the_earth_is_broken raze i never made a mixed_tape for anyone, or for myself. i made a mix cd once, when i was still a teenager, barely, for one person. it had tim buckley and laura nyro and probably the replacements and i don't remember what or who else on it. there was one song i thought she would really like. it was tim live in 1968, alone for seven minutes with his acoustic twelve-string guitar, playing a song i'm pretty sure he only ever played once, singing about being lost in the logical skies of a mechanized, efficient world, asking if we were going to be the last ones, the last ones to try, spinning fear into love, grinding decades into dust. i was right about that one. it was a strange song to start a mix cd with, but it made its mark. 140114 ... raze it moved from tim straight into "pocketful of change" by rain tree crow. from applause to pipe organ and clattering drums. no pause. no breath. hurled from one quiet world into another. i remember that. i know "androgynous" was in there somewhere. and "hands to work" by the wooden stars. mary_margaret o'hara must have been in there too. but what song? "when you know why you're happy", maybe. or "you will be loved again". i can almost piece it all back together. almost, but not quite. there's too much of me missing, and i can't slouch back into who i was then when there was so little to lean on and so much to fall into. 210904 ... tender square oh, the mixtapes these hands have made! for murad, for scott, for mike, for christian, for jason, for brandon, for michael. christian told me he listened to the tape so often it wore out, and i could think of no better compliment. scott, on the other hand, coolly informed me he knew everything i put on there, and i was devastated because i’d been trying to impress him. every song selection belying a deeper meaning. the oh-so crucial transitions and the need for sonic variety and range. the artwork capturing some essence of the music itself before play was even pressed. with this process, i’m always reminded of rob gordon from “high fidelity”: “the making of a great compilation tape, like breaking up, is hard to do and takes ages longer than it might seem. you gotta kick off with a killer, to grab attention. then you got to take it up a notch, but you don’t wanna blow your wad, so then you got to cool it off a notch. there are a lot of rules.” i spent ages on the mix i made for michael before we got together, trying to convey what it was that he meant to me, even though i wrapped it in a plain piece of lined paper to diffuse how important the contents were. he never said anything about the disc at all! when i finally had the nerve to ask, he offered, “i liked the last five songs.” after we got together, i told him how that crushed me, saying “you cut me bradley, you cut me DEEP” and it’s been this ongoing joke between us ever since. seven years later, i can still remember some of the songs i chose for him: “4:15” by young rival, “some time alone, alone” by melody’s echo chamber, “up against the wall” by peter, bjorn, and john, and “like lust” by movement. 210905 what's it to you? who go blather from