Mixed Messages
Talk of making mixed CD's came up in conversation the other night and it got me thinking about something that ties into blogging and also (though only sort of related) ties into what I think partly makes life worth living.
See; we live in this world of bullshit right? Fake Plastic Trees and all that... At least some of us draw lines in the sand using words like this. Sometimes, however, when I get to feeling a certain way, I think that beyond the *real* or the *fake* what we have are simply moments. These are both real and imagined, and evolve in the anals of our brains as we hash them up time and again to get a laugh at parties or whatever. *Moments* are very special. For me they are locators of those things I tend to think people are talking about when they speak of 'hearts' and 'souls'. Mostly, what makes a moment great between two people is that you see a naked aspect of a person. Naked honesty, naked fear, naked anger, naked joy, its as titilating as that moment of intimacy right before that last stitch of clothing falls to the ground and is equally life affirming.
I'm a junkie for these types of moments. I love people; and I love all of the shit that comes with loving people, I really do. When I think of the sheer magnitude of the chaos any given person has to sift through in a day, sharing a clear moment of truthful vulnerability becomes all the more mystical. This is also why I like mixed CD's so much...a mixed CD shared between friends or lovers captures a moment in ways that a picture just can't. I remember toiling for hours over CD's obsessing that they were just right...why? Because way back before I had the gumption to articulate what I felt about these little Magnum Opuses, I sensed that if I did my job correctly that I could capture something that was beautiful, magical, human, and most of all--fleeting. There's a reason, I feel, that things like sex get conflated with concepts like death. They are both the same in how they remind us of our ultimate, ubiquitous, and undeniable fleeting nature. The greatest moments, both good and bad, occur like a bolt of lightning and surge through the body. Infusing or draining it of what we call life. The objects we consider the most beautiful in life are equally fragile and fleeting. Butterflies, Orchids, Aurora Borealis, youth, ect... I think now of plums and how they taste the best just before they begin to rot. That's life. That's a moment. Feel it, and its gone. That's why I love mixed CD's so much. They are efforts to pay homage to great moments. And Blogs, as I see it, can do something of this nature too...blogs represent an infinite 24 hour space in which a person may record a moment or even (say, through the rather anonymous arena of the blogverse) expose themselves in a rather telling blog entry. This could create the opportunity for readers to connect in that meaningful, beautiful, and fleeting way with bloggers...a kind of human beackon amidst the chaos of the virtual universe.
Talk of making mixed CD's came up in conversation the other night and it got me thinking about something that ties into blogging and also (though only sort of related) ties into what I think partly makes life worth living.
See; we live in this world of bullshit right? Fake Plastic Trees and all that... At least some of us draw lines in the sand using words like this. Sometimes, however, when I get to feeling a certain way, I think that beyond the *real* or the *fake* what we have are simply moments. These are both real and imagined, and evolve in the anals of our brains as we hash them up time and again to get a laugh at parties or whatever. *Moments* are very special. For me they are locators of those things I tend to think people are talking about when they speak of 'hearts' and 'souls'. Mostly, what makes a moment great between two people is that you see a naked aspect of a person. Naked honesty, naked fear, naked anger, naked joy, its as titilating as that moment of intimacy right before that last stitch of clothing falls to the ground and is equally life affirming.
I'm a junkie for these types of moments. I love people; and I love all of the shit that comes with loving people, I really do. When I think of the sheer magnitude of the chaos any given person has to sift through in a day, sharing a clear moment of truthful vulnerability becomes all the more mystical. This is also why I like mixed CD's so much...a mixed CD shared between friends or lovers captures a moment in ways that a picture just can't. I remember toiling for hours over CD's obsessing that they were just right...why? Because way back before I had the gumption to articulate what I felt about these little Magnum Opuses, I sensed that if I did my job correctly that I could capture something that was beautiful, magical, human, and most of all--fleeting. There's a reason, I feel, that things like sex get conflated with concepts like death. They are both the same in how they remind us of our ultimate, ubiquitous, and undeniable fleeting nature. The greatest moments, both good and bad, occur like a bolt of lightning and surge through the body. Infusing or draining it of what we call life. The objects we consider the most beautiful in life are equally fragile and fleeting. Butterflies, Orchids, Aurora Borealis, youth, ect... I think now of plums and how they taste the best just before they begin to rot. That's life. That's a moment. Feel it, and its gone. That's why I love mixed CD's so much. They are efforts to pay homage to great moments. And Blogs, as I see it, can do something of this nature too...blogs represent an infinite 24 hour space in which a person may record a moment or even (say, through the rather anonymous arena of the blogverse) expose themselves in a rather telling blog entry. This could create the opportunity for readers to connect in that meaningful, beautiful, and fleeting way with bloggers...a kind of human beackon amidst the chaos of the virtual universe.
posted by Kevin at 12:10 a.m.
3 Comments:
What I miss more than mixed CDs is mix tapes...because you got to listen to the music while you were making it, and you had to put a lot more thought into song order--none of this drop and drag crap.
And yet, in all of this, I don't think I ever made a mix CD for you.
Want one?
-Rhi
to answer you Ben...not exactly. I like to think that digital music means (especially since this has brought file sharing) give people the chance to craft even better mixes. I think that the ease by which mixes can be made give us more time to concentrate on getting the *right* tracks...and file sharing makes that easy too...so, really these little babies can be even more meaningful as a result.
I've always loved the little clicks and shushes and trailings-out on mixed tapes. They let me imagine the person fumbling for the pause button, or getting distracted reading liner notes and forgetting to stop recording on time, or getting lost in awe-struck contemplation of my beauty, or whatever. Seriously, I really miss that when I listen to a cd someone has made me. They sound somehow less personal.
Post a Comment
<< Home