Artist	Song
Turin Brakes	Blue Hour
Death Cab For Cutie	All is Full of Love (Bjork cover)
Mew	The Zookeeper's Boy
Feist	Mushaboom
Sister Hazel	All For You
Jenny Lewis feat. Watson Twins, M. Ward, Ben Gibbard, Conor Oberst	Handle With Care (Traveling Wilburys cover)
Weezer	Burndt Jamb
The Dismemberment Plan	Superpowers
Charlotte Gainsbourg	The Songs That We Sing
Gomez	Woman! Man!
Manitoba	Kid You'll Move Mountains
Brookville	Golden
Erin McKeown	Cosmopolitans
Josh Rouse	Flight Attendant
Sun Kill Moon	Si Paloma
Red Hot Chili Peppers	Cabron
Pernice Brothers	My So-Called Celibate Life
Elliott Smith	Say Yes
Sean Watkins	The Sound of My Crush
The Polyphonic Spree	Soldier Girl
Fiona Apple	Paper Bag

Comment:

In order to ascertain just how little certainty there is in the world, Descartes constructed

a demon. This demon had the power to cloud the senses completely with a false reality. How,

it was asked, can one know with certainty that this demon doesn't exist and doesn't

blindfold us as we speak? How do we know that this is the real world?

If this reminds you of the Matrix - or vice-versa - then you've got the basic idea.

Descartes supposedly got out of this dilemma by asserting that God exists, that God is good,

and that a good God wouldn't allow such deception. But there were a number of flaws with

this escape to certainty. One flaw was in that third step and its implication that deception

is universally bad. Descartes pays no notice to the possibility of benevolent deception.

The Thomas Theorem: "If people define a situation as real, then it is real in its

consequences for them."

White lies are her instrument.

A neighbor shows her letters from her late husband. She steals those letters, makes copies,

and returns them unnoticed. She uses those copies along with some aging chemicals to

construct a brand new letter from a long-lost love, a letter lost in a plane crash thirty

years ago and only recently recovered.

A man with an unrequited fixation and a woman desiring to be the object of such a fixation

fail to notice each other. Through a few subtle embellishments of the truth, a perfect match

is made.

A young man's job at a fruit market is a living hell, thanks to the boss who constantly

mocks him in the public square. Suddenly, this boss's life becomes increasingly nonsensical

in tiny and increasingly frustrating ways. It's as if God Himself suspended the normal rule

of logic in his apartment. Or perhaps karma is real.

If karma is real, the white liar could use some of it right now. Tears strike the kitchen

floor because a friend betrayed her and stole the man she secretly admired. But it will all

be righted soon, for she is creating another lie in her mind. She shapes it with exquisite

detail. As it turns out, the theft was unsuccessful and he continued looking for the true

mystery woman. He's walking across the street to her apartment building. He's climbing the

stairs. He reaches her door and quietly opens it. He creeps up to the beaded curtain that

marks the entrance to the kitchen where his true love stands. He gently runs his fingers

across the curtain.

The beads move.

The beads move! In that second when she spins around to acknowledge the fruits of her mental

miracle, she marvels at her talents, at how her powers do not stop at the deception of

people, for she just told a white lie to reality and reality bought it! She dreamed up a way

to bring beauty into her drab corner of the world and it worked, and now she is united with

this other idealist, this man who is just like - oh.

It's just the cat.

Mix #57, a renovation. Made in September of 2006, inspired in part by Kierkegaard (the philosopher) and Amelie (the movie).

(EDIT: mix now uploaded. If the link's expired, or if you'd like to hear one of my other mixes, just send me a message.)

Feedback: