Thursday, February 01, 2007
Mixtapes
(12/21/06)
I love making mixtapes. And I love being given mixtapes. I used to make so many, I guess mostly, in the months before I left for Seattle:
Rock Out With Your Cock Out Mix
Calm the Fuck Down Mix
Happy Music Mix
Regina's Mix
Not So Ordinary Mornings Mix ...
Whatever.
When Chris and I first got together, actually, way before we ever got together, when we first started dating, I made him a tape.
I'd been spending some time with him a lot. I'd work at the bar and he'd wait for me to get off, and then Edgar and I would play Sinatra songs on the jukebox and Chris would help us do stuff so we could all get out and go to Katz' er something.
Sometimes we'd all go together, sometimes Chris and I would tell 'em we were going solo.
Sometimes we'd drink coffee and talk for so many hours; other times, we'd drive.
It was one of those nights when we were driving and talking that he kissed me the first time: at a stop light. I don't know why, but I always sort of liked the idea of couples kissing at stop lights.
I think it was that night we hung out for so long and I came home in this happy daze and wasn't ready to sleep yet; cause it was the opposite of not wanting to wake from a dream -- not wanting to go to sleep.
So, I stayed up and made this tape while the sunlight came and worked its way into the day and my living room.
I was methodical about it, but not. I wasn't trying to express any sort of feelings with the tapes. I was trying to pick music he may not have heard, and mixed with some he had, and mix those with a few things I thought were like the greatest shit in the world.
And in a way, with that tape, I was being myself, the same way you try to be when you are hanging out with someone in person.
I don't know how to explain it except that a few years ago or so I really started working on this idea about knowing who I am at least for that moment and trying to say what I mean and mean what I say, and try to be upfront about things like how many different types of things I read, and how many kinds of music I like, because after a few rodeos you realize that those sort of things either are important, or can be important, or can become important, depending on the persons in the situation, um, at hand.
So I sort of let this tape flow, thinking about him and not thinking about him, and then it went from that to totally just me putting on that tape what I wanted to listen to at that precise moment.
I love the progression of that tape; it's like a story. It rocks out. It moves from The JAMC to the Decemberists to Autolux to Blue Sparrow to Azure Ray to Desaparecidos to Of Montreal to the '89 Cubs to Bloc Party and back to the '89 Cubs; then somewhere in there it takes this weird, but nice transitional turn to All-Time Quarterback and Portishead and Dntel and Her Space Holiday.
I don't know, man. I liked that tape so much I wrote down the track listing and made an extra copy for me, except I felt kinda weird doing that for some reason, because mixtapes are gifts, in the same way that you're not supposed to read your own Tarot cards, so I made another copy with the exception of the Azure Ray song. I put a different one so that the tapes would be the same but slightly different, and so therefore original.
I still listen to that tape all the time. 'Cause it's a bad-ass tape. Fuckin A. Like today, I cleaned the house for my folks and I thought I could use some tunes ... there you go.
But the weird thing about mixtapes, or any music or sounds or smells or anything, I guess, is the way they access your memories like taking toys out of a box and playing with them.
Fortunately, with Chris's Mix, 'cause that's what it's called, I love the songs so much and they're so personal to me, that I can listen to it anyway -- listen to it in that, I can listen to it and not necessarily think about him.
But today I was listening to it, and I was thinking about something else too. Like the word love. Or the feeling, rather, because I don't know about you, but I am very good at remembering detailed moments when I realized I was in love, with past loves. The same way I knew in certain moments that I was loved, and the funny thing is that these moments do not coincide necessarily with the verbal use of the word love.
It's more an unspoken language in the eyes or the smile. Or it's in the air, and I don't care if that's corny, it's in the electricity of the air formed by the coupling and interaction of two distinctive personal energies colliding.
But I was thinking today even about how that moment isn't necessarily quite right either. Because the moment you realize you're in love is not the moment you are falling in love. They are two separate pieces of whatever space-time continuum this shit exists in; and I'm not sure it's bound by natural time.
The point is, I listened to that tape today, and I wasn't listening hard. I'd heard it a million times. It was just music I cleaned the house to. And I thought to myself, while I was half-listening and half-allowing it to just be background noise while half-thinking and half-cleaning, and taking smoke breaks, that I was in love with him way before I ever knew. I was in love with him when I made that tape. Deeply subconsciously, but nonetheless, I was.
So knowing that now it's amazing to me that I can listen to that tape at all.
I was in love with someone else, years before I ever met Chris, and he moved away. He made me some CDs as a parting gift, when I was moving away, which was before he moved away.
Those CDs got a lot of airplay in my discman for a little while, but I stopped listening to them somewhere along the way.
They were really great songs, and they were put together to say something. I understood the message perfectly. It was the same as the ones I've made I guess, old bands he put on there I would know, and some shit that was new to me but from bands that were either unsigned or had broken up.
Some'a the greatest songs I ever heard, on those CDs, but whenever I listen to them, I cry. I know right. Fucking emo. But seriously, I do. I've tried giving it a rest. I'll keep 'em tucked away and wait six months, and take 'em out, just wanting to hear something different, or something old, and then, first or second song, without fail, I cry.
This might be about mixtapes. This might be about being in love, or being alive long after love, or the fact that love can leave you feeling differently, in the same way that different persons can make you feel differently.
I don't know. Guess right now I'm just glad I can still listen to that tape 'cause it rules.
(12/21/06)
I love making mixtapes. And I love being given mixtapes. I used to make so many, I guess mostly, in the months before I left for Seattle:
Rock Out With Your Cock Out Mix
Calm the Fuck Down Mix
Happy Music Mix
Regina's Mix
Not So Ordinary Mornings Mix ...
Whatever.
When Chris and I first got together, actually, way before we ever got together, when we first started dating, I made him a tape.
I'd been spending some time with him a lot. I'd work at the bar and he'd wait for me to get off, and then Edgar and I would play Sinatra songs on the jukebox and Chris would help us do stuff so we could all get out and go to Katz' er something.
Sometimes we'd all go together, sometimes Chris and I would tell 'em we were going solo.
Sometimes we'd drink coffee and talk for so many hours; other times, we'd drive.
It was one of those nights when we were driving and talking that he kissed me the first time: at a stop light. I don't know why, but I always sort of liked the idea of couples kissing at stop lights.
I think it was that night we hung out for so long and I came home in this happy daze and wasn't ready to sleep yet; cause it was the opposite of not wanting to wake from a dream -- not wanting to go to sleep.
So, I stayed up and made this tape while the sunlight came and worked its way into the day and my living room.
I was methodical about it, but not. I wasn't trying to express any sort of feelings with the tapes. I was trying to pick music he may not have heard, and mixed with some he had, and mix those with a few things I thought were like the greatest shit in the world.
And in a way, with that tape, I was being myself, the same way you try to be when you are hanging out with someone in person.
I don't know how to explain it except that a few years ago or so I really started working on this idea about knowing who I am at least for that moment and trying to say what I mean and mean what I say, and try to be upfront about things like how many different types of things I read, and how many kinds of music I like, because after a few rodeos you realize that those sort of things either are important, or can be important, or can become important, depending on the persons in the situation, um, at hand.
So I sort of let this tape flow, thinking about him and not thinking about him, and then it went from that to totally just me putting on that tape what I wanted to listen to at that precise moment.
I love the progression of that tape; it's like a story. It rocks out. It moves from The JAMC to the Decemberists to Autolux to Blue Sparrow to Azure Ray to Desaparecidos to Of Montreal to the '89 Cubs to Bloc Party and back to the '89 Cubs; then somewhere in there it takes this weird, but nice transitional turn to All-Time Quarterback and Portishead and Dntel and Her Space Holiday.
I don't know, man. I liked that tape so much I wrote down the track listing and made an extra copy for me, except I felt kinda weird doing that for some reason, because mixtapes are gifts, in the same way that you're not supposed to read your own Tarot cards, so I made another copy with the exception of the Azure Ray song. I put a different one so that the tapes would be the same but slightly different, and so therefore original.
I still listen to that tape all the time. 'Cause it's a bad-ass tape. Fuckin A. Like today, I cleaned the house for my folks and I thought I could use some tunes ... there you go.
But the weird thing about mixtapes, or any music or sounds or smells or anything, I guess, is the way they access your memories like taking toys out of a box and playing with them.
Fortunately, with Chris's Mix, 'cause that's what it's called, I love the songs so much and they're so personal to me, that I can listen to it anyway -- listen to it in that, I can listen to it and not necessarily think about him.
But today I was listening to it, and I was thinking about something else too. Like the word love. Or the feeling, rather, because I don't know about you, but I am very good at remembering detailed moments when I realized I was in love, with past loves. The same way I knew in certain moments that I was loved, and the funny thing is that these moments do not coincide necessarily with the verbal use of the word love.
It's more an unspoken language in the eyes or the smile. Or it's in the air, and I don't care if that's corny, it's in the electricity of the air formed by the coupling and interaction of two distinctive personal energies colliding.
But I was thinking today even about how that moment isn't necessarily quite right either. Because the moment you realize you're in love is not the moment you are falling in love. They are two separate pieces of whatever space-time continuum this shit exists in; and I'm not sure it's bound by natural time.
The point is, I listened to that tape today, and I wasn't listening hard. I'd heard it a million times. It was just music I cleaned the house to. And I thought to myself, while I was half-listening and half-allowing it to just be background noise while half-thinking and half-cleaning, and taking smoke breaks, that I was in love with him way before I ever knew. I was in love with him when I made that tape. Deeply subconsciously, but nonetheless, I was.
So knowing that now it's amazing to me that I can listen to that tape at all.
I was in love with someone else, years before I ever met Chris, and he moved away. He made me some CDs as a parting gift, when I was moving away, which was before he moved away.
Those CDs got a lot of airplay in my discman for a little while, but I stopped listening to them somewhere along the way.
They were really great songs, and they were put together to say something. I understood the message perfectly. It was the same as the ones I've made I guess, old bands he put on there I would know, and some shit that was new to me but from bands that were either unsigned or had broken up.
Some'a the greatest songs I ever heard, on those CDs, but whenever I listen to them, I cry. I know right. Fucking emo. But seriously, I do. I've tried giving it a rest. I'll keep 'em tucked away and wait six months, and take 'em out, just wanting to hear something different, or something old, and then, first or second song, without fail, I cry.
This might be about mixtapes. This might be about being in love, or being alive long after love, or the fact that love can leave you feeling differently, in the same way that different persons can make you feel differently.
I don't know. Guess right now I'm just glad I can still listen to that tape 'cause it rules.
Labels: Breaking Up, Love, Music, Seattle, Work
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