Mix Tape: News Year's Eve

According to my ongoing mix tape, it's been nearly a full year since a song has truly captivated me. For the record, that's primarily what this mix tape thing is supposed to be: songs that go on repeat.

I made a New Year's Eve playlist for our party with the help of my brothers-in-law. It was a pretty nice collection of songs, commendable for being such a last-minute affair, but I would have been OK if we had just put Arcade Fire's "Afterlife" on repeat the whole night.

I'm close to saying it's the only song that captivated me all year, so it makes sense to listen to it at the year's end. And it makes for a great year-end party song; like Coldplay on that closing night in 2011, it's the song that's become the dance-the-year-away hit.

But more than that, it feels like New Year's Eve.

Another year gone. Was it a good one, one you want to celebrate? Or a bad one, one you want to forget? Most likely it was a mix of both. Most likely it left you wanting more. Because isn't life just that? A strange mix of celebrations and regrets that leave you hoping for more?

It makes you wonder why we celebrate a new year anyway. Is it to celebrate all that happened or to celebrate that it's all finally over? Aren't we just yearning for another fresh start? But the fact that we do it all over again 365 years later, doesn't that show us we're really longing for a much bigger Fresh Start?

After all the bad advice
Had nothing at all to do with life

In the end, isn't life just a lot of screaming, shouting, and working it all out? Can't year after year of the human existence be summed up in shouting, "I gotta know!"?  Because what's the point? And what's next? And will it all be worth it?

What we will be has not yet been made known.

Like most songs that captivate me, there's a melancholic regret and a tired hope mixed up in every aspect of this song. That sounds like New Year's Eve, and that sounds like life, because both are waiting for the Fresh Start. Might as well dance.

This is Arcade Fire's "Afterlife" from Reflektor