The Never-Sent Mixtape Project
In the basement, at the bottom of a box of photos and old birthday cards, is a shoebox filled with letters I’ve never sent. One can trace the chronology and geography of both my paper preferences and romantic obsessions.
Light blue-almost-white stationary and my daughter’s father. Chicago return address.Yellowy quadrille paper and various ill-advised relationships. Portland zip codes.
Brown Muji recycled writing paper. Still a favorite. Individuals all over the continental United States, intended to be mailed from Philadelphia.
Always written with Uniball pens. I deserve an endorsement deal.
So many hours, writer’s cramps, and 1st-2nd-3rd drafts. I’ve even sacrificed a few stamps. I intended to send them all. Really! While art school has made me blase about under-utilized paper, I hate the idea of wasted effort. Yet I’m a big believer in timing, whether it applies to the exact way I tell a story, when I arrive for a date, or the moment I’ll drop an envelope into the big blue mailbox around the corner. And sometimes the perfect time never seems to arrive.
And thus begins the story of the Never-Sent Mixtapes. I fell in love with a boy. He was (no, IS) funny, smart, sweet, cute and on and on. It would have only been more perfect if we owned a private jet and a wide assortment of Pendleton blankets. An amazing opportunity/exactly-what-he-needed arose. And so he left the country.
I was thousands of miles away from him, holding a bag of words I never said, just because the timing never seemed right. I worried that he would never know exactly how I felt. I decided that I wanted to make a series of mixtapes for him. I imagined that if someone sent me a series of meticulously crafted tapes, complete with aesthetically pleasing liner notes, my heart would be won forever. He would feel similarly, right? A vintage Walkman would be required, too. After all, how would he listen to them otherwise?
My friends watched the process move along:
The day I found a stereo with both input for my computer AND a cassette recorder (after weeks of scouring any thrift store in bicycle/bus-accessible radius). I walked home with the components balanced on my bike’s handlebars.
The endless procurement of vintage paper and photos.
The assortment of glue sticks, scissors, markers, and Letraset sheets that covered my couch for at least a month.
The day I sliced my hand with my X-acto knife while otherwise carefully cutting up the table of contents in an old science book.
The constant playlist revision/debate.
“I’m jealous,” one friend said.
“He better realize how lucky he is.” My best friend demands gratitude.
And soon they were finished. Well, four of them were complete. I was debating sending a fifth later. I placed them in a wooden cigar box under my desk. I wasn’t ready to send them yet.
For a few days I was mad at him. Then I thought I might be visiting. I could take them then. No, no, they should go in the mail. Oh wait, it was too close to Christmas. Now I was angry at him again. Then we weren’t speaking. Things were getting weird. And so on.
Eventually the little wooden box moved to the basement, tossed into a larger cardboard box filled with the random clothes and detritus he had left behind.
“It’s a shame,” a close friend declared sadly. “They were so lovely and loving.”
I shrugged my shoulders and mutter something dismissive and untrue like “He wouldn’t have cared anyway.”
Another friend pointed out that I should do something with them. Some day I might send them. I’ve come close. The Walkman (acquired through copious hours of ebay searching) lives in my bottom desk drawer, along with everything else I’m too sad to see regularly.
In the name of unwasted time, of making something nice out of something sad, of turning the proverbial frown upside down…I’m posting one every week, in the order they were made.
The First Tape
The liner notes were made from a map of Missouri, vellum, an arial Letraset sheet, and of course, a uniball pen. The A-B sides of the actual tape are labeled with Missouri city/town names. The image would be sharper if I had actually scanned the liner notes, but I’m saving the best view for him (when I eventually send them).
Side A (download it here)
Mirah, Plants + Animals, Beach House, Deerhunter, Nico, Little Joy, Fleetwood Mac, Devendra Banhart, White Fence, Yo La Tengo, Fruit Bats, Jim James + Calexico, The Kinks
Side B (download it here)
Atlas Sound, Woods, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, Them, Bettie Serveert, The Greenhornes, Bowerbirds, Mazzy Star, Phosphorescent, The Breeders, Viva Voce, Scout Niblett.
Sorry…you’ll have to actually download the mix to learn the track names!
To maintain track order (it’s especially important!), please create a new playlist in iTunes and then click and drag the folder to import.
Reblogged from swap meet..
January 02, 2011, 9:58pm Comments
