I made a Spotify playlist, for 2019 to begin. Something that was less a statement about what I was leaving and more what laid ahead — 2018 was an unimaginably hard year in so many ways, and I just wanted to leave it there to die. (This was, for all kinds of reasons, never going to happen; parts of what made it so hard were always going to live on into 2019, and when the New Year finally did arrive, it came in like a surprise, somehow. I remember on December 31 thinking, Wait, isn’t this early?) So, I made this playlist that was, for want of a better way to put it, songs about my emotional state and being strong and starting over and and and I’m sure you can imagine the kind of thing.
Mirah’s “Energy” was the first song on it.
I love Mirah. I have done for years, but my affection for her music has only grown in recent years, and her most recent album may be one of my favorites, and this track — the last one on there — one of my favorite songs from her altogether. I love the sonic structure of it (The second half feeling like a response to the first, a defiant build from the cautious optimism of what had come before), and I love the language of it, too: “No, we can’t choose/How the day falls/How the stars lift/We can just, we can just give tenderness,” or especially, “When I’m mad and I’m burdened/And I’m feelin’ uncertain/And I just want to lay down my mind/I’ll wake up again/And a new day begin with more energy.”
It’s a song that’s a little sad, a little tired and a lot ready to keep going because things will get better. And that’s exactly what I needed to start my year. “We only know that it’s not that easy,” indeed.