The Morning: A playlist to remember now, later

Music to mark the chapters of life. Plus, a "Beetlejuice" sequel and the Oasis reunion.

View in browser|nytimes.com August 31, 2024 By Melissa Kirsch Good morning. Creating a valedictory playlist can help demarcate this chapter of your life: It's a way to mark time, to keep one period of time from bleeding indistinctly into the next. María Jesús Contreras Record keeping I am putting the finishing touches on my Summer 2024 playlist. This isn't a collection of the summer's hottest hits, although Chappell Roan and Charli XCX did make it on there. It's a mix of the songs that I've been listening to this summer, regardless of when they came out — more Barack Obama than Billboard. I've been curating this playlist all summer, adding to it whenever I notice there's a song or an album that I've been listening to again and again such that it's becoming part of my life soundtrack. My Summer 2024 playlist is not meant to be listened to during the Summer of 2024. It's for the Winter of 2024, or some far-off day in 2035, when I want to evoke this period of time. This period of time when I rediscovered Genesis and became convinced that their 1983 song "That's All" might be the best song ever written. When I spent an entire month listening to only "Worth It" by Raye and "You'll Accomp'ny Me" by Bob Seger until I knew every lyric and drumbeat and guitar riff by heart. When I hear these songs in the future, they'll trigger memories from this summer. I'll be back by the lake where a duck walked right out of the water and stood by my beach chair. I'll be sitting on the screened-in porch drinking iced coffee while the rain blows in. By making a playlist of the season, I'm delineating a chapter of my life. I'm engineering a mechanism to induce nostalgia in the future. This dividing of life into chapters is something I've become more deliberate about doing as I've gotten older. I don't want one season to just bleed into the next, the days losing their distinctness, vivid experiences fading as they recede into memory. Anything that can create order out of the accumulation of life lived seems useful. Sometimes I'll just go around and take photos of my apartment so that I'll have a record of how it looked in this moment in time: the plants and the bedsheets and the clothes piled on the chair. They're not photos I want to look at now, but 20 years from now when I've forgotten about these details that are mundane but so essential to my daily life. My friend Grace has been making monthly playlists for the 10 years I've known her. She calls them her musical diary. "I don't keep a written journal, but I can look back at the playlists and remember how I was feeling at that time, what was going on in my life: a breakup, a move, a low, a high," she told me recently. This is what I want: reliable ways to conjure the feelings, the major and minor events. I feel a lot of remorse around not keeping a journal, a record of my days. I kept one as a kid, but in college, I made the error of reading those cloth-covered notebooks. It was too soon — I was so embarrassed at my young self's hopes and concerns and insights (or lack thereof) that I took the diaries and threw them in the dumpster behind my dorm. How stupid! How rash! Ever since, any effort to keep a journal has felt doomed, a stop-and-start affair that's always tinged with anger at my college self's impulsivity. I like the idea of using playlists as a journal. It's easy to do, and easy to stick with. But while I hope the songs on my playlist will evoke forgotten memories and feelings when I listen to them in the future, they're unlikely to unleash the complicated thought processes, the quickly vanishing flashes of insight, the tiny observations that you uncover only when you actually sit down and write through them. Perhaps this weekend I'll listen to my summer playlist and try writing out a companion journal entry, a sort of State of the Season that goes deeper into this moment than songs written by someone else ever could. For more How to keep a journal. Or consider a commonplace book. A log book works, too. In 2022, readers of The Morning made a big, collaborative summer playlist. THE WEEK IN CULTURE Music Liam Gallagher, left, and his brother Noel. EPA, via Shutterstock Oasis, which broke up 15 years ago, announced a tour next summer. Fans spoke to The Guardian about what the reunion means to them. (See a timeline of Liam and Noel Gallagher's sibling rivalry.) Laurie Anderson's latest album, "Amelia," traces Amelia Earhart's final flight. "It unfolds as something between a song cycle, an oratorio and a vintage radio drama," Jon Pareles writes. The brother of Joey Ramone and the widow of Johnny Ramone, each of whom controls half of the punk band's intellectual property rights, have filed lawsuits against each other. The pianist and scholar Robert Levin improvises over Mozart's work — just, he argues, as the composer himself would have done in his time. Film and TV The Venice Film Festival commenced on Wednesday, offering a first look at some of the films that may dominate awards season. That includes "Maria," a biopic of the opera diva Maria Callas, starring Angelina Jolie. The fourth season of "Only Murders in the Building," now on Hulu, knowingly deploys a number of celebrity guest stars. It can be overwhelming, Esther Zuckerman writes in her review. The gap between seasons of TV shows are getting longer, James Poniewozik writes — "The Rings of Power" took nearly two years to return, and "Severance" took three. "The Deliverance," a horror movie from "Precious" director Lee Daniels, is one of six films Times critics are talking about this week. Other Culture Stories A family accused a Miami art gallery of going to elaborate lengths to pass off forged paintings as authentic Andy Warhols. Meghan Markle has invested in Cesta Collective, which specializes in basket bags that are handwoven by a collective of women in Rwanda. "Cats: The Jellicle Ball" is a modern reimagining of Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Cats." Watch four dancers from the reinvented classic. THE LATEST NEWS Abdul Rahman Abu Al-Jidyan, a nearly 1-year-old boy, is the first person to contract polio in Gaza in 25 years. Ramadan Abed/Reuters The Israeli military and Hamas will observe brief pauses in fighting, starting Sunday, to allow 640,000 children to be vaccinated for polio, U.N. officials said. Brazil blocked the social network X after its owner, Elon Musk, refused to comply with a judge's orders to suspend certain accounts. The judge threatened steep fines for Brazilians who continued to use the site. President Volodymyr Zelensky dismissed the head of Ukraine's Air Force, days after one of the country's first F-16 fighters crashed — possibly because of friendly fire. The share of Black first-year students declined at two elite Massachusetts universities, an early hint of the effects of the Supreme Court's affirmative action ban. Patients taking the obesity drug Wegovy were less likely to die from Covid, a large clinical trial found. The result surprised and excited researchers. A driver struck and killed the N.H.L. star Johnny Gaudreau and his brother Matthew as they rode bicycles near their family home in New Jersey. Subscribe Today The Morning highlights a small portion of the journalism that The New York Times offers. To access all of it, become a subscriber with this introductory offer. CULTURE CALENDAR By Alexis Soloski 🎬 "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice" (Friday) There is nothing unusual about Hollywood disinterring past intellectual property. These days, most nationwide releases come coated in grave dust. But few mainstream movies are as wildly singular as Tim Burton's "Beetlejuice," a giddy, gothic orgy of macabre imagination and morbid practical effects. Maybe its singularity will beget a decent sequel. Burton's follow-up reunites much of the original cast — Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder, Catherine O'Hara — and adds Jenna Ortega (the star of "Wednesday") as the daughter of Ryder's indelible Lydia Deetz. If that doesn't tempt you to get your fleshbags into a theater, what will? RECIPE OF THE WEEK Bryan Gardner for The New York Times By Melissa Clark Saffron salmon kababs There's an art to grilling fish that can elude even the most seasoned home cook. How do you keep it from sticking, from overcooking, from catching on fire? Kabab it! Threading chunks of fish onto skewers makes them easy to move around the grill, and keeping the fish pieces small means they'll cook quickly and evenly. In Naz Deravian's Iranian saffron salmon kababs, a fragrant marinade imbues salmon fillets with a tangy, spicy flavor in only 30 minutes — so you don't need to plan much ahead. If you like, you can thread quick-cooking vegetables onto the skewers. Or stick to salmon chunks alone, letting their saffron-stained color shine. REAL ESTATE Chris Smith and Emily Porat in Brooklyn. Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times The Hunt: Two first-time buyers wanted a sunny place in Brooklyn with a decent kitchen and not too many stairs. Which home did they choose? Play our game. What you get for $700,000: A Queen Anne-style brick house in Columbus, Ohio; a two-bedroom condominium in Phoenix; or a 1925 Craftsman house in Oklahoma City. LIVING Doug Emhoff, left, the vice president's husband. Todd Heisler/The New York Times Domestic life: This election cycle has highlighted a subtler aspect of masculinity: husbandliness. A wide net: Some people are setting their locations on dating apps to different cities (or even countries) hoping to broaden their romantic prospects. Shopping: Labor Day "deals" are everywhere this weekend. Here are the ones Wirecutter's deals experts are actually excited about. Travel: For a rustic taste of Spain, head for the hills of La Rioja. Vocalizing: Can grunting during exercise give you an edge? ADVICE FROM WIRECUTTER Do you need a purse for your water bottle? A giant water bottle can be cumbersome and heavy. Our advice? Consider a water bottle carrier. (Yes, like the ones you may have seen all over your social media feeds.) Wirecutter experts put six of them to the test. And while most of the carriers were pretty uncomfortable to wear, I was surprised to find that a spacious, well-designed carrier can be a game changer. It lets me enjoy my walks sans achy wrists, all the while inching toward my daily hydration goals. — Elissa Sanci Wirecutter is giving away one of its favorite water bottles — and a bundle of other expert-approved picks for staying cool. (Terms and conditions apply.) GAME OF THE WEEK Notre Dame quarterback Riley Leonard hands off to Devyn Ford at practice. John Mersits/Cal Sport Media via AP Images Notre Dame vs. Texas A&M, college football: College football will be quite different this season. That's because, for the first time, the sport has a proper playoff. Twelve teams will make the postseason bracket, including at least one from a smaller conference, which means teams outside the sport's elite inner circle will have a shot at a championship. Notre Dame is a storied program, but hasn't been part of that inner circle in quite some time; its last N.C.A.A. title came in 1988. Will this year be any different? Notre Dame begins the season ranked No. 7, with an easier schedule than many other top contenders. But it faces a potential spoiler tonight in No. 20 Texas A&M, whose deep and talented defense could punish Notre Dame's inexperienced offensive line. 7:30 p.m. Eastern on ABC NOW TIME TO PLAY Here is today's Spelling Bee. Yesterday's pangram was axiomatic. Take the news quiz to see how well you followed this week's headlines. And here are today's Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku, Connections and Strands. Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times. — Melissa Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. Editor: David Leonhardt Deputy Editor: Adam B. Kushner News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti Associate Editor: Lauren Jackson News Staff: Desiree Ibekwe, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lyna Bentahar Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch Need help? Review our newsletter help page or contact us for assistance. You received this email because you signed up for the Morning newsletter from The New York Times, or as part of your New York Times account. To stop receiving The Morning, unsubscribe. To opt out of other promotional emails from The Times, including those regarding The Athletic, manage your email settings. To opt out of updates and offers sent from The Athletic, submit a request. Subscribe to The TimesGet The New York Times app Connect with us on: Change Your EmailPrivacy PolicyContact UsCalifornia Notices The New York Times Company. 620 Eighth Avenue New York, NY 10018