mp3s for my funeral.

Dirges, elegies, laments or whatever you may want to call them, these are the songs that will follow you to your grave. These will be the songs that they will play on your wake, flowing out somberly from speakers that someone brought in to add more ambience to the funeral parlor, adding more drama to your drama. These will be the songs that will play out from the tinny speakers of the hearse that will bring you to your supposed final resting place, and more often than not, they will play it from cassette players. Almost always "Hindi kita malilimutan" would be played, and the playlist of the usual crud of music that were playing even before you were born or songs you never hear anywhere except in funerals. Songs in the ever lonely minor keys, and songs made only to wring more grief out of sadness. Now, what if someone could just play the songs you were fond of when you were still alive...what if you could, before you ever expired, told the world that they play your playlist in your wake and in your funeral to remember you by instead of those songs...

I dont think I am writing this is out of morbidity or even a deathwish or a penchant for death but perhaps, I should say, insurance for the living. I am not a moviestar, a politician or even a rockstar, I don't think I am even barely popular but I'm sure there would be souls who will come to my wake and walk alongside that black hearse towards my still unoccupied grave and I will be more than thankful if the songs that will be played would be the songs they knew I liked and loved to hear. Small comfort if you're dead but a comfort still. And to those people who came it would be more okay if the last song that will play in their head when they depart from the cemetery would be a familiar tune, instead of Gary Valenciano's voice crooning "Hindi kita malilimutan".

My playlist would always include Counting Crows at the top my list along with Blind Melon. It would be a free for all from there; from Gin Blossoms to Metallica, from John Mayer to Soundgarden to Rage Against the Machine, from Eraserheads to Backdraft, to Indio I; from Daft Punk to Tom Waits. I know could go on for some more and the songs would just go on and they will continue on playing long after I have been buried and started to go soft, I guess there are just too many of them after those first two bands; perhaps I should make my playlist more definitive then. Perhaps I should start writing it down and lower it down to just 400 songs and give that list to whoever would be able on my wake and funeral. Now, wouldn't it be wonderful if they could play the songs you like on your funeral, on your last hurrah before you start turning to dust, before they start forgetting about the color of your eyes...

How about you, have a playlist running in your mind?