Over the last few days I reconstructed Chasm, a 28-song playlist I made when my marriage ended. I had always understood it as a collection of songs that could wreck me, but going through it one track at a time with Song Why‽ made the structure clearer. Chasm wasn’t just sad music. I built it as a tool. Sometimes I knew I was devastated but couldn’t quite get to the tears, so I made myself a machine that could get me there.

The songs did different jobs. Some made me cry. Some just described the emotional weather. Some were old favorites that suddenly acquired a new autobiographical address. Some were things that had belonged so completely to my marriage that losing the marriage felt a little like losing the song too. And some were just really good songs. This remains important archival methodology: do not over-psychologize the Yacht Rock.

The playlist starts with “Don’t Speak” and ends with “Don’t Bother Me,” which is almost embarrassingly efficient storytelling. It doesn’t have a clean recovery arc. Even near the end, when Noah and the Whale’s “Blue Skies” finally offers a little hope, I immediately follow it with “Yesterday,” then “Back to Black,” and eventually close the door entirely. That is probably the most honest thing about Chasm. I wasn’t healed when I made it. I was trying to survive something that still felt enormous.

“Blue Skies” means something different to me now. When I put it on the playlist, I was telling myself that someday there would be blue skies. Not that everything was fine, or that the pain had some secret purpose, or that I should cheer up. Just that weather changes. This would not always feel like this.

And it doesn’t.

I can listen to Chasm now and still remember exactly what those songs were doing for me. Some of them can still get me. But I’m not standing in the same weather anymore. I got the blue skies Noah and the Whale were singing about. The playlist didn’t know that yet. I did eventually.