mix tapes.

It's something I keep coming back to: making mixes. I make new playlists in iTunes for myself all the time. But I love making them for other people much more. I love the challenge of assembling 80 minutes' worth of music for a given person.

Some people like to make mixes based on their own personal preferences. I like to make mixes based on what I think the other person will like most. I like combining songs and artists I know they like already, with other stuff they might never have listened to before. I like picking a mood or a tone - or a few - and trying to coherently structure the mix accordingly. Should I use fast songs? Slow ones? Sad ones? Happy ones? Dance music? Chill music? Everything?

I've made several this year, and I've received mostly positive feedback. This makes me happy. The way I see it, making someone a mix that they enjoy overall means that I know them well enough to recognize what music they would like. And then, listening to that particular mix will evoke that person as I listen. Not any one track, but that specific arrangement of songs will remind me of them. I like that. I like knowing that when I'm 3500 miles from here, I can listen to these sets of songs and still feel close to my friends. I hope my mixes make my friends think of me the way they make me think of them. It's a gift.

Things on my mind:

- Typography.

- Narcissism.

- The Italian Renaissance.

- Manipulation in all its forms.
--- Manipulation through images.
--- Manipulation through the semblance of love.

- The relevance of geography in relationships.

- Talking. Speech habits. Language.
--- Anna Deavere Smith.

- Robot Unicorn Attack.

- Songs stuck in my head this week:
--- "Home" - Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros.
--- "Black Hole" - The Silent Years.
--- "Dog Days Are Over" - Florence + the Machine.
--- "Superfast Jellyfish" - Gorillaz.
--- "Stillness is the Move" - Dirty Projectors.
--- "Jesus, Etc." - Wilco.

- Marina Abramović and performance art.

- Passive and active forms of running away.

- From Jenny Lewis: "I'm fraudulent, a thief at best - a coward who paints a bullshit canvas."

- My seminar paper, my honors project, my absurdism paper, and my Met facade paper.

chemical reactions.

I have never liked the smell of coffee, let alone the taste.

Tea is supposed to give you a much steadier caffeine high. I don't drink either.

Sometimes we don't need external stimulants to wire and fry our nerves to the max. We can trigger it ourselves.

This is also known as "masochism."

Self-inflicted mental and emotional wrenching.

Learning which thoughts pause your blood flow while twisting your stomach into endless Gordian knots.

Learning what will chop the knot in two.

Living with two rocks in your abdomen.

I need a Diet Coke.

I liked irony before I knew it was hip to be ironic.

Does that make me even hipper?

The harsh truth of this plagues me at times.

"I'm aware of how self-involved wanting to give can be… I wanted [Catherine Keener’s] character [in Please Give] to express that and to do ridiculous things, to show that wanting to give doesn’t make you graceful and doesn’t redeem you."

- nicole holofcener

Growing up is strange.

I don't like it.

Things are becoming too real, too fast. I'm not ready.

I get way too attached to fictional characters.