Subway Thoughts: Music in Motion, Life in Transit

There’s a weird kind of clarity that only happens in the subway. Maybe it’s the way you’re literally underground, disconnected from the noise of phones and Wi-Fi. Or maybe it’s the act of moving without needing to drive, steer, or speak. Either way, when I put my headphones on and zone out on the train, that’s when the music starts speaking back to me.

Subway listening is cinematic. That song you added to your playlist two weeks ago but didn’t feel yet? It hits differently when you're staring at the subway platforms fly by and your reflection looks a little more tired than usual. The subway turns every track into a score for your life. Even the most basic beats become storytelling tools.

For me, the subway is where my dual lives, music curator and real-life person, collide. In high school, I curated playlists for sports teams: adrenaline, hype, focus. Songs that literally changed game-day performance. But I also contribute to Nectars, where it’s less about hype and more about feeling. Music that unravels slowly, like a warm, synth-heavy thought spiral. On the subway, I’m not curating for anyone else. I’m curating for the moment, for me.

It reminds me that context matters. The same track that gets a basketball team amped up becomes melancholic when you’re standing in a half-empty car at 11:37 p.m. on a Tuesday. Sound doesn’t change but meaning does. And that’s what makes music so potent. It morphs with your environment. It meets you where you are.

For me, every subway ride is a mini therapy session. A silent, rhythmic processing space. Music moves through my ears, but it also moves through memory, imagination, and fear. And when I step off the train? I’m usually a little clearer on what I’m feeling, and why.

So yeah, “subway thoughts” aren’t just passing musings. They’re the lifeblood of my creative process. The secret place I go to figure out what I actually believe about sound, emotion, culture, and self. Sometimes when I am in a restaurant and I like the song that is playing I will figure out what it is so that I can listen to it again, alone, in movement, on the Subway.