Experiencing the City Through Music as a Young Woman
There is something uniquely private about listening to music in public. It makes me wonder what spaces people usually listen to music in, whether they can be private or public. The music that you listen to, from whatever age you started listening to it up until the age you are now, is basically a time capsule of who you have been over the years of growing up.
When it comes to music and being in the city of Chicago, you start to notice music everywhere. You notice what people are listening to in their cars or the people walking down the street with headphones on. They could be listening to a song, podcast, or nothing at all but there is something about walking through a city with headphones that just hits differently.
When you’re a 22-year-old music curator who happens to be a young woman, you will spend a lot of time surrounded by people or alone while standing on the periphery of a conversation and observing what is happening around you. We all interact with music so differently, and I think those differences reveal a lot about our personalities and the way we experience the world around us.
Your point about music as a time capsule really resonates, especially the idea that what we listened to at different ages maps who we were becoming. I'm curious about the flip side: when you revisit an old playlist, does it feel like nostalgia or more like encountering a stranger? You mention observing others through their headphones, but I wonder whether the city itself shapes the soundtrack, or whether we mostly project our own moods onto it. That tension between private listening and public space seems central to what you're describing.
See also: https://loottoforge.org/