Mixtape woes

There's nothing I love than making a good mix. Maybe eating lost of cake and cookies, but aside of that making mixes makes me happy. I'm constantly making mixes in my head, writing notes down of potential mixes for people and etc. But some time ago I started to hate it. I felt like people didn't get it. They don't understand this dying craft of making a statement. They didn't get it and in return I hated that miscommunication they got once they listened to it (or perhaps they didn't even listen to it!) I take making them pretty serious seeing that I learned how to make my first tape when I was 12 and spend so many hours listening to my sister's mixes instead of having friends. Welcome to the hyper nation. Sure playlisting is nice, but the craft! Where it at yo!? It's crazy to know that now the image of an ipod is the image of music. 

So I decided to stop making mixes for people and start making them for me. No one appreciates it more than I do (even the friends who claim to love it-sorry I probably love it more). To end this making mixes for people business I did one more mix to end it all (for a while at least).

I made this mix-made 25 copies (CD's) of it and made individual cover art of it-handwritten and everything. Then I left them around the art building on my campus. I think after 2 or 3 hours all of them were taken. I didn't think I would get any reaction from it-though a few days later I was talking about Ted Leo to a friend and he mentioned he loved the song I put on the mix from Ted Leo and this girl who overheard flipped out and asked me if I was the one who did those mixes. That made me happy, but that what was it-no more reactions from random people and no more mixes for people. But after month I gave in, because making mixes for people is more fun than making one for yourself. Although the mix I made for myself the other day ended with me jumping and giggling for a while because the mix ended perfectly with 1 second of tape left.

Making mixes is a craft which I personally think only a few can do well. And tapes, well they are more fun to make and hard to master. Plus they are more aesthetically pleasing to look at. There are some issues with tapes though-like yesterday. I listening to probably my favorite mix ever-my tape deck, my fucking tape deck ate it! I sank into a low funk. I've only fixed one mix ever and that was many years ago. I had to carefully perform surgery on it. It's fine now, but that almost made me lose it. I've gotten a few mixes from friends but never a mixtape-so it means a lot to me.

I just don't get why: 

1. People don't make mixes anymore (especially for me-And I call bullshit to people who claim that they think I won't like it [okay, that's slightly true] and that I'm difficult).

2. Tapes are dying. If you want to make me happy put it on tape.

3. Jens Lekman rules. (Seriously, I love him and wish he would write a song about me).

Oh Jens...

All these mixes woes made me watch High Fidelity yesterday-made me want to reread the book, and reread Love Is A Mixtape (because it is!)