Artist	Song
julie doiron	la jeune amoureuse
big star	i'm in love with a girl
bjork	domestica
john lennon	oh my love (demo)
songs:ohia	being in love
bob dylan	boots of spanish leather
colin blunstone	though you are far away
cat power	sea of love
procol harum	too much between us
jayhawks	blue
karla schickele	telegram
weavers	a-walkin' and a-talkin'
sam phillips	wasting my time
wedding present	spangle
trembling blue stars	nobody but you
elvis costello	i want you
low	last night i dreamt that somebody loved me
smashing pumpkins	soothe
ben folds five	smoke
modest mouse	talking shit about a pretty sunset
brian eno	by this river
ivy	back in our town

Comment:

i've never made an overtly autobiographical mix, but most every mix i make is for a particular person, and so emotional expression is an innate factor.
i decided i could make a mix for myself as that 'particular person,' an act of closure, since my own music isn't happening these days. (skip the next paragraph if you don't want the autobiographical content-- the mix comes across as fairly archtypical, too)

*******((((i haven't talked to the girl who was my closest friend and the girl i loved in about three months. we had a really enlightening, wonderful thing for much of three years, when we could overcome geography and hiding from parents. she'd become unable to be a good friend for me starting around last august. she cheated on me, which i didn't mind that much, and then reversed the talk of the previous few months of "a future," and said she couldn't take the pressures of frequent distances and secrecy any more. even that i could understand, as i didn't relish those things, either. i couldn't, and probably never will, understand, though, the stance she had to take to achieve separation-- she had to become stone. last december, we were 'reunited' during her winter holiday. it was beautiful, and helped me in a lot of ways, insofar as it was good to know that "our love" hadn't been a romanticised fantasy. two weeks later, though, she'd found an exotic chilean spanish-poetry masters degree seeker. she came to me when she needed me, and could no longer reciporocate. i gave her a letter with an ultimatum, and told her that how she responded would tell me all i needed to know about her state and our connection. she phoned-- two weeks later, seeking absolution more than anything. i said goodbye. that brings us back to the beginning.)))

*******so i made a mix today, a last celebration and excorcism. i've been shown that i'll still love, and can be loved in return. the loss is "a shame," now, but that constriction of the chest that comes with remembering-- it's gone.

******i wrote down a list of fairly general 'stages' in the process of separation. i took a list of songs i'd already compiled-- purposefully avoiding the usual eclecticism, taking tracks i'd used in mixes made for the girl over the years-- and fitted the songs to the 'right' stages. serendipitously, this chronological approach made for exactly the sort of flow i'd seek in normal mix-making.

*******i don't usually go in for conscious ritual symbolism. but making this mix feels pretty good-- and i hope to make it to a place where i can live the last stage, final forgiveness, and share something of our lives again.


******the mix should be seen as a series of 14 stages: awakening (01); laughing (02-03); being (04-05); sailing (06); longing (07-08); straining (09-10); losing (11-12); yelling (13-14); crying (15); breaking (16); fading (17-18); forgetting (19); breathing (20-21); forgiving (22)

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