If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. - C. S. Lewis

Desire made manifest must surely exist in another world to that of our everyday reality. For so much of our lives we fight against our desires and our passions to better fit into a society governed by reason and unspoken social rules. Perhaps our purest intentions and desires are only ever let out through art, allowing us to remove ourself from the culpability of love, lust and impossible yearnings.

The artists in this playlist explore all aspects of desire, from the cerebral to the physical, and even to the ideological and political. Revisit the depths of Leonard Cohen’s kisses and feel Bill Callahan’s hand brush against you for that one perfect night as they tell us of the role of touch and physicality within our desire. Light up like a lightbulb or an atom bomb in the tones of The Bad Seeds and never set out to pursue your physical desire without Krisma’s Black Silk Stockings.

Desire can exist in the past and perpetuate through memory as Alex Cameron explains, and can be as confusing as it is beautiful. Perhaps only in song and art can some desires ever be fulfilled, if we are facing Tom Waits’s temptation. And yet, however impossible it may seem at times, we should embrace and embody all aspects of desire within our life, for if Byron is right, “’tis very certain that the desire of life, prolongs it.”