August's Mini-Mixtape: Asymmetric ASYMPTOTE
One of the things that happens when you do something repeatedly, or perhaps something that happens when I do something repeatedly is that eventually, you/I create a structure, a framework to help you keep making the thing. This is how I ended up with my side bet that is paraluman. This is how I started doing monthly videos for the first Tuesday of the month and Matching Mixed Media for the last Tuesday. And now because it was fun last time and I’d like to keep doing it, I’m now introduce a Monthly Mini-Mixtape to my stock rotation of things. We’re gonna just say the week before Matching Mixed Media.
But there have to be rules. Rules keep the content interesting. Rules mean I have to do more. So the rules are simple. Five songs. Shared narrative theme. Quippy title. Maybe a subtitle if the spirit moves me. No repeats of bands from the last list (preferably ever, but I can’t promise that given how I listen to music). Increasing wild fake EP art.
1) “Clocks made God from the monsters in my head. Do you want to know my name? Is that all you want to take from?”
I actually got to Rainbow Kitten Surprise at the start of the month. Like quite literally, it was Friday, August 1. I wore a cute outfit.
I’m not sure it’d be entirely correct to call Rainbow Kitten Surprise the first queer band that I liked, but I discover them around the same time I discovered I was non-binary and I found out their lead singer was trans and it gave me confidence to go out into public in a skirt by myself, which is something I hemmed and hawed about in the past, so there’s that. They didn’t play this song, but it’s the line that’s been stuck in my head for a minute.
An aside: it’s really funny seeing a bunch of youth (like actually pre-teens) in the audience brought to the concert by their parents and the first song in the set list being Cocaine Jesus.
2) “Oh my God. Oh, you think I'm in control.”
I’m back on the dating apps. I don’t particularly like being on the dating apps, but enough time has passed and I know I want to known by someone, which unfortunately means that I have to be perceived by someone which means putting myself out there into a weird, weird universe.
Now, the apps are hell which does mean I am trying other things, none of which I’m going to talk about at this exact moment, but as someone who does earnestly seem to have stability, I am doing an awful lot to upend it.
3) “Tunnel vision leads me to the next decision.
Maybe I had chose these lessons at a different time.”
One of my favorite words is myopia, literally short-sightedness. It’s not a positive word by any stretch of the imagination, but at the same time, it is a word that acutely captures my default mindset.
The near attainable point. Find the solution to the problem at hand. We can sort the rest out in post. We need to get to post first.
4) “I guess I’m kind of foolish, but time can make it better.”
It is fucking wild that the only evidence of this song is this one YouTube and an off hand mention on the composer’s website. I have not seen Ode to Joy. I have no particular want to see this movie, but the song enchanted me and it’s one that I find myself coming back to during recovery.
5) “And every time I roll the dice, snake eyes never come as a surprise.”
A friend of mine who I have not talked to in a few years introduced me to the FX show, You’re the Worst. Slothrust did the opening theme for the show. That song is called 7:30AM and the signature line is “I’m going to leave you anyway.”
That’s not my particular August vibe, but I do love the vocalist’s particular vocal fry (at least that’s what I think it is), and Double Down also fits into my particular August vibe. We are taking chances. We are gambling. We are seeing what happens and accepting what devil may come. We are not going to be deterred by set backs.
I am optimistic about things to come, and that’s something. It’s more than what I had.