The Philippine Online Chronicles

I’ve always believed that our appreciation of songs tends to be less about the songs themselves and more about our associations with the songs.

That is to say, we appreciate songs based on their capacity to mean something more for us than just what their words can express to us.

That is to say, I don’t love Stonefree’s “Baka Naman” because it’s a good honest lucid in-character meditation on the psychosis of a torpe making them far more sympathetic to the listener than how the Eraserheads tried doing it with pop culture charm in “Torpedo” – I love it as it reminds me of a slow bus ride up a windy mountain road when I was 17 and crushing on a girl I just couldn’t bring myself to talk to, a girl who will be leaving the next day for Canada, a girl to whom I wanted to say a lot of things, things I was then about to say for the first time.

That is to say, a song is a poem is also a moment in a life.

That is to say, to love a song is to say I did this;

it is to say, This happened to me;

it is to say, This is how I see the world;

etc.

That is to say, a mixtape is a declaration of a life as it was lived, as it is lived.

That is to say, a mixtape is a declaration of one for another.

That is to say, a mixtape is a confession.

That is to say, a mixtape is a confession of one to another.

That is to say, a mixtape is not to say This is how I love you;

it is to say, This is how I love;

it is to say This was me before you

– please forgive me.

That is to say, This is me – love me.

I’ve Got Your Letter You’ve Got My Song – A Weezer Mixtape

Side A (download zip file)

1. My Evaline
2. Buddy Holly
3. Jamie
4. Suzanne
5. The World Has Turned And Left Me Here
6. The Good Life
7. Only In Dreams

Side B (download zip file)

1. Butterfly
2. Mykel And Carli
3. Undone (the Sweater Song)
4. Pink Triangle
5. Say It Ain’t So
6. El Scorcho
7. Across The Sea

A life of easy reprieves: I had buzzcut hair; I had Clark Kent glasses; I had pimples and crooked teeth and wore my school uniform with rugged Chuck Taylor’s; I sang lead vocals and played the guitar for a band; I read comic books and scifi paperbacks; I read JD Salinger’s entire bibliography in one landlocked summer; I was fourteen going on twenty-four. Two years back I thought about killing myself, then I learned to play the guitar, then I met some girls, then I made some friends, then I met another girl, then she moved halfway-round the world. I was lonely for a while.

This Is Just A Tender Affair – A Belle & Sebastian Mixtape

Side A (download zip file)

1. Le Pastie De La Bourgeoisie
2. Lazy Line Painter Jane
3. String Bean Jean
4. Jonathan David
5. Belle & Sebastian
6. Winter Wooskie
7. This Is Just A Modern Rock Song

Side B (download zip file)

1. I’m Waking Up To Us
2. Beautiful
3. Photo Jenny
4. I Know Where The Summer Goes
5. The Loneliness Of A Middle Distance Runner
6. Marx & Engels
7. You Made Me Forget My Dreams

In college: I discover sex and love and literature, mixing and confusing the three every chance I get. I spend an evening lying on the grass and looking up at the stars; I doze a while; I wake up with my clothes wet with dew, jeeps rushing and bleating all around somewhere in the distance beyond the trees; I sit up and put on my shoes; beside me, she stirs, waking: I am wondering where you were when all of this was happening – waking up beside someone, slipping out of bed, taking a bath, putting on clothes, making breakfast, commuting to work? I was happy for a while.

But I Hold You Anyway – A Mountain Goats Mixtape

Side A (download zip file)

1. Fault Lines
2. Pure Heat
3. Pink & Blue
4. Color In Your Cheeks
5. New Britain
6. Historiography
7. Fall Of The Star Running Back

Side B (download zip file)

1. Pure Gold
2. Jenny
3. Sax Rohmer #1
4. Song For The Julian Calendar
5. The Mess Inside
6. Distant Stations
7. Palmcorder Yajna

Things are hidden. Things are lost. Things fall apart – a confession implies guilt: if there isn’t any guilt to be felt, is it still a confession?; if there isn’t any guilt, do I still need to be forgiven?

I Love You In The Morning – A Leonard Cohen Mixtape

Side A (download zip file)

1. So Long, Marianne
2. Love Calls You By Your Name
3. Bird On A Wire
4. Who By Fire
5. Famous Blue Raincoat
6. Hey, That’s No Way To Say Goodbye
7. Joan Of Arc

Side B (download zip file)

1. Suzanne
2. Sisters Of Mercy
3. Chelsea Hotel No. 2
4. Dress Rehearsal Rag
5. Story Of Isaac
6. Diamonds In The Mine
7. Sing Another Song, Boys

Things are seen. Things are found. Things are rebuilt. I am twenty-eight going on twenty-nine.

Next: Mixtape as Biography

All images by Adam David