My Irish bloodline is more personal trivia than heritage. My forbears sailed across the sea to farm in Pennsylvania nearly two centuries before my birth and roughly a generation before the Potato Famine, all of which is to say, there’s a great deal of distance there. Ireland is an abstraction, and my connection to it is ancestral rather than lived.

I never experience that connection more strongly than when I listen to The Pogues, “Thousands Are Sailing.” That song encapsulates anything I’ve ever read, seen, heard, or felt of my Irish heritage. There’s a push and a pull, grief and love, genuflection and spit, grit and pride. It’s a great song.

I’m putting a YouTube link with the very-much-still-relevant lyrics below. By all means, wear the green plastic hat, drink the Shamrock Shake, tell the kids the leprechaun left a chocolate gold coin, and down some Guinness and Jameson alongside your corned beef. But if you can spare five minutes and twenty odd seconds this St. Patrick’s Day, give them to the Pogues and think of the Irish.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27iJsZpQn3A

My music taste is the ohio accent of music: It's all over the fucking place and it's a mix between all of the possible Genres. Except Country, I can't get behind that. Pop is weird too, but whatever. One second I'll listen to set it off, and the next, Mozart. It's weird, but I'm weird, suck it up :)

Mystery, romance, cozy, or adventure...whatever I am writing at the moment depends on the music I have playing in the background. It can range from classical to 80's pop, but when I'm riding in the car or riding my horse, I like to crank contemporary Christian music and sing along. It's what makes me happy. It's what brings me joy, just like writing.

Depressing rock music, because it gets me, makes me feel like I'm not alone.

Depressing nightcore music, because I understand it, and I feel as if there are worse lives than mine, so I should stop griping (whining, pronounced gri-ping, like grape with an I) "I can feel you fade away,

from the kitchen to the bathroom sink and,

your steps keep me awake..."

Also, pop music, because that is upbeat and gives me some hope.

Rock, because I grew up on it. I have staked my childhood on rock music.

Besides for some mixtures of these types, that is all-

oh, wait, Indie and alternative. Sometimes. Depends on my mood, because some of em I like, others... eh...

Good luck everyone! (If you do not like music, you are dead to me)

1) Sad song/by we the kings

2) one day/ Tate mcrea

3) heart break/ demi lavato

4) Perfect two/ perfect two

5) I guess peter pan was right/ phobooty

6) you broke me first/ Tate mcrea

Artists

1) Demi Lavota

2) Twenty one pilots

3) Ruelle

I listen to all kinds of music.

Classical, pop, soundtrack, sea shanties... I listen to all of them for various reasons.

I listen to classical because I'm a classical musician and composer. I listen to pop, because I genuinely like some of the pop music that exists in the world today. I listen to soundtrack music because I just genuinely like it. And I listen to sea shanties because sea shanties just hit different.

Music just do be like that sometimes. It's part of life, and I thoroughly enjoy every second pf it. Life wouldn't be the same if we didn't have music in the world.

I remember listening to ‘Kaleidoscope World’ by Francis Magalona when I was about 3 or 4 or 5 or somewhere around that range. The music video on the old dusty CRT monitor was barely there cause the afternoon sun bled from the balcony into our living room that was adjacent to it. I could see shapes moving, muted colors, but the red sun was too bright for the screen to do its job, shadows of a shadow from a half-dead bulb. Yet the song was still there - transcended physicalities, and rose above the chug and pulse of Makati that, more often than not, swallowed moments like these whole.

I don’t listen to that song much, it’s a good listen, but it’s not my go-to song. I don’t even know why I started writing about it. I try to find a reason like “it reminds me of my childhood” or some other filler fit for a procrastinated last minute paper doomed to be a victim of an eye-roll from my AP literature teacher, but I know that whatever I write won’t be enough for me - just doesn’t feel right, instinctually. Maybe the reason’s hidden underneath all that rubble, only appearing in hindsight. Or maybe I’m putting too much meaning into something that I can half-remember, clawing at the edges of a memory stitched up by myself to seem whole instead of a sandwiched dream.

I do know Francis was the first time I thought about death. He had cancer and died when I was 9. Didn’t understand the gravity of it all, thought he was just sick. In the midst of nationwide mourning, I asked my dad if he’d die too, and he nodded. Then I took out one of those magic-8 balls we had and asked the same question to only get the same reply after a heart-wrenching shake.

Still, I’d like to think Francis M as my very first song means something. As I try to draw a map of my almost-22 years here, I know some things happen and they send you off to an unimaginable trajectory even if they only budged you a millimeter to the right. Same way with this song I guess: Francis M to Parokya ni Edgar to Sandwich to Nirvana to My Chemical Romance to All American Rejects to Cage the Elephant to The Ink Spots (played Fallout when I was 11) to Bob Dylan to Alt-J to Sea Shanties (???) to Arctic Monkeys to Bright Eyes to Third Eye Blind to Johnny Cash to Wu-Tang Clan to Connie Francis to Mitski to TV on the Radio to Village People to The Growlers to Tame Impala to Nick Cave to Handsome Boy Modeling School to Hendrix to Pixies to The Breeders to Kim Deal to Interpol to Mos Def to Pharcyde to Skeeter Davis to Blind Melon to Godspeed You! Black Emperor to Funkadelic to The Wytches to Wavves to Slipknot to Machine Head to Death Grips to Swans to Daughters to Beach House to Joy Division to Father John Misty to 70s Cambodian rock to Brockhampton to U.S. Girls to Talking Heads to Portishead to Dr. Dog to The Books to Okonkolo to Sons of Kemet to Silver Mt. Zion to Modest Mouse to The Microphones to Clipping. to Lightning Bolt... and so on and so forth. Jesus, if I kept going I’d probably turn my brain into moldy pulp as the question “what the hell happened there?” keeps pummeling my cerebral cortex while it dusts off memory banks and plays detective in its own crime scene.

I don’t know why I listen to the music I listen to. A lot of maybe’s and a lot of or’s swirl around, not knowing whether they’re “and’s” or not. There’s the usual culprit my cortex suggests that says “Makes me feel good” which is true. And there are some other hippie yaya stuff tempting me to connect the dots but I’d rather throw away the cereal box than spend some time with it.

But it was nice though, to look back, to try and draw a linear map of cringe-worthy music tastes and fail, and to conjure up that image of Francis M, a shadow of a shadow, on our CRT monitor swirling about and layered over by fuzzy static.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ

I listen to just about everything, although rock and country are my favorite genres. Lately I have been hooked on video game soundtracks and anime openings - both have been pumping me up to work on short stories. Here are a few tunes I have been digging:

Ys IX - Monstrum Nox Soundtrack - Decision (https://youtu.be/SuPnbbI_pgw)

Orange Range - Asterisk (From Bleach) (https://youtu.be/dfh4JuzYNpM)

LiSA - Gurenge (From Demon Slayer) (https://youtu.be/jiJu4K2jems)

BLUE ENCOUNT - Polaris (From My Hero Academia) (https://youtu.be/-t5--PiJsWo)

Asian Kung-Fu Generation - After Dark (Also From Bleach) (https://youtu.be/OvahxFH7IGg)