I’m almost hesitant to say as it feels pretentious, but Debussy’s Clair de lune from the Suite bergamasque. I listen to most genres in some capacity. I could probably narrow down to a top five or ten, including Clair de lune, but the other tracks I would struggle to place relative to each other. Cdl is the only one that stands above the others, which I can listen to literally at any time. Lang Lang did a performance in 2022 which is the closest I’ve found to a perfect recording of the piece.

There are days where I might go for a walk, stop by the river close to my house, sit on a bench on the bank, pop this on my phone and just look out on the water. I’ll watch the birds swooping around, and butterflies on the flowers nearby, the wind blowing the water’s surface, and the clouds over the trees, and just listen. It makes me think of the beauty and impermanence of life and living. Of the complexity and insignificance of our being. Of the individual and the mass. Of my own place in the world, and in spite of my resolutely nihilistic worldview, my own life’s value. Of death and its inevitability, but also its necessity.

It’s one of very few things which can inspire in me that child-like wonder we were all once so acquainted with. I once listened to it sitting alone on an outcropping overlooking Lake Tahoe. My friends were alarmed when I returned to the group wiping my eyes and waxing poetic about the concept of beauty.

I will also say the Rammstein’s Du Hast is a fucking banger.