Order

Dick: I guess it looks as if you're reorganizing your records. What is this though? Chronological?
Rob: No...
Dick: Not alphabetical...
Rob: Nope...
Dick: What?
Rob: Autobiographical.
Dick: No fucking way.

Taking mental stock of outstanding items, chores, or to dos, happens naturally with me, on a constant basis. In spite of myself, I'm always striving toward greater standards of order and organization. Not purposely -- I don't "care" in a thoughtful way -- but rather it just happens instinctively without any real effort. Which is particularly noxious, I think, because that means that haphazardness is a skill I have to work toward, and reliability and stability are natural. So I'm always projecting an air of concern that honestly doesn't exist in me, and it seems like I'm interested in "fixing" things or making things "better" when in fact I'm not thinking about it at all. It's just happening without effort. I often worry that this call toward order has made me appear weak -- like I am investing more energy and effort than others. But, truly, it takes more effort for me to do nothing, than to do something.

So I spend a lot of time revisiting certain "messes" and cleaning them in greater detail. Like my nearly unruly music collection. This morning I started organizing and reordering a few items and what happened? I was done with that chore so quickly that I felt like I "should" do something else. So I started making a mix -- what I used to accurately refer to as a "tape" but is now called a "playlist". Blech! The very notion of that analog to digital shift makes me nauseous. Without an actual tape, the whole mix-making process loses something of the tangible effort and work that made it so fucking laborious and personal of a process.

In the past, when I sat down to make a "tape" -- I never sat. Instead it was all physical work. I was up and down, pacing around my room, playing tracks on cds on one stereo, then moving to the tape deck, recording, playing back. Listening to more tracks on a separate machine trying to pick the songs and get the order -- the flow from one track to the next -- exactly right. Making sure the song selections and transitions were on the level with the intentions of the mix (who it was for, why it was being made, what I wanted it to convey, etc.). As Rob so clearly states in High Fidelity "the making of a good compilation tape is a very subtle art. Many do's and don'ts. First of all you're using someone else's poetry to express how you feel. This is a delicate thing." And it is. You have to be careful, you have to listen to the words, to the music, to the message that is translated in subtleties of the fade from one song into the next. You have to pay attention to band names, song titles, possible innuendo and intended or unintended interpretations. Sometimes a mix is a straight-shooting monologue and other times it's a coy invitation.

Taking a note from Rob's handbook - it's a delicate thing that no amount of order can arrange neatly. But without the work of the tape making, the playlist arranging loses some of its meaning and power. After all, it's a lot easier to click and drag a track than to rewind to the right spot and rerecord. So in a certain way I'm not sure that mixes have the same reach that they once did and that is just yet one more tragic truth of modernity that makes me feel totally out of order.

All The Posts I Was Supposed to Write

I've been on a bit of a writing hiatus the past 6 months or so. I think, mainly, because I'm uncomfortable with many of my thoughts and therefore, unsure about immortalizing them in the printed word - either shared or privately. It's as if, if I don't record them, they don't exist and then I don't have to deal with how confusing they are.

So, what's so wrong with where my head's been at? Nothing. It's all normal, nearly 30, contemplating the universe, the same old bs... But I don't like questioning myself and how I went from there to here and what the next square target should be. I much prefer being in the know. Yeah, don't we all? Instead, I'm thinking about the painful, overwhelming passing of time, and that facts that...

I started college 10 years ago. I have 2 classes left and will be done with grad school. I haven't talked to my brother in at least 7 months. My sister in at least 4. I am in debt to the tune of a figure that if I typed it would make me throw up. I have lived in South Florida for 4 years and 8 months -- some of that time I was happy. I have spent the past 25 years contemplating the universe and still don't seem to have any answers. 9 years ago I lived in a house I hated, but the summer was beautiful there -- since then I have had progressively more and more intense feelings of uncertainty about the future. I have been an adult -- on my own and unsure -- for 8 full years, but I still feel like I'm 15 and that any minute, as summer sets in, I'm going to drive to Bubbling Brook, sit on the back of a car, eat ice cream and talk until curfew about love without fear.

I used to believe in such things. I really did. Now I am walled up and afraid. So much so, that I don't like writing things down.