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.

Please, please, please...

Haven't had a dream in a long time
See, the life I've had
Can make a good man bad

So for once in my life
Let me get what I want
Lord knows, it would be the first time.

In the center of the first world

It's laid out before us, who are we to break down?

Every day we wake up, we choose love, we choose light

And we try -- it's too easy just to fall apart

Love can free us from all excess, from the deepest debts

'Cause when our hearts are full we need much less...

There's nothing I can do

To keep from feeling like I blew

The only chance I had to make it better.

I love Explosions in the Sky. This song breaks my heart every time I hear it and I love that I can't explain why.

"Time to Pretend"

I hadn't gotten to MGMT's Oracular Spectacular when I wrote about the music I was listening to 2 months ago, but I recently read this description of my favorite track by them and wanted to copy it down.

What makes "Time to Pretend" so universally liked (even by cranky indie rock purists) is its dazzling wire walk between smug, smartass irony and actual lust for the kind of fucked-up celebrity lifestyle that keeps Perez Hilton in bandwidth. MGMT's perfect sound was an evolution. The duo's earlier self-produced Casio-chintzy version of the song made no secret of then-college students Ben Goldwasser and Andrew Van Wyngarden's dry disdain. But Dave Fridmann's major-label-funded take two is something out of Hieronymus Bosch, a lush pleasure garden of melodies twining like naked limbs, guitars and drums distorted into dirty, Ecstatic grooves. It's all a little unsettling-- decadence always is. But MGMT pull "Pretend" off with the kind of conviction that standing on the precipice of stardom can give you. --Amy Granzin

Pitchfork Media's notes on the track, which they rated as #99 on their list of the top 500 songs of 2000-2009.

I told a friend a while ago that "Time to Pretend" is my favorite song by MGMT, even though most people prefer "Kids" or "Electric Feel." I said that I think most people interpret it as the singers' serious desire to screw around with their lives and have a good time while they're young, but I prefer to see it as a disdainful mockery of people who do that - or a weird mix of the two. I love how absurd it is, and how it bounds between being youthfully indulgent and angsty, artfully annoyed and celebratory. A lot of that is in the contrast between the music and the lyrics. Ms. Granzin pretty much read my mind, I'm convinced. I recommend it highly.

Also, I really dig Hieronymus Bosch.

I don't know if gin was around in 15th century Netherlands, but if it was, I bet Bosch enjoyed it.

"Dance instead."

I really like watching scenes that take place at balls in period dramas.

Well, really, I just like to watch the dances. The clothes are nice. The goings-on are interesting. But the dancing--that's what really gets me.

It's so different now from what it was then. Now, going out "dancing" is basically an excuse to move suggestively and rub up against strangers. It's so sexual--so intimate--in a public sphere. I understand that there's a certain appeal to just letting yourself go, especially when it's dark--it's easy to feel like there's no one else around. In Funny Face, Audrey Hepburn is in a dark sort of beatnik cafe in Paris, dressed moodily in all black with a little flip of a pony tail, and she tells Fred Astaire, "I rather feel like expressing myself now, and I could certainly use the release!" She then proceeds to dance solo in a wild expression of pent-up emotion for about five minutes straight. It's beautiful.

When it's done tastefully, dancing is such a gorgeous form of expression. Passion and grace and taste, especially when set to song, make for something sublimely beautiful. It can be so otherworldy, so ethereal. That's one of the main reasons I enjoy musicals, both on stage and in film--that combination of mediums make for something so powerful. Though, even when dancing's not tasteful, there's something to be said for the raw, primal emotion being expressed. But I think it's even lovelier when that emotion is expressed through restraint. And period dramas that have dancing scenes that totally do that. Haha.

James McAvoy and Anne Hathaway in Becoming Jane are my favorite. They fairly exude sexual tension through sideways glances and light touches through gloved fingers. Keira Knightley and Matthew McFayden are full of resentment and intrigue in Pride and Prejudice. And Jeremy Northam and Gwyneth Paltrow show this unrealized desire for each other in Emma--he knows he wants her and thinks she doesn't want him, and she doesn't know what she wants.

It's pretty masterfully done in all three films--the music helps, and the context, but a lot of it comes purely from the way the actors gracefully and dramatically move toward and away from each other, the way they steal glimpses at each other as they turn, the way they gently clasp each other's fingers. It's subtle, but so effective.

I'm with Philip Seymour Hoffman. I like subtlety.

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Now playing: The Decemberists - The Rake's Song

"...She held herself to insanely high standards...

...She worried a lot about whether she was good enough. It was surprising to see how relieved she seemed whenever I told her how amazing she was. I wanted her to feel strong and free. She was beautiful when she was strong and free."

-- Love is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time by Rob Sheffield

Not written about me, but it might as well have been. Minus the fact that I haven't died out of the blue from a pulmonary embolism. :: Knock on wood. :: Renee, Sheffield's wife, was 31 when she died.

Well, that was morbid.

I like it when I find people who make me feel strong and free. I like it when I find people who make me feel like me. It doesn't happen very frequently. Or maybe I don't let it happen very frequently. I also like it when I find people who see me better than I can see myself. Though, that's not as hard to do these days. I'm stupid and scared and kind of end up running away from everyone in the end, anyway. I suppose I should work on that. At least I'm aware of it. Even when I'm in complete denial of something I don't want to be true, I'm usually still aware of it and am just avoiding being honest with myself. Deep down I know it's the truth. That's something I guess. Though, knowing you're acting cowardly doesn't make the fact that you're being a coward any easier to accept when that's the last thing you want to be.

Haha, that's depressing.

Morbid and depressing. Lovely. I'm a fun person, I swear. I guess, just not at 3:23 a.m., evaluating the post-Valentine's Day wreckage. Well. Just in general at this hour when I can't find the "off" switch for my incessant, overbearing, impossible-to-please brain.

Speaking of which. An old friend commented on my away message on AIM the other day when it said, "Consciousness is overrated." He told me that it was horrible and depressing and that I was basically saying I'd rather die. Which is not what I intended at all. I just meant that, when you have a lot of realities to deal with which you'd prefer to ignore, sleep is infinitely preferable to being awake. I just meant that I was running away because I couldn't turn off my brain. I just meant I was being weak. I didn't mean I was suicidal and I wasn't envisioning some macabre end of all consciousness. I meant consciousness as in being awake versus being asleep, not being alive versus being dead. I was just indulging in childishness. But I wasn't about to explain that to this kid. He never would understand, anyway. He doesn't see me clearer than I see myself, though I think he might have a long time ago. He's one of those people Andy Warhol talks about who likes me for the wrong reasons--or at least, likes me for something that I'm probably not. He wouldn't understand that, either, though.

That was depressing too. Moving on.

This song is pretty sweet. It's nothing special, really, but for some reason, the lyrics and tone just click with me. It makes me think of summertime in the city, where young people find this inexplicable euphoria in the damp darkness, where they roll through the streets like they own the world. It makes me want to gather a bunch of chill people and go to a random concert and grab a drink or two. It makes me want to do something spontaneous and embrace the irrepressible irresponsibility of youth. It makes me want to find someone passionate to love, and go on an adventure with them. Do something crazy just for the sake of being able to talk about it afterward--just once. Why not, when every other kid makes a lifestyle out of it. Really, the song is just fun. Give it a whirl.

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Now playing: We Are Scientists - After Hours

"To me, a voice without soul is not a voice worth listening to...

...I don't want to waste my time just listening to technique or gorgeous high notes. It's all great if it's there, but if it doesn't have a raw, soulful emotion behind it, it just isn't worth it."
- Matt Doyle

There are a few things that you need to know in order to understand me at all. One is that I believe in a lot of things that are difficult to verbalize because they're very ambiguous--I'm not big on absolutes. Another is that, like any remotely complex person, I'm full of contradictions. Another is that I'm very intuitive in nature--I know how I feel and what I think, but I don't always have good explanations for these feelings and thoughts. Writing is frequently how I search to express what I mean. Thank god for the backspace key. Me in a nutshell is pretty much any INFJ description you find.

Because of my ambiguity and dislike of extremes, I find myself feeling torn about a lot of things. One of these things is art. Many of my friends are intellectual and artistic snobs, in the least offensive way possible. They have higher standards for "art" than many, and don't throw the term around lightly. I'm pretty sure they'd look at a lot of modern art and wonder why it's art.

I do that too, sometimes. I think there are many works that I would concede have artistic qualities but are, on the whole, not art. And really, why is Jackson Pollock considered brilliant? I'm sure Wikipedia would tell me, but I don't think I care. What I do care about is Andy Warhol's belief that art is for everyone.

I can't decide to what extent I agree with him. On the one hand, I do believe that something need not be "high art" for a person to enjoy and appreciate it, and I don't believe that a person has to recognize that something is art or understand why they like it in order to appreciate it. I also understand that something can be technically bad, but still evoke reactions from some that high art would evoke from others. I can appreciate Warhol's notion of "corporate art" and why Pop Art is important. On the other hand, though, so much enters the mainstream that just isn't good. I just read a post on Entertainment Weekly's PopWatch blog entitled, "Lil Wayne's 'Prom Queen': Make it go away!" that has the tag, "Ouch! That was my ear!" I haven't heard it and I really don't want to, but it's the 9th most downloaded song on iTunes right now, which angers me.

I indulge in my fair share of music that is varying degrees of cheesy and dubious in quality. I'll admit it: I listen to Fall Out Boy. Yep. And when the mood hits, I listen to old-school Celine Dion. (But NOT "My Heart Will Go On.") So what? I'll be the first to admit that I don't have the ear for music that I deeply wish I had. I don't have the understanding of the theory aspects of music, I have no rhythm, and my attempts at piano and cello were technical failures when I was younger, even if my parents and teachers thought otherwise. I don't have a sophisticated ear, and I occasionally enjoy unoriginal sequences of power chords and over-processed, unexceptional voices. Or, I excuse those if I react to the sappy or silly lyrics. I'm okay with that. That used to embarrass me, but now I don't really care. I like what I like and that's that. This is an even sillier reference than my Devil Wears Prada one, but it fits--that chick flick Music & Lyrics. The musician defends himself to the doubtful lyricist, claiming that a three and a half minute pop song can do more to cheer up a person than any novel or film can do in three and a half minutes. I suppose he's right.

At the same time, though, I completely agree with the quote I opened with. "Fun" music is great. I like to sing it at the top of my lungs in the car on my way to and from school. Sometimes I'll even dance to it alone in my room. But at the same time, any music with soul is so much better. And by "soul," I mean passion--I love hearing a song and feeling instinctively that it was a product of passion, something that the singer and writer really believes in. I love Tapestry because I feel like Carole King really feels every word she sings. I love Chris Ayer because I feel like he believes in everything he writes. And The Cure's "Pictures of You" gets me every time.

There's a Pericles quote that I really like: "All things good should flow into the boulevard." They should. But of course, they don't. Not always. If we're going to go Warhol, "You don't decide what's good." And in our world you can't really dismiss the "bad", anyway--it still has a significant impact on the mainstream audience, which is huge. The good stuff's there, though. You just have to find it.

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Now playing: The Airborne Toxic Event - Sometime Around Midnight

"Pop music is tricky..."

"...because we've been trained not to expect much meaning in it. I love big melodies, but I also love songs with a strong, lasting message. The truly great songs somehow marry the two. Lennon was great at it. Marvin Gaye, Paul Westerberg, Burt Bacharach. They all wrote super catchy songs with lyrics that struck a nerve. Those songs make you want to dance but also make you think."
- Val Emmich

I used to feel guilty listening to pop music sometimes. I'd sit there listening to these terrible songs I'd heard a million times already and think, "This is ridiculous. I should be listening to something good. Something new. Something different." Yet I have to remind myself: you like what you like, and like your feelings, it's pretty much not something to be ashamed of. It's not like I'm walking around pretending BBMak is brilliant or that Jesse McCartney is comparable to Paul McCartney or something blasphemous like that. But a decent pop song is a decent pop song. Sometimes something light, shallow, sugary, and disposable suits your mood exactly.

Plus, like Val Emmich says, not all pop music is dispensable bubblegum crap. If you wanna get technical, the Beatles early stuff was pop music. John Mayer, Kelly Clarkson, Gavin DeGraw--they all put out great music, much of which definitely has a pop feel. Fall Out Boy, Dashboard--yeah, almost all their stuff sounds trite and unoriginal, like everything else they've done, but they don't pretend it's anything more than what it is. Alanis Morissette, the Goo Goo Dolls, Counting Crows, U2, Maroon 5--solid stuff. Sarah Bareilles, Anna Nalick, recent Mandy Moore, Missy Higgins, Ingrid Michaelson--kind of alternative, kind of pop, kind of folksy, even, and it's all mostly great. There are some fabulous women singer/songwriters circulating these days with strong piano or guitar-driven melodies and stronger lyrics.

I was reading a Q&A with the men of Keane today. They were discussing their new album Perfect Symmetry with EW.

EW: Much of Symmetry has an '80s feel. One fan even called it a Top Gun sound. Compliment or insult?
Tom Chaplin, vocals: Top Gun was actually the first record I ever bought, so I'm okay with that. But the funky, upbeat, flamboyant '80s vibe of Thriller may have been an indirect influence. I worshipped Michael Jackson as a kid.
Tim Rice-Oxley, keyboards: Our decision not to restrict ourselves by good taste was liberating.

It kind of goes along with the Marc Jacobs art-world-intimidation thing: when you stop thinking about what is "good" and what is "bad", and just like what you like and feel what you feel, it can work out just fine, and produce something that may not be a masterpiece, but still something meaningful.

On a side note, I love that EW doesn't put an apostrophe between the decade and the "s", and I love that they spell "worshipped" with two P's. They know what they're doin'.

On another separate note, I made a playlist of songs that just kind of hit a nerve, and I've been listening to it a lot lately, just for the hell of it. James Taylor's "Fire and Rain" is on it, Ingrid Michaelson's "Glass," Billy Joel's "This is the Time," Ryan Adams and the Cardinals' "Come Pick Me Up," Remy Zero's "Fair," Howie Day's "Standing in the Sun." Also is the Carole King song I'm listening to right now, "It's Too Late."

Every time I listen to it, I'm struck by how wonderful a song it is. She's a great songwriter in general, but this particular song--the intonation of her voice, combined with the lyrics, make for this beautiful song that starts out melancholy and doleful and ends...well, melancholy and doleful, but also more...brave. Soulful. So intense yet mellow. Gets me every time. I highly recommend it.

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Now playing: Carole King - It's Too Late

'Love is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time'

By Rob Sheffield, contributing editor at Rolling Stone magazine. It was a great book - when he was young, he married a girl he met at graduate school in the late '80s - "a real cool hell-raising Appalachian punk-rock girl" - nothing like himself, except in that they both loved music. He used the mix tapes he made as a boy and during his relationship with her to chronicle his life, his love for her, and what he went through when she suddenly passed away in the late '90s.

I loved it because it toyed with the idea of how our subconscious connects different things in our lives - like songs - to feelings or emotions we experience when we are involved with them. An object or a song or a movie or a book - none of these are merely things. They are all alive with the feelings or thoughts that we associate them with. Newsweek's movie reviewer David Ansen did something similar recently - he's been keeping a list of every movie he's ever seen since he was twelve, back in 1958 or so. He wrote an article that appeared in the magazine recently about how what he was watching at the time brings back memories for him of what he was thinking, how he was feeling at the time.

I thought a while ago about doing something similar myself - recording different associations like that. It's not just music - it's clothes, writing, smells, and so much more, too. It's both good and bad - it's comforting to have memories, but disconcerting in that it makes letting certain things go, incredibly difficult - to make myself break these associations. So many things have a history for me, and my past is never really gone - it's still with me in the little things I see and hear every day.


"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."
- Maya Angelou


On some days, it feels like it'd be nice if the crazy machine in Eternal Sunshine was real, and certain memories and connections could be erased from our beings. Or, at least, if we could have the option of locking them up and forgetting about them temporarily. Not forever or even for a long time. To be liberated from them without having to work at it, just for a day. That'd be lovely...


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Listening to: Fall Out Boy - Hum Hallelujah