#24 “Romantic Fatalism“ by Sam Dennis

Music carries words and feelings that are sometimes unfound. The crash of love-letter choirs; the silence of negative space. We tend to borrow these lost emotions from music and art, and we do this in hopes to express the words and gut-punching power of passion that we are too drunk on joy and agony and life to let stumble out of our whirling minds. Sound pulsates in a spectrum of feeling, and it riddles itself in ebbing and flowing complexity. Like life. Like love.

I wanted to expand on these ideas with this playlist. I used it as an avenue for storytelling, aiming to emulate a “concept album,” exploring sounds and emotions through a beginning, middle, and end. The format imitates that of a double LP, mimicking an A, B, C, and D side. Each record clocks in at about 28 minutes, and each side is a chapter with scenes to the story. The first record’s final scene is provided by Cortex, and it's followed by record two’s C1 introduction to heartbreak by Keith Jarrett. Listen to it all, cover to cover. I hope it resonates with you. This playlist is a love story: A story of love, loss, and romantic fatalism.

Like love, Katrien De Blauwer’s work is raw with pensive intimacy and rough tenderness. I ultimately chose this collage of hers as the playlist’s image for its juxtaposition of singularity and partnership, of emptiness and fullness, of lightness and darkness; for its loveful lust for life.

Sam Dennis (@realsamdennis) is an artist from Stockton, New Jersey, currently based in Los Angeles, California. He works as a filmmaker, writer, actor, visual artist, songwriter, and composer. And, despite an uncanny physical and behavioral resemblance, he is not Ace Ventura.

Sam Recommends:

Speaking from the heart
Howling with the windows down
Rumble Fish dir. by Francis Ford Coppola
Akira dir. by Katsuhiro Otomo
Charles Bukowski 
Pablo Neruda and Chet Baker live in Belgium, 1964