My friend AB invited my friends and me, a group we call Puglove, to his house to listen to music together. Last year I wrote about it here. He asked us:
- If you were to spend the rest of your lives with puglove on a deserted island, with somehow electricity and the best sound system ever, what 2 songs would you share/play? Remember, we can't get off, and those are the only 2 tracks we can play. Don't pick 30 minute ballads.
- Send me a short writeup of what PL means to you, and why you chose those 2 tracks.
Choose two songs for a desert island stay. Not easy!
I dove deep. Genres, playlists, old favorites, searching for the perfect pair. The weight of choice grew heavier with each listen.
I was stumped.
Then came the words that changed everything:
Musicians are magicians.
I'd been there, caught in their spells during live shows, watching as they conjured emotions and experiences beyond our ordinary reach. I'd been mesmerized, enraptured, transformed.
The question shifted: What spells would I weave for myself and my fellow castaways?
I inspected my relationship to Puglove and the meaning this group of wonderful individuals carries in my life. In a magical sense, I believe we are celestial beings who've chosen to live in time-bounded physical reality. Therefore, carefully choosing who and what we spend time with is of utmost importance. Puglove is a living testament to good choices.
Christopher McCandless captured something essential about why these choices matter so much. In Into the Wild, he wrote:
Happiness is only real when shared.
Like magic shared between kindred spirits, music gains power when experienced together. This truth guided my choices toward songs that held both personal meaning and collective power.
I found my two spells for times of fortune and famine:
The first: “Welcome” by Jon Hopkins - my Peace and Wonder spell. Cast this during quiet moments when your heart feels ready to burst open, a swirling mass of rising energy ignited by drum and chime, maybe the most primordial of instruments. As the prelude to “Music for Psychedelic Therapy,” it opens the door to an album that's sung to me while I swam in the deep end of my psyche, healing me in ways I didn't know I needed. While I wish I could've submitted the whole album, “Welcome” captures the magic and the weight of the journey it offers.
The second: “Remember Where You Are” by Jessie Ware - my Stable Love During Unstable Times spell. Cast this when love begs to be felt in the form of marquees adorned with rows of dimming bulbs, once ablaze with life, now flickering with memories of a grander, simpler era, where beauty strives to shine through the chaos. Jessie's voice mingles like a well-fitting cocktail dress in this soirée of melody and strings, building to that refrain at 3:31 — one of my all-time favorites:
Can we keep moving in the after hours? Can we keep loving on the edge of doubt? You should let me save the day, Please and thank the pain away. (Remember) Why don't you take me, take me home?
Because home isn't where we're stranded— it's in the magic these songs weave between us.