Songs From ‘The Rock’
For the past four weeks I’ve been obsessed with music. I haven’t slept much. I haven’t eaten much. Surprisingly, I haven’t drank (too) much either. Honestly, I’ve just listened to music. This recent obsession coincided with a deeply troubling existential funk that arose like a wide, black cloud as a reaction to several things: my anxiety over Bloom’s anxiety; Gourevitch’s sobbingly sad account; the 45-second flowering and apparent death of a very meaningful professional opportunity, and the inevitable cranial bruising that results from prolonged contact with a blunt object, brick wall, immovable attitude, or entrenched emotional position. Compounding and eclipsing this is concern over my own perceived diminishing health (both physically and mentally) which I attribute to the sudden acute awareness of living an utterly meaningless life in a savage and inarticulately uncaring modern world so blinded by the light from split atoms and Sex In The City reruns that it refuses to face its own insurmountable insignificance.
Perhaps predictably I have turned to music for solace, and through this funk I have listened to music virtually non-stop, craving the relative sincerity of recorded thoughts of warmth, hope, or at least depression roughly the same size and shape as my own. That these sounds of pure, ecstatic, life-affirming expression are created by machines in a studio and transmitted electronically to my auditory cavities is a wonder of love and faith that has buoyed me immeasurably as I survey the blighted landscape of possibility which seemed so wide a matter of months ago, with snow in my hair and a foreign hand in my own. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about music, contemplating the mixtape and the ‘life we have lost in living… the wisdom we have lost in knowledge.’ It makes me pine for the days when mixtapes were necessarily an art form, when the amount of time and energy necessary to make one actually meant something. Of course, not every mixtape made twenty years ago was a labor of love (we’re not all Rob Gordon, after all) but it’s beyond argument that easily transferable, arrangeable, and burnable digital audio files have taken the quality bar on mixtapes down considerably.
It was into this artistic milieu that I ventured, attempting to do something conceptual with the mixtape that I’d never done before. To showcase the sheer dexterity and endless possibilities of personal mixes, I decided to create two autonomous tapes for two young women for whom I feel very differently: One to a girl that might describe me as nothing more than a ‘deeply cared for failure’ after a brilliant crash from the heights of possibility to the inimitable struggle to remember each others birthday every year, and the other to a girl I’ve never actually met before (an odd undertaking in and of itself). The catch was that I wanted to use the same artists for both tapes to show how any style or band can be used to different affects when placed carefully in the context of a mix. But a problem arose: at what point did the quality of the mix supplant the aforementioned rules of conduct? If I found a song that was perfect for one tape and could find no suitable corollary for the other, would I sacrifice a great song for a less perfect one in order to maintain the rigidity of the rules? Would it be permissible to put the same song on both tapes? If one is attempting to show how the same artists can create different moods with different songs, how could you ignore a song universal enough to fit multiple moods? In the end I decided the mixes themselves were the proper end, and any red tape existed solely for my own creative and experimental purposes, so I settled on a compromise of two flex artists per mix with the understanding that the same song was acceptable as long as it didn’t become a front for my own infernal laziness.
It took me two weeks and more hours than I’ll ever admit, but hastened by a personal deadline of a Wednesday birthday lunch meeting (which I was promptly stood up for—stood up be an ex???), they were completed. So without further ado, I share them with you:
#1 ‘My Little Heart Attack’ For Elizabeth on her 21st birthday
01. Islands – Jogging Gorgeous Summer
02. Mountain Goats – Dance Music
03. Decemberists – Engine Driver
04. Okkervil River – Song Of Our So-Called Friend
05. Joni Mitchell – See You Sometime
06. The Streets – Dry Your Eyes
07. Jack The Original – It’s Okay
08. Elected – It Was Love
09. Elliott Smith – Someone I Used To Know
10. Deseparecidos – Man And Wife, The Latter (Damaged Goods)
11. Hidden In Plain View – Garden Statement
12. Jack’s Mannequin - Rescued
13. Rocky Votolato – Suicide Medicine
14. Rainer Maria – Terrified
15. Carissa’s Weird - Yours Truly, Ugly Valentine
16. Rilo Kiley – More Adventurous
#2 ‘Sing Me Something: The Kahlua-Fudge Brownie Mixtape’ For Kaitlin
01. Jack The Original – Sing Me Something
02. Elected – Would You Leave With Me
03. Mountain Goats – Dance Music
04. The Streets – Could Well Be In
05. Deseparecidos – Man And Wife, The Former (Financial Planning)
06. Joni Mitchell – People’s Parties
07. Okkervil River – Black Sheep Boy
08. Rocky Votolato – Portland Is Leaving
09. Jack’s Mannequin – Miss Delaney
10. Elliott Smith – No Name #1
11. Teitur – You’re The Ocean
12. Jason Robert Brown – I Could Be In Love With Someone Like You
13. Rilo Kiley – The Absence Of God
14. Hidden In Plain View – Halcyon Daze
15. Decemberists – Of Angels and Angles
16. Rainer Maria – Clear & True
Was it a success? I don’t know for sure yet. Undoubtedly I completed the tapes in roughly the way I wanted, but I think the bigger question is: where does one go from here? Do I try this again with two more people and switch it up again to test myself and the limits of expression even more? More people? The mixtape EP project? I don’t know, and this is what I love about music, and when you get right down to it, about life. The possibilities are infinite, and while that can be a crippling proposition to the psychologically fragile, it truly is the spark that makes this life worth living.
Put away the coffee spoons, Eliot, I’m feeling better today.
Adam