to be intricate to be worth listening to. This song has emotion, and listening to it, I can tell it was made with love. 

Something all the songs I’ve been binging lately have in common is the aspect of vulnerability. I suspect the whole “tortured artist” idea isn’t too far off. Some of the most beautiful art is pulled from a place of pain. 

I don’t think it would be fair to end this piece without sharing the song that’s playing right now. I’m sitting in my car in my driveway, watching the melted snow drip down my windshield and appreciating the emptiness of the streets, listening to “Till Forever Falls Apart” by Ashe and FINNEAS. 

This song is really the perfect ending for my own personal music video.

Price can be reached at [email protected].