I was totally obsessed with making mixtapes when I was younger. I'm talking hundreds of them - like to the point it was basically my art form, the mixing and remixing, the recording over and then erasing and starting all over. I'd spend hours picking songs and arranging them in these perfect sequences on these BASF cassette tapes I loved. I gave them to my girlfriend Lisa. I gave them to my brother and sister. I gave them to friends. It's possible that if you lived in North Dallas at that time, I might have given you a mix tape.
The thing about making a mixtape is, there's no way to know how long it'll take before it all clicks. Sometimes one would just flow out of me, start to finish, in the exact run time of the cassette. Most of the time, I'd fiddle with one for days, rearranging the tracklist over and over, until finally the transitions lined up. Penguin Cafe Orchestra cuts to Michael Smotherman, cuts to Nina Simone, cuts to Los Lobos, cuts to......
Creating anything worthwhile involves this odd relationship with time. You need great patience, but patience alone doesn't guarantee excellence. I had some mixes that I tinkered with for months that never quite came together. Every once in a while, a burst of energy would produce a mix that exceeded all my expectations. It's complicated.
I remember this artist retreat I went to at a magical place called Laity Lodge - an incredibly holy environment out in the Texas hill country. I'm in these small group discussions at the weekend retreat with actual artists - painters, sculptors, musicians. Total strangers coming from all walks of life. But then you put them together, and magic starts to happen. You start noticing weird connections between them.
I spent the first day really grappling with the fact I am not an artist. The retreat was in the post-cassette tape period of my life. If you love making mixtapes, you know that Spotify is sorta like the BBQ you buy at the airport. It's meat, there's slaw, the sauce is red & peppered - but it just ain't BBQ. Making a Spotify playlist is not making a mixtape. But I was hiking and listening to my Spotify playlist of my favorite songs of that year. I do that every year, a ritual that connects me to my roots and helps me see the places music showed up in that year.
I am on the hike, and I listened to two totally different songs smacked together, and it hit me. Mixtapes are my artform. Taking an obscure African folk tune I discovered on a music blog, and following it with an alt-country weeper I once heard on a Jody Denberg radio show. Styles that don't seem to match at all. But then you listen, and whoa, they work seamlessly. The human stories sort of resonate together. Those unlikely transitions from one space to another can feel magical.
It took me a long while to realize: maybe my art isn't even the cassette tapes. Maybe the tapes were just vehicles to bring people together, to create connection. I'd make these intensely personal mixes for friends based on what I thought they'd love or what they were going through. I sweated over transitioning between songs to guide listeners through a journey of feeling. But part of it was imagining someone I cared about on the other end, having their own emotional experience shaped by my song choices.
My art is broader than cassette tapes - it's the mixing itself, of songs or souls. Carefully arranging transitions that make beauty emerge from dissonance. Crafting harmony by bringing unlike elements together, whether musical or human. I am energized when I "mix" people together and discover harmony and dissonance. Mixing unexpected groups together is my art form, helping cut from dialogue to compassion to laughs to tears....to BBQ.
I do it through cassettes, and I do it through bringing people together.
....and in case you are interested, here are my fav songs of 2023
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