At the keyboard, waiting for words to come, I often flip over to Spotify, looking for new playlists. Always hunting for some melody, some tangible experience I haven’t heard before. Triggering some thought I haven’t thought before. I ask friends on Facebook for songs and create new playlists. I browse playlists already created in genres I don’t normally listen to. I listen to Spotify’s “Discover Weekly” – created just for me! – religiously.

Turn up the volume. There’s the beat. There’s the hum. And my fingers respond to it. They move across the keyboard, trying to find their own rhythm.

I learned to type because we couldn’t afford a piano, an instrument I would still dearly love to learn. What we did have: a typewriter. A clicking, clacking keyboard rather than a melodic one. So, I learned to type, feeling the keys as the stories, like a melody, appeared one letter – one note – at a time beneath my searching fingertips.  

music and writing playlists spotify Writing