My playlist is a tarot deck 🔮

How to use Spotify & dance as a digital divination tool

If you’re one of the folks who follow me because I work at Medium, this is your fair warning that this is NOT a story about Medium. I contain multitudes; nice to meet you!

I am a human who dances a lot. Like, a lot a lot. My editorial career started as a scene reporter for a rave magazine in the mid-’90s, where dancing was seen as so important that the style guide made it clear that the word was to be capitalized: Dance, like God.

25 years later, that editorial decision strikes me as unbelievably twee (these days, I don’t capitalize either word).

…Then again, I have a mirror and barre in my living room. I have a daily devotional dance practice. I wake up most days and dance my prayers. I wind down some days dancing my gratitudes. I’ve taught conscious dance courses. I take Cuban Salsa classes in the evenings, and sometimes go to sober day raves in the mornings.

Dance probably does play an upper-case role in my life.

When I was teaching conscious dance, the biggest lesson I was trying to teach my students was that you could use a simple freestyle dance every morning as a mindfulness practice.

Bafflingly, one of the most common questions I would get from students was how to find good music for the morning dance.

“Oh, that’s the easiest part,” I would tell them. “As long as you’ve got a few playlists you like, you just pop one open and click shuffle — let the algorithm be your musical tarot card!”

See, I use the Spotify algorithm in the same way some people use tarot cards.

Some folks pull a card each morning, to see what perspectives the images and symbols can pull out of their subconscious.

Me? Every morning, I pull up one of my favorite playlists, press shuffle, and let the algorithm serve up a song. I dance it through and see what shows up.

I should be clear, here: while I have some out-there belief systems (panpsychism, anyone?), I don’t believe that tarot cards can predict the future. Rather, I believe that they give you a lens through which you can shift your perspectives about what’s to come.

In the same way, I don’t believe that shuffling a playlist is true digital divination. I don’t believe that the first song you hear in the morning predicts the kind of day you’re going to have.

But I do believe that what I hear in a particular song, and how that song moves through me on that particular day can give me a lens through which I experience the rest of the day.

As with any mindfulness practice, the fun is just seeing what comes up.

I can listen to the same song on different days, and dance through it in completely different ways.

A song that might strike me as empowering one morning, might strike me as incredibly sad on a different day.

A song that makes me bounce around in circles one day might be an exercise in irritation and annoyance some other time.

Regardless, the concept is the same: some folks pull a tarot card, and see what the images conjure from their minds.

Others of us pull a song, and see what the music inspires to move through our bodies.

You should totally try it.

PS: If you can’t find a good playlist, I have tons. Here’s one of my favorites for shuffling first thing in the morning:

If you want to go down the rabbit hole with more of my writing about devotional dancing, here ya go!