Listen to “Songs” by Arto Lindsay: Spotify, Apple Music

A playlist of songs that I like might be slightly counterintuitive in the context of Dia. Imagining that playlists here have an agenda, I did one of beautiful songs instead. I stand up for the songs. It is supposed to be ravishing; sweep-off-your-feet beautiful and romantic. The order of the songs is meaningful, and their repetition is a rhetorical device. You hear things differently the second or third time—you hear more, notice more ways of hearing, find more points to hear from, don’t hear it anymore. I get hung up on one little moment in the song, some hesitation or change, and want to feel that again. Here, repetition also ties the playlist into a whole. 

I had another idea for a playlist of songs that include the word silver in their lyrics. That had more of an agenda in the equivalence of wealth and affection. The song “Street of Dreams” remains from that earlier idea. A couple of songs I included because the lyrics are so good and make me feel a certain way. This is a carryover from performing live. Lyrics, before they make the audience feel or understand anything, should make me feel something while I’m singing, so what comes across is more than the words. Then, language being a structure, the lyrics make the singer sing with a certain affect that can cross language barriers.

This was João Gilberto’s innovation in music. He synthesized samba into one beat on the guitar, reharmonized songs, allowed chord and melody to drift apart and come back together, and sang in a quiet voice with long breaths. He felt no need to add emotion in his singing because it’s all already in the song. I put one of his songs in the middle of the playlist and repeated it three times. “Maria Ninguém,” meaning Maria no-one or Mary nothing, was written by the great songwriter Carlos Lyra and is said to be Jackie Kennedy’s favorite song.

What happens to be my favorite song, Gal Costa’s “Até Quem Sabe,” is missing because of streaming rights. “I’m going to lose myself through town and drink,” she sings, and self-lacerating doesn’t seem so bad. A motif repeats at the end—a so-called vamp, something common to many songs. Until who knows, the title translates. I’ll see you around, maybe.

—As told to Matilde Guidelli-Guidi, Dia’s curator and co–department head

Poetry &: Music with Anne Carson, Robert Currie, and Arto Lindsay