mixtape vol. 1 - starts/ends/summersonward

mixtape vol. 1 - starts/ends/summers/onwards

side 1

“Crystalized” - The XX

nobody says anything so how to know not to wear headphones. wear jeans with tights under them. wear hoodies, bandannas, dollar store knit glove. just start leaving. springtime on the single speed schwinn and just keep moving, know the lake is to the east and go due that way, then due south, lines to follow back. get lost and rely on numbers. go numb at the cold spring wind off the lake. start to realize things and start to get stronger and start to enjoy it, the long loops, the time spiraling out, cold cheeked, breath in and out. the entirety of the album over and over until the sun goes down and one day, when it is warm and the time has come, start doing it every day. 

"The Lie and How We Told It" - Yo La Tengo

second shift. downtown empties at 10 and aimless on friday nights gain speed in the empty lanes and shoot out somewhere into the city. diagonals work well but make the lincoln park mistake exactly once and never again. theres so much music now: it comes from online friend mixtapes and openers and coworkers and yet here's this quiet momentum of an instrumental, the part of the ride that is there's fuck else to do. there's the third story walkup and three roommates, there's the long night stretching out, there's 80 degrees and rationing squares. no destination, just movement. gliding in and out of cabs and the crowds on milwaukee, side streets to catalog, whatever it is to parse through so far gone now, thinning memory spool.

“The Ghost of You Lingers” - Spoon

up and down elston realizing the hulking shadow is the same plucky girl visible from the train. umbrella, raining, pouring, a one time semiotic: the city approacheth. a one time companion from a summer job selling love to the lonelyhearted in lincoln park. favorite elston with instrumental love makes you feel first, all reverb stretch. one night head west and meet up again. after the day it stopped feeling like anything. get off late, the schwinn next to his fall fixie go firm-lipped and sarcastic in the midwestern wedding yard happy village, beer after beer until following him home seems okay, and maybe making him cry, and sticky and sweaty clear eyed riding back into second shift the next day. i had a nightmare that we could be put back together. shift into adult love and its end. blink and see his black sleeved arm pell mell down Augusta for years. never see him again.

mixtape tbc.

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some notes:

it’s still august! this mixtape thing has been a little exercise praxis whatever the hell it is that began to get scribbled down when it started getting warm because whether you like it or not, bikes + music is kind of 99% of my bike experience, and some memories are scratched into me like that. also: currently i’m working in the same building i began working post-college in 2009 when riding my bike in the city a lot during formative times, so today seemed a good a day as any to send this out. i will continue to. its my newsletter, i dont care.

the ask question answer is coming, don’t fret, pet. and by pet, i mean probably whomever out there may be trying to fuck with me, but guess what? a deal’s a deal.

also this is happening in a couple weeks, so, come? don’t? i can’t tell you what to do. i am bisexual and too much of my life has been bike oriented, so what will come out of that? STAY TUNED.

xoxo