It was memory.

Then, he took a deep breath, opened a new file, and started the lofi beats again. The Mac’s fan hummed quietly. The green and black icon glowed.

Not the fancy, silver-aluminum backup kind. A better kind. The kind that worked through a pair of Sennheiser headphones and a library of saved songs.

He closed the 2011 pop-punk song. He right-clicked the nameless playlist. Selected “Delete.”

He hadn't seen that in years. It was a corrupted import from his very first iTunes library, transferred via a dying external hard drive. He hesitated. The cursor hovered. He clicked.

The screen of the iMac glowed a soft blue in the dim light of the studio apartment. To an outsider, it looked like any other desktop: a Magic Mouse, a Magic Keyboard, and a single window open. The application icon was a simple circle of green and black waves. Spotify.

But then, his eye caught it. At the very bottom of the sidebar, buried under a folder called “Archived,” was a single playlist with a default gray icon. No name. Just a string of numbers and letters: “a7b3_export_2013.”

He minimized that window. He needed focus. He scrolled to a playlist called “CURRENT // WORK.” It was a sparse, minimalist list of lofi beats and ambient synth. He clicked on a track. The smooth, gapless playback—another Mac-only delight—flowed from the anger of 2019 to the quiet calm of 2024 without a skip.