40@40 (2016)

I spent two years in Scotland as a religious missionary, moving through cities and small towns, riding trains and buses, meeting people who welcomed me into their homes. I grew to love all of it, the countryside, the pace of life, the conversations, and the feeling of trying to adapt to something new. I changed how I spoke, what I ate, how I carried myself.

Many of the tracks on these birthday mixes are tied to that time. Scottish artists, Scottish accents, bring me back quickly. Their voices, their phrasing, the way they tell stories, it all connects to those memories, especially to the people of Drumchapel who opened their homes to me again and again.

I have fond memories of the kids complaining from the back of the car when this song would come on.

After multiple listenings it is not clear to me if she wants him to follow her or if this is a stalker situation.

"Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you." ― Joseph Heller, Catch-22

"Just because you're paranoid. Don't mean they're not after you" - Nirvana

What I love most about Sarah Blasko's "Spanish Ladies" is her clear voice and the language. The song is full of proper sailing vocabulary, words that belong to another century and another kind of life: clew-garnet, main-brace, shank painter, foreyard. A clew-garnet is simply a rope used to haul up the corner of a sail. The lyrics don't slow down to explain themselves.

I got here through a book about Washington's spy ring, which later became the series Turn: Washington's Spies. Near the end of an early episode, a smuggler slips away into the night in a small rowboat, and Sarah Blasko's voice rises through water and fog as the credits roll. I already loved a good sea shanty, and this song was familiar, but this version felt fuller.

Versions of "Spanish Ladies" surface everywhere once you start looking: Quint drunkenly singing it in Jaws (1975), which I tucked in as the hidden track on this mix; or in a favorite show of mine, The Mentalist; and sailors moving through Assassin's Creed: Black Flag.

It seems I have made it past the point where people would say I "died young". I am probably still in the "he died too young" phase of my life though.

I follow Frank Turner's tattoos more than I should. Can anyone confirm if the sailboat sinking on his right hip says "HIPWRECKED" or "SHIPWRECKED"?

"You're the shit and I'm knee-deep in it"

Top five albums of all time, Paul McCartney RAM 1971.