2022 Playlist: Raindrops, Rainbows, and Oncoming Storms

My annual playlist summing up the year .....

My sweet, sweet beloveds:

Abọru Abọye Àbósíse (Ah-boh-ruu Ah-boh-yay Ah-boh-she-shay)
“May prayers and offerings from the marketplace be raised back home.

As some of you may remember, I put together an annual playlist, that I will curate and add to throughout the year. It is my attempt to sum up the year emotionally, energetically, and to hopefully show you a good time.

After Club Q I am despondent about using logic, polemic, discourse, or any available means to convince this country, any current configuration of Christian church, or even some people in my own life, that Black, Trans or Queer people deserve to exist. To be seen. To thrive.

I am exhausted by the project of your lost humanity, and our attempts together this year to rediscover our nascent national empathy.

I have decided to listen to William James.

I will live. I will live all I can. It’s a mistake not to.

As the this American society slowly creeps back to where it was when I was teen, queer bashing and fear, I am finding a lot of wisdom in little queer teen lenny. I wrote a lot about his survival but that little queer really knew how to live. They would not really care what any church, pundit, fascist, reviewer, bishop, nazi fuck, or faceless voices in the void thought of them or how they were born.

I am finding that little lenny was mostly chasing art, dreams, sunsets, and faded highway signs. I want to get back to that.

It will take a few years with book release scheduling, but starting early 2024 I will be taking an indefinite saabatical from my career as faith leader, public speaker, writer, and I will be deactivating all my social media.

Little lenny is out there somewhere on the road and I am going to spend a few years trying to find him again, and tell him that he is safe, loved, and ok.

This years playlist tries to sum up these feelings, this tumble of sweaty, anxious, and terrifying liberation,

There have been good moments this year, pauses in the storm, gentle cool drops of grace we have had this year.

Moments of real happiness and joy. Orgasms. Dancing. Hugging someone. Delighting in found, digital, or genetic family in new arrangements that fit your world.

This year was full of magic, sorcery, ase, energy, the gates being wide open for over 2 years, transmissions from home, and finding peace in my ancestors and predecessors. I have been flush with an inner knowing that “the road to mystery” I walk is well worn, with markers, and friends returning to my life.

This year has been a year of clearing away the wreckage of what was wrought with the churches patriarchy as the only way many of us conceive the Creator.

This has been a year of preparing the throne of my heart for Sophia.

This has been a year that as you stare at the oncoming storm we will face, with just the right amount of light , you can still see a rainbow.

From the right angle.

It’s been a year.

Hope this playlist helps as you have friends, lovers, and enemies, over for a drink or a bite.

If you are on the road I hope this kills a few states, layovers, or stops.

Some quick stats and notes about this years playlist:

2020 was called Revolutionary Road now up to 8 hours after curation for two years.

2021 was called Do You Know the Way Home? It’s up to a whopping 17 hours after one year.

2022 Raindrops, Rainbows, and Oncoming Storms comes in at a modest 5 hours and 28 minutes. I have embedded it below.

Interesting to note this year: after 2 years running with several songs on both list, no Phish.

This year Black artist are again heavily represented in very particular ways, but no hip hop.

I never would have guessed that before I started.

(Since each playlist is a living thing, it may not stay that way.)

This year for the first time Dezron Douglas makes it with his new single “More Coffee Please” which makes the no Phish, or Phish related bands thing, even weirder.

Dezron is the new bassist for Trey Anastasio Band, affectionately called TAB, for a year now. Truth is Dezron is a friend, asked me to be in the video (linked above), and I like the tune’s fit in the list. I have also listened to it at least once a day for a few weeks. Jazz songs are like that, it may take you weeks to explore one.

Plus who couldn’t use new jazz coming out of Harlem?

This years list also has more short quotes from freedom fighters around the world, and here in the Empire.

Everything else I have to say is I try to say in the playlist : Enjoy.