Open Monologue
Just because I'm making it up as I go along doesn't mean I don't know what I'm doing

See you in the operating place!

Originally uploaded by massdistraction

I’ve been distractedly finding songs that I remember from some of my mix tapes I made so many years ago. That got me thinking (and tweeting) about the linearity of mix tapes.

It’s sad to think that my kids will never know what a mix tape is. Playlists just don’t have the same linear narrative feeling.

I think the difference is all about control of the artistic process. When you create a playlist for an iPod or other media playing device/software, you create a set of content for the listener then they decide the order for the music to be played. Mix tapes provided not only the content but also the context for the music. There is a certain order that reveals something about the person making the tape – not just the music they thought of but the order it came into their mind. Sometimes a mix tape would be created out of a specific theme or idea (often an idea like “you and me babe, how about it?”. Yeah, that was a good song for those tapes). The order of the songs is critical to the artistic vision, humble though it might have been, of the tape’s creator. It can be critical that the Doctor and the Medics’ cover of ‘Spirit in the Sky‘ comes right after ‘Destroyer‘ by the Kinks. (Try it – you’ll hear what I mean).

I feel very attached to my iPod, often physically. Sometimes having iTunes crank out a random or Genius playlist suits my mood just perfectly. Sometimes, though, I miss the linear narrative of the mix tape over the hypertextual soundscape of the play list. The mix tape isn’t just a disconnected series of songs. It’s an artistic statement – my artistic statement, an expression of who I am at any given moment. I want that expression to come through clearly. Semisonic sums it up so well in ‘Singing in my Sleep‘:

Got your tape and it changed my mind
Heard your voice in between the lines
Come around from another time
Where nobody ever goes

All alone on the overpass
Wired and phoned to a heart of glass
Now I’m falling in love too fast
With you or the songs you chose

…

I’ve been living in your cassette
It’s the modern equivalent
Singing up to a Capulet
On a balcony in your mind

It’s interesting/ironic that along with the ease of remix, there has also been a loss of artistic control. Anyone can create an artistic expression based quite explicitly on the work of others. But as this has happened, the creator loses control of their work. The meaning no longer stays fixed once the work is loosed upon the world. I certainly appreciate the democratization of media creation and production, but I can’t help feel a little tinge of regret when I think that each individual artist has lost some degree of control over how their work is (re)presented. And I feel a large tinge of regret that I lost some of those mix tapes after I spent hours working to get them just right.