Artist	Song
Adrian Belew	Face To Face
from Side Two (2005) 3:05
KT Tunstall	Black Horse & The Cherry Tree
from Eye To The Telescope (2004) 2:51
Sting	Desert Rose
from Brand New Day (1999) 4:49
Neil Young	Red Sun
from Silver & Gold (2000) 2:47
Björk	Who Is It
from Medúlla (2004) 3:59
Bob Dylan	In The Summertime
from Shot Of Love (1981) 3:36
They Might Be Giants	Careful What You Pack
from The Else (2007) 2:42
Cassandra Wilson	Waters Of March
from Belly Of The Sun (2002) 4:28
David Bowie	The Man Who Sold The World
from The Man Who Sold The World (1970) 4:00
Joni Mitchell	Sweet Bird
from The Hissing Of Summer Lawns (1975) 4:10
The Beatles	In My Life
from Rubber Soul (1965) 2:26
Robert Fripp	Love Cannot Bear
from Love Cannot Bear (2005) 8:43
Elvis Costello & Allen Toussaint	The Sharpest Thorn
from The River In Reverse (2006) 4:19
Emmylou Harris	Hour Of Gold
from Red Dirt Girl (2000) 5:03

Comment:

... Or TINGAHIOC, for short. Actually, the real quote (from Zen teacher Joshu Sasaki, as quoted in Brad Warner's book Zen Wrapped in Karma Dipped in Chocolate) seems to be "There is no God, and he is *your* creator", but I'd misremembered it for so long, and idealized this unfinished mix for so long, that it'd be pretty sacrilegious (heh) to go back now.

Yup: this is one of those mixes that I worked on many years ago -- in this case, all the way back in 2009 -- and then abandoned, only to finally return to and, just now, complete. I even, in the interim, wrote a blog entry (at http://abangaku.livejournal.com/76199.html) talking about it, calling it "a collection of songs -- not a mix CD exactly, since after all the mixing was never completed to my satisfaction". Well, now I do believe can cross that off my list...! So what, after all this time, do we have here?

... Well, other than a collection of downright awesome songs? Hmm. Warner writes: "Buddha is not a supernatural being. We don't worship him. ... But that doesn't mean Buddhists reject the existence of God. Different Buddhists express it in different ways." Yes, the God of "There Is No God, And He Is Our Creator" is a subtle God, a disguised God. But, if you look closely enough at KT Tunstall's "big black horse", Joni Mitchell's "sweet bird", Robert Fripp's "music", or, heck, even Cassandra Wilson's "it"... well, you just might find a surprise waiting!

The million-dollar question being, then: Are these songs' fluttering and tangential encounters with the divine just what makes them, in fact, so awesome? Well, maybe I can answer in a more precise way: I think it's indeed something to do with their *double vision* that makes me return to them again and again. Not that I'm even a religious person, but -- you know, that just might be what appeals to me here, actually, as someone who flutters all over the place myself. Is the "you" God in "Face To Face" or "In The Summertime"? Is the "she" in "Careful What You Pack" traveling to the afterlife? Just who *is* it that never lets you down...? Well: if the answers were explicit... they'd be that much less intriguing.

Why is the SubCategory here "Romantic"? Well -- and here the theme gets really thick -- it's because if the ambiguously divine entity referenced in these songs isn't an actual supernatural being, I'd say, a *lover* generally becomes the most satisfactory replacement. "Sweet desert flower," sings Sting, "this rare perfume is the sweet intoxication of the Fall." What could be more earthy, and yet more celestial, than that?

TT: 56:59.

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