8. Kurt Vile - “Pretty Pimpin”

This song is a beautiful amalgamation of self-love and self-loathing. I think it typifies the relationship we all have with ourselves. It’s a continuous vacillation between adoration and mockery, between finding our faults and our strengths, at once our biggest fans and critics. I mean how can you not appreciate a line like “Then Saturday came around and I said ‘who’s this stupid clown blocking the bathroom sink’, but he was sporting all my clothes - I gotta say, pretty pimpin”?

We all go through life in a constant flux, changing from one moment to the next as we evolve from an unreachable past to an equally unreachable future, all while continuously trapped within the present. We like to think of ourselves as the same individual from birth to old age, but I often look back on my past self from a year, week, day, or even hour ago and find myself asking “what the hell was I thinking?” It’s the simultaneous curse and blessing of a linear existence, perpetually moving, never the same, learning from the past and guessing at the future. We all change, or at least have the capacity to. It’s the hallmark of our existence, trapped between the vice of determinism and free will we somehow have to find the room to eke out an existence. It’s a messy and frustrating business, but ultimately freeing. We’re all progressing, and at the barest philosophical level of things all we can be sure to have is ourselves - our own brain and our own head stuffed with thoughts, doubts and opinions. Somehow we have to find a way to navigate the confusion and get comfortable within the cramped metaphysical quarters. I wish I could tell you how to do so, but then again I can’t even prove beyond a doubt to myself that you even exist.