Much like a lot of people, I have been working from home for the last nine months. My workspace is at one end of our dining room table and my friend sits at the other end. We cannot see one another behind our large computer monitors, but I think we have a good thing going. Our days are filled with spontaneous singing, having lengthy conversations in accents that are not our own and occasional ranting about certain aspects of our respective jobs.
Before we started working from home, my work office had a shared Spotify playlist that we could all add to and it was played over speakers on a shuffled loop for 8+ hours a day. It was a nice idea, but sometimes I would still plug my headphones in and just listen to what I wanted to for the day. Now, at home and with a friend, it feels weird to have headphones on, effectively leaving the room in silence. To combat this, we listen to music together, but it is music that has been democratically chosen by both of us. Sometimes our playlists will be themed. We’ve had days where all we listen to is Lizzo, Dolly Parton, Elton John or Springsteen. Other days, we’ve had choice jams from musicals such as West Side Story, the Producers, and our beloved Moulin Rouge. Sometimes it’s fun to belt out Ewan McGregor’s parts in Your Song and Elephant Love Medley.
This is a digression. Most of the time we listen to hastily thrown together playlists, adding tracks to the Song Queue when we think of them. We have a couple of go-to songs that we never tire of and that act as placeholders until we can decide what we want to play. I’d say our top five, in no real order are:
- It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere by Alan Jackson (ft Jimmy Buffet)
- Tired of Waking Up Tired by the Diodes
- Rip It Up by Orange Juice
- Rosanna by TOTO
- Got My Mind Set on You by George Harrison
Every time I see the cover of Cloud Nine, the George Harrison album on which the above song appears, I am filled with such joy at how charmingly shit it is. It may be my favourite album cover of all time. It feels so slapdash, just a cheesy picture of the best Beatle in front of some clouds, his guitar not even properly slung around his neck. For a long time, I’d see it and think it’d be easy to do a MS Paint version of, given that there’s not much to it. When my brain conspires against me, I find it comforting to launch my phone across the room, put on a podcast and piss around on MS Paint for hours. It’s really therapeutic. So I finally went ahead and made this. The only time I didn’t feel in a semi-meditative state while moving my mouse around to do it was when it came to the shirt, which was a complete pain in the arse. His mouth cracks me up, though, I did not do a great job there…
kirsteninneski.ca 