September's Mini-Mixtape: scintilate
Another month, another mixtape. The last couple times, there were very clear songs that had a banner theme and everything was known before I started compiling. This time around, I have songs in mind, but I won’t know how they connect till the end. How exciting.
1) “There’s an amount to take / reasons to take more.”
Sometimes, the algorithm is a suitable matchmaker. But only sometimes. This song cycled through and has since become a staple in my driving playlist. There’s something about the pain, the longing, the tension of want.
Unsurprisingly, there is a lot of want that exists in my life.
2) “But you're a feedback loop of a truth hard to undo.“
The first Ryn Weaver song I ever heard was Octahate back in 2014, shortly after graduating undergrad. It was, as the kids say a bop, and I subscribed to her YouTube channel because that’s what you do. You subscribe to channels and then nearly eleven years later, a single randomly shows up into your feed and says “hey, wake the fuck up and face yourself.”
One of my favorite sound descriptors is hypnotic, and something about this song is hypnotic, alluring, a siren song echoing. The yearning. I suppose all of this month is a not so subtle yearning.
3) “Lightning comes and lightning goes / and it’s all the same to me.”
Third Eye Blind’s Ursa Major was probably my most played album my freshman year of college. It definitely served as as my alarm music back when I had an iPod touch and a weird docking alarm clock that solely worked for this single device before I realized that I was paying a premium for a sleek device when all I needed was pure functionality and form.
Sharp Knife and Non-Dairy Creamer off that album were probably my favorites at the time, but Bonfire has become a nostalgic anthem for me, especially as I continually use the image of bottled lightning as an idealization for the creative process.
And then you couple that with the fact that this past weekend was the St. Louis Balloon Glow, and well, everything begins to take shape.
4) “Trying to find the words for / what I need to come to terms with.”
Something that has unfortunately come up a lot is that an individual does not necessarily need to be a good person to make art. There are several examples of that. Four Fists was a 2011 spin-off project between P.O.S. and Astronautalis. Both of those individuals have less than stellar track records. And you can never truly separate the art from the artists. But I think there is also a honesty in admitting that the artistry helped and we can admit that humans are complicated and that there is a possibility for change. We have to hope for the possibility of change.
5) “But I won’t be sad for the sake of it.”
I’m filing this as “Chainsmokers” song in my record, so I reserve the right to use a blink-182 song in the future as needed.
This pick is admittedly a weird one to cap the set, since my last (read: only) realationship was back in 2017/2018 and bares next to no details even remotely similar to either of the anecdotes in either verse. That said, it is also a song about not pitying oneself, and that’s useful and helpful and if nothing else, lightens the mood in a specific way.
Cover Reveal
I didn’t know the title of this mixtape till I got here, but you saw it on the subject line. But here’s the cover art I’ve come up with.
