The music or the misery

A good compilation tape, like breaking up, is hard to do and takes ages longer than it might seem.  You've got to kick off with a killer, to grab the attention.  Then you've got to take it up a notch, or cool it off a notch...oh, there are a lot of rules.

Apple is telling me that I have 5,966 songs in my iTunes library.  Considering Friday was payday, and I'm browsing the albums by artists (my default viewing experience) and already experiencing existential fears of being sonically incomplete ("I ran the gauntlet on Olivia Tremor Control albums but I only have a handful of Paul Simon tunes?  UNACCEPTABLE"), there's a 95% chance I will break 6000 tracks before Monday rolls around.  I mean, I don't even have an entire Green Day album, and Insomniac was the kind of thing I could just stick on repeat and not have to worry about skipping ahead...back in 1995.  Good lord, I'm the oldest person in the world.

Mix tapes were a forte of mine...not in the sense that I was good at them.  Nobody clamored for a tape I had concocted from a mixture of CDs I borrowed from my uncle and recording the radio (sorry, B94!).  But, they were the closest I could come to foisting a very loose sense of artistry.  I was (and I still am) very, very left-brained.  Creating original content was a chore, especially if it was to be graded or assessed...and if I had to read it out loud, or perform it?  No fucking way.  I had to pretend that I was reciting some famous person's work, so I could easily dismiss the poor pentameter or shitty collusion of thoughts that were smashed together in a single paragraph. I didn't write this.  I did not write this.  Sure, my name is at the top of this paper, but that's a coincidence.  That's some other Tim...

But making mix tapes was like being a DJ.  Someone already did at least half of the work for me, all that's left is motifs and themes and ordering.  ORDERING.  My math-centric brain drooled, and would spend far too much time with a notepad and pen, scribbling track lists, rearranging the numbers, drawing arrows.

I spent hours putting that cassette together.  To me, making a tape is like writing a letter -- there's a lot of erasing and rethinking and starting again, and I wanted it to be a good one.

Over the holidays I offered up a mix CD to whoever wanted one, and got about thirty responses.  Those dozens of people may be wondering just what happened.  Well, the blank discs are still on a bookshelf in my bedroom, on a spindle.  The iTunes playlist I was going to burn is long gone, deleted after yet another payday-fueled splurge that left me with another hundred or so songs that I would put on any mix CD, but did not want to give people six albums.  Overkill.  Or maybe the inference that I have nothing better to do with my time than drag and drop music (which has more than an ounce of truth).

But, overall, the problem was rhetorical.  If I'm making a CD for a specific person, I cultivate boundaries.  I have a finite pool of songs to choose from, seated firmly in either "stuff I know they like" and "stuff they may not have heard but I would hypothesize that they would like."  Restrictions are enforced.  I know a friend that would likely stab me in the face if I put any Decemberists songs on a mix CD I make for her.  Nobody seems to enjoy the Eagles' "Seven Bridges Road" as much as I do (and that revelation comes with the disclaimer that I am indifferent to, or loathe, just about every other Eagles song in existence).  When my audience is one person, I can create a playlist in maybe an hour.  But when my audience is everyone...

This is the second Simply Red song on this tape.  One's unforgivable.  Two's a war crime.  Can I fast-forward?

Right before we had both left for college (her before me, since RIT was scheduled in quarters and classes did not start until after Labor Day), my high school girlfriend made me a mix tape.  Most of the songs are lost in the ether, after 17 years, but I do remember an oddly high proportion of Billy Joel tunes...not even ones I would have professed to like.  "Tell Her About It"?  "You May Be Right?"  To this day I wonder if she was trying to convey some message about our relationship through 1980s soft-rock.  Her breaking up with me a few months into our freshman year did not allay this concern.  I give her credit for sticking a few show tunes in there, though.

The last CD I made was given to a person that is no longer speaking to me.  This is not something your parents tell you when you're younger.  "As you grow up, some people may resent you so strongly that you may never hear from them again."  It was pieced together quickly, leveraging her confession that her upbringing did not have a lot of music involved.  So, I made an album that I could listen to at least a few dozen times without boring myself to death.  A nice balance of obscurity, oldies, and what I would probably call "90s standards", which I guess is my specialty.

If she hasn't thrown that CD away by now, it's the only remaining connection she has to me.

That's sort of an exhilarating thought, to me...to be remembered solely by 15 songs I gave a person right before taking them out to lunch, as if we had departed and I ceased to exist.  Sort of like a funeral playlist, but without the overall themes of "this person died" or "life goes on" or whatever message you hope to convey to your mourners.  Just stuff that someone would listen to and say "this reminds me of Tim".  I realize that such a list is cart-before-the-horse-ish in nature, as by sticking some songs on here I am already creating that connection.  But, it's Sunday and I'm still in pajamas, and I can't think of a better way to pass the time.


1. Elbow - Station Approach

But coming home I feel like I designed these buildings I walked by.

2. Typhoon - Young Fathers

And it wasn't all we hoped for,

But we shake it off and we say

"Here's your yellow ribbon.

I am your consolation."

3. Ben Folds Five - Battle of Who Could Care Less

Every day, you wake up late.

Sometimes I wish I was that way.

4. R.E.M. - Untitled

All I really want to say is:

Hold her.

And keep him strong,

While I'm away from here.

5. James Taylor - Riding on a Railroad

Time to time, I tire of the life that I've been leading,
Town to town, day by day.

With all of this in mind, I'll gladly make a mix CD for anyone that requests one.  But I won't make one and then send it to thirty people.  I'll make thirty, moderately unique, and arduously assembled CDs, and send them out one at a time.  And I'll put a disproportionate amount of effort and time into something you may only hear once, but that's fine with me.  It's cathartic, and slightly more constructive than alternative ways to pass the time at night.  And, in a way, that suits me.

 Is it wrong, wanting to be at home with your record collection?  It's not like collecting records is like collecting stamps, or beermats, or antique thimbles.  There's a whole world in here, a nicer, dirtier, more violent, more peaceful, more colorful, sleazier, more dangerous, more loving world than the world I live in; there is history, and geography, and poetry, and countless other things I should have studied at school, including music.