The Art of the Mix Tape: Dissolve

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Tell them whatever you want
You and I know what happened here
Tell them whatever you want
We gave each other, proof we were there

So opens one of my favorite winter songs: Dissolve by Jenny Owens Young. As I sit here on a snowy February night, one of the last (one can only hope) months of winter, I think of how tonight's chill will slowly be eclipsed by tomorrow's moderate rise in temperature. By mid afternoon, with the defrost on in my car, the small flakes on my windshield will evaporate and dissolve as if upon contact.

There's nothing left of me and you
We sat and watched the glue
Dissolve
We're dead
We're bones
We're dust
There's nothing left of us

It's funny how time makes all things fade, and Owens Young is an expert at wording that precise phenomenon. As Ben Gibbard has professed: "The gift of memory's an awful curse." The passing of time is a beautiful, gradual, frustrating, and ultimately unstoppable experience. A snowy day like today brings me feelings of the cyclical nature of life; reminding me, in a purely neutral sense, of how things in life have always dissolved. The dissolution of days gone by is not a negative or unfortunate thing. Rather it can be kind of perfect, like when a pine branch weighed down with the accumulation of fallen snow slowly bends and dips, spilling a mass of flakes onto the flurried ground. Spring fever will take hold soon enough, bringing waves of rebirth, but today, just be at peace. Here are some other favorites for a flake-drenched evening against a backdrop of desolate white.
1. Dissolve - Jenny Owens Young