A Playlist for Reflecting on Senior Year at Colby

Before I came to Colby I had an ultra-idealized vision of what going to a small liberal arts school in the middle of Maine would be like. I pictured myself living out Donna Tartt’s The Secret History. I read Tavi Gevinson’s The Infinity Diaries, and held her description of Columbia (“the purity symbolized in the church-like campus, the bunk bed intimacy of communal living, the ancient library granting legitimacy that being a self-made “wunderkind” could not”) as the gold standard in my mind. 

Colby has been none of those things for me. But maybe I’ve learned to love Waterville in all its quiet beauty anyway. Maybe it was perfect anyway.

Since my sophomore year, I’ve been adding songs that remind me of Colby to a private playlist on Spotify. Now that I’m a senior, I thought I’d share the playlist along with the lyrics that are most important to me. 

1. 2021, Vampire Weekend: 2021, will you think about me?
2. White Winter Hymnal, Fleet Foxes: I was following the pack / All swallowed in their coats / With scarves of red tied ’round their throats
3. Spring Snow, Vampire Weekend: Trains start to move / Bells start to ring / The seasons we had / Don’t mean anything
4. Portland, Maine, Donovan Woods: Portland, Maine, I don’t know where that is / And I don’t want to know, I don’t want to know
5. M79, Vampire Weekend: You walk up the stairs / See the French kids by the door / Up one more flight / See the Buddha on the second floor
6. Little Boxes, Malvina Reynolds: And the children go to summer camp / And then to the university / Where they are put in boxes / And they come out all the same.
7. Berlin, Without Return, Voxtrot: I don’t know you, baby. / You don’t know me. / We are just victims of the same situation
8. Valley Winter Song, Fountains of Wayne: And the snow is coming down / On our New England town / And it’s been falling all day long
9. Campus, Vampire Weekend: I see you, you’re walking ‘cross the campus / Cruel professor, studying romances / How am I supposed to pretend / I never want to see you again?
10. Warmest Part of the Winter, Voxtrot: And twenty years of push and pull have left you searchin’ for a name
11. Ladies of Cambridge, Vampire Weekend: I’ve had dreams of Boston all of my life
12. Rolling Stones, The Vaccines: I know that people think your mind is a ski resort / But the art of deception is contact sport
13. Class of 2013, Mitski: Mom, is it alright / If I stay for a year or two?
14. Byegone, Volcano Choir: Day dead bye-gone / Laying near the lights / Of the knights of the northern lodges
15. Introduction, Voxtrot: Sometimes I think of some place colder / The sound of traffic and the way it’s worn / When you feel yourself grow up inside of here
16. Vienna, Billy Joel: Dream on, but don’t imagine they’ll all come true / When will you realize, Vienna waits for you?
17. Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters, Elton John: While Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters / Sons of bankers, sons of lawyers / Turn around and say good morning to the night
18. The Future Pt. 1, Voxtrot: Hey, this is the future / And we don’t grow up like that
19. Rivers and Roads, The Head and The Heart: Been talking ’bout the way things change / And my family lives in a different state
20. Bye Bye Symphony, Foxy Shazam: Life is a bitch but she’s totally doable / She’ll knock you around and she’ll lend you a hand
21. Oh Lord, Foxy Shazam: And god knows I’ve had some rough fucking years / Oh lord, oh lord, keep on keeping on
22. Next Year, Two Door Cinema Club: Maybe someday, / You’ll be somewhere / Talking to me / As if you knew me, / Saying, I’ll be home for next year, darling.
23. Unbearably White, Vampire Weekend: It’s what you thought that you wanted / It’s still a surprise
24. Ribs, Lorde: It drives you crazy, getting old
25. A More Perfect Union, Titus Andronicus: Give me a brutal Somerville summer / Give me a cruel New England winter / I want to realize too late I never should have left New Jersey
26. The Battle of Hampton Roads, Titus Andronicus:  And I’ve destroyed everything that wouldn’t / make me more like Bruce Springsteen / So I’m going back to New Jersey, I do believe they’ve had enough of me
27. Take off Your Sunglasses, Ezra Furman: Well she put on her skis and she slid down hill / Yeah she slid downhill in her bright red mufflers
28. Ants Marching, Dave Matthews Band: Take these chances / Place them in a box until a quieter time
29. Linda Ronstadt, AJJ: Today I lost my shit in a museum
30. Victoria, Beverly: Last week I saw you out with the guys you work with / A sea of pastel all around in their polos
31. Your Best American Girl, Mitski: Your mother wouldn’t approve of how my mother raised me/ But I do, I think I do
32. I Think Ur A Contra, Vampire Weekend: You wanted good schools / And friends with pools / You’re not a contra
33. Presumably Dead Arm, Sidney Gish: I’m old, which means I’ll be 30 and happy / likely married to personified business casual khakis
34. Townie, Mitski: There’s a party and we’re all going / And we’re all growing up
35. Pressure to Party, Julia Jacklin: I know I’ve locked myself in my room / But I’ll open up the door and try to love again soon
36. Book of Stories, The Drums: My life’s a book of short stories, / And we wrote a new one everyday
37. My Way, Frank Sinatra: And more, much more than this / I did it my way
38. The Ice of Boston, Dismemberment Plan: And I slip on it every time
39. Robert Frost, Mal Blum: But I always go back to where I’m meant to be
40. Sweet Hibiscus Tea, Penelope Scott: The artificial way the sunlight bounces / Off the glitching leaves
41. Collage, The Three Degrees: Wintertime is a razor blade / That the devil made
42. Montreal, Penelope Scott: But I think we all know / That I won’t make it to Montreal
43. Ordinary Life, Ezra Furman: The human mind gets way fucking sick of beauty  

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