The Art of the Cigarette: Songs to Soundtrack your Reflection
The cigarette very often represents an intimately human moment in all of us. The moment of pause. A few minutes to think and process the past, present, and future of whatever odd snippet of time we may have found ourselves in.
Soundtracking the cigarette in its various circumstances can add incredible power to it. The right song can reveal and confront the emotional context of what is going on, and keep you grounded as you navigate the experience that life is giving you.
So here are some songs I feel are perfect for that moment of smoke and reflection and the different settings/contexts I'd imagine that they'd be ideal for. Along with which cigarettes I recommend for the occasion.
Bolero on the Moon Rocks - Peter Thomas Sound Orchester
From the soundtrack of Rampatrouille Orion, the first ever West German science fiction series, this song makes you feel like a war general plotting his next assault. A sense of duty and leadership takes over you. Each drag of the cigarette symbolizes an arrow being drawn in the war room of your mind. You feel dread for what's to come, but are straight-faced and logistical with your thoughts. There is no room for doubt. The odds are against you, but your next move may just turn the tides in your favor if you can pull it off. You are weighing where to place yourself as you accept your likely fate of death.
Ideal Setting: In the war room of a naval vessel approaching a Western European beach head.
Recommended Cigarette: K-ration Chesterfields stained with the dirt of a previous battlefield.
David Lynch - The Night Bell With Lighting
The late and great David Lynch is arguably the most reputable emissary of cigarette smoking in recent times. Although lesser known for his music, his sense for the macabre still pervades through it. There's a very noir feeling to this one. Smoking the cigarette is your way of keeping grounded as you take in an environment that completely obscures your previous understanding of reality and the limits of human expression. That which only occurs at 4am surrounds you. Despite your discomfort, you stay. Your uneasiness is outmatched by your curiosity.
Ideal Setting: In the corner booth of a remote biker bar/strip club in the rural Midwest. Processing imagery of a midget that climbed out of the vagina of a pole-dancing clown. You can't see him, but you feel the presence of Michael Douglas somewhere in the room. The place reeks of underbelly sweat and colostomy bags.
Recommended Cigarette: A Pall-Mall bummed off of a sweaty circus acrobat with a third eye tattoo on his forehead that you met outside.
King Krule - Logos
London's King Krule has always had a keen eye for the depths of romantic inner turmoil. Off of 2017's The Ooz, Logos stands out as a reflective moment in which that turmoil is dissected in all of its soft-spoken self pity. This smoke break is one of immense futility. You've smoked 13 of these things today already, this 14th one hardly has an effect. You are weakened with no routine or structure to keep your thoughts at bay. The only things at your disposal are the night that you woke to and where it takes you, if you can even muster the courage to appear publicly, that is. You as you know yourself has almost completely dissolved. The one that got away is gone for good, with your identity tucked into a duffle bag of her clothes that she grabbed from your disheveled apartment. This is not a moment of accepting defeat. It is one of bathing in its daze.
Ideal Setting: Walking home from the jazz club you perform at every Wednesday night. The one sliver of structure that gets you out of bed. Your suit as unwashed as the rest of your body.
Recommended Cigarette: Your last Parliament. You can't reasonably afford another pack, but you likely will lack the discipline to not buy another.
Falling out the Sky - Armand Hammer and The Alchemist ft. Earl Sweatshirt
Armand Hammer and The Alchemist's 2021 collaboration, Haram, may just be the best rap album of this decade so far. Falling out the Sky stands out for its nostalgic, island-themed instrumental and introspective, picturesque verses offered by both Earl Sweatshirt and Billy Woods. This song places you in a state of bliss so unfamiliar and pure that it causes you to amicably look back on every fucked up trial and tribulation that you went through to reach this point. Every exhale of smoke symbolizes a fragment of the past you've overcome. Life's challenges are unending, but in this moment, they have lost their presence. A solitary tear streaks down your eye as you radiate the nirvana that you've achieved. This happiness is momentary, but that's all the more reason to revel in it.
Ideal Setting: A beachfront property in Malibu that you bought straight cash. Wealthy families with spotless minds roam the shore below you; privileged in their inability to understand what it took for you to be there, but you smile at them still.
Recommended Cigarette: A blue American Spirit crushed into a spliff of top shelf weed that your friend from Long Beach slid you from their shift at the dispensary.
Dan Reeder - Clean Elvis
Louisiana's DIY legend Dan Reeder has an innate ability to deliver you a big warm hug via his musical abilities. Clean Elvis feels as if Reeder is placing a freshly picked apple in the hands of your malnourished heart, and sharing one with it. This moment of reflection is marked by unconditional love. The ability to laugh at all of your mistakes and smile at the uncertainty of your own future. You even giggle at the fact that maybe you shouldn't really be smoking these anymore. Maybe this one will be your last, or at least act as the timestamp to the start of your own recovery. There's no use in being bitter. What happened has already passed, and you've made the choice to embrace the love you still feel, instead of neglecting it out of pride.
Ideal Setting: The acceptance stage of grief
Recommended Cigarette: The remainders of a pack of whatever was left behind by an old lover. Ideally they'd be 27s, but you'll enjoy these like they're your favorite.