merging sounds

i sitting in a café and copying from external to internal to external again. it’s a drone like task, but it is all my fault and it’s kind of interesting. the music that we carry with us through our lives, on our hard drives, on our ipods, inside our heads are markers of who we are. they are a view into our own personal rhythms and into our past. my collection is filled with movie soundtracks, the blues, cuban, alternative and diverse singers like elvis costello, lyle lovett and chris isaak who have deep lyrics matched with deep voices.

a few weeks ago i was surfing , looking for music buy while in the US. as part of the search i entered “fat possum” and got to “the black keys”. using an internet search engine to find a new artist is fun, but it feels modern; and coldly distant. there was a time when finding new music meant acquiring new friends. i can remember back to albums and eight-tracks, but for me the finding new music was flipping through a strange CD collection and swapping discs to hear the music. if there was bonding, a tape would be made. tape making was a way to show a new friend you cared enough to share your tunes. it could also show that you cared enough to understand their tastes. i still have tapes friends made for me many years ago (mace thanks for the surf punks).

i used another element of the internet to reach out to a friend i thought would like the cool new band i had found. his response was, “yeah cram turned me onto them, he told me "dark helmet" got him hooked him on them”. shock and confusion… that one sentence touched on three friends i had made in three separate companies over the past 8 years. they are also people who lived worlds apart and who have actually all been brought together by connections directly through me. the shock was that these connections did not extend their music to me, but had resulted in them sharing an artist i was left having to search for myself.

that conversation set off the following chain of events; another IM sharing the pain of not being included in the sharing, a core dump of bits to a little black box, the bits being tossed in a bag and schlepped on a world-wind tour because the time to review, categorize, filter and copy has not bubbled to the top. i am now staring out a window on a world half a planet away and merging an entire history of a friend’s musical life with my own.

better than that, i am finding clear signs of prior dumps and merges which have happened. i can see history of multiple friends who have formed a very comprehensive and special collection of bits. the bits have now created a situation where the sum of the parts are more than the original set could ever have been. imagine taking the memories of your friends and merging them into yours. clearly having an obsessive organizer, a crazy architect, a musician and a larval-stage TLA junkie mixed into my head is an interesting proposition.

it does prompt a few thoughts though. just how much tape would it take to hand 100+ gig of music to someone on cassette? and, who is going to take the time to create the playlist we will listen to the next time we get into a pub for drinks. actually, here is an interesting thought: this group of friends has never once been physically together. we are sharing our memories and although we have worked, eaten, drank and smiled together, we spend much more time virtually connected than we do phyisically close to each other.

how am i ever going to find the time to listen to all this music? i need someone to make me a tape so i know what to focus on first.