Rebuilding... Everything

After a few years of curating a carefully selected music catalog for my radio show and personal collection, I had about 60,000 songs in my hard drives and iPod. A lot of the music in my collection was from friends of mine or fans of David Lynch who submitted music through the David Lynch Foundation social media which I used to manage. Many of those artists ended up becoming casual acquaintances or close friends. The music itself became a huge part of my life. I was pretty certain that if I lost my music collection I would be devastated.

When I was on a decluttering kick, I downsized and gave some of my backup hard drives with all of my music to a few people who I thought would appreciate it, thinking I still had 2 backups. It turns out I didn't. Some anomaly when backing up my laptop had wiped out my main music collection. I hadn't even noticed. I still had all of it on my iPod and thought it was on the hard drive, so I didn't worry about it.

Two years ago, I was organizing my dad's memorial service, which we didn't call a memorial service. We didn't know what to call it. The Skippers aren't a traditional family by anyone's standards. Let's just say it was a party in my late dad's honor. I put together a slideshow and, of course, a long playlist which included some of his favorites: Taj Mahal, Janis Joplin, Bo Diddley, The Beatles, and Donovan (whom I was able to introduce him to once or twice at DLF events).

Everything went off without a hitch. It was emotional, but perfect in many ways. The playlist which had been running off my iPod all day was seamless.

It wasn't until a couple days later that I realized that my iPod had been completely wiped out. All 60,000 songs were gone. I didn't think it was a problem until I flew back to LA and tried to reload it that I realized my hard drive was empty too. This had been my absolute worst fear. But to be honest, when it actually happened I couldn't give a f**k, because you know... my dad had just died after a year of a rapid decline that was very traumatic for everyone involved. And his mom was in hospice at the same time as him so she followed a few weeks later. I have lost a lot of friends to overdoses and accidents over the years, but I wasn't prepared for the intensity of grief that would consume me in the coming months. Nothing else really mattered. 

I couldn't be bothered to grieve the loss of my music collection for one second. I was still in shock. After about 18 months I think I finally got around to importing the cds I held on to during my decluttering phase. These were all cds given to me for my radio show and included a lot of rare recordings of phenomenal Pacific Northwest bands and shows which I treasured. I've moved over 30 times in my life so collecting bulky items like books and vinyl has never made sense to me, but I am glad I held on to these cds.
 
Grief is a strange beast. It can swallow you whole if you're not careful. Nothing in the world lasts forever, but it's easy to get attached to the illusion that things will always continue the way they are, good or bad. And then BOOM! Sh*t changes. Again.

I'm grateful for my meditation, music, and friends who have been a constant source of relief, humor, and support during the last couple years. I turned 40 in April and was thinking I was at my wits end and couldn't handle any more grief or grief-related stress and was looking forward to entering my 40s with a lighter load. I wasn't expecting the first few months to be the most difficult yet, but have hope that this too, will change. If nothing else, I will have learned a lot and have gained a bit of compassion along the way.

Musically, THIS PLAYLIST has been my main soundtrack for late 2017, early 2018...

With some highlights from Belly Belt,  Schaffer the Darklord, Kabuto The Python, Coolzey, and Snailmate.