Sinister: preserve your memories, they're all that's left you.

[lindsey baker]

hello sinister.

right now i am surrounded by cds, and i am again surprised that forty of 
them in one pile is still not enough to handle the delicate intricacies of 
making a mix tape.

i think i have left some home by my broken tape player, thus leaving me with 
about twenty albums with which to make an amazing compilation, one that will 
wow the listener with my well-honed capabilities to put songs together in a 
semblance of order, make things that don't have anything to do with one 
another work in such a way to make an oiled machine of the various 
glued-together parts.

i think i should have tackled a smaller, simpler project. sixty minutes of 
music is nothing and everything to me when someone else makes it. i buy it 
and listen to it, cherish the little circle of heaven and brandish it in the 
air. i make everyone else stop what they're doing, slip a little something 
in the news desk cd player, turn the volume up a bit and put my hand to my 
chest in the ultimate gesture of adoration.

i am a crazed fan.

and not only that. i think i might suck at trying to take things other 
people make for my own bit of art, ripping four-minute increments and 
attempting to re-weave a tapestry of sorts that was already perfect to begin 
with.

argh.

i would never never win the mix tape battle. i think i may only reduce the 
listener to tears. tears of shock and dismay, mind, that my skills 
are...well. yeah.

maybe it's not that bad. maybe it never is, really. but the open door to the 
top of the arts desk boom box, when combined with the open door the player's 
tape deck, looks like a transmogrified mouth, gaping. laughing.

***

sitting around today, i spotted a calendar on the arts desk for the zoo bar 
here in lincoln. they usually have blues bands of some sort there; i've been 
once to review a show. a family band. the millers.

you realize something when sitting in the crowd at a bar, watching an 
eight-year-old kid wail on the harmonica while his dad and brothers play 
back up. providing a clean dance track for the tipsy thirty-something single 
women, who saunter up to the edge of the stage and give that grade-schooler 
a show he probably shouldn't get until he's at least fourteen.

you realize loneliness drives people to strange things. for one. you also 
realize just what people are driven to on a tuesday night, a pitcher of 
drawn beer and a few friends the only salvation from mundane schedules.

the schedule for the zoo bar here has, unsurprisingly, nothing i want to see 
this month. and nothing i could see, anyway, since i am, alas, at the tender 
and terribly frustrating twenty-year mark, where nothing happens except an 
extreme teetering in the area of a chalked, coming-of-age line.

in the spirit of trying to console myself and having something to do come 
may 11, i thought i might hop on the internet to find more calendars. more 
things i don't really want to go to. here is a small list of musical acts 
thrilling the chicago area about two weeks from now. (get out your personal 
planners now!):

1. michael mcdermott, who, in the description, is hailed as a faded "MTV 
megastar"
2. scott miller and the commonwealth
3. giant step
4. neko case/pieta brown
5. thrones
6. down (who, according to that description, are "metal." YES.)

of course, bright eyes is also in that mix, but must be stated away from 
those other gems. i was hoping the "tweeter center" might have some 
interesting acts -- after all, they do have "twee" in their funny little 
name. i was very very wrong, though, because coming up at the tweeter are 
hot hot HOT acts usher, alan jackson and kid rock.

and i can't even get a little tipsy in order to get my groove on before any 
of these hit peeps, unless, of course, i smuggle a little booze in the venue 
via the belle and sebastian flask i may as well buy off of ebay in lieu of 
something else.

misslou sighs, and adds more stars.

***

tonight, on my way to the coffee house to interview kids about how cool the 
strokes are, i looked intensely for a few moments at my cigarette. i watched 
the smoke curl, the paper burn, and i tried, for a minute or two, to time 
the pace of my walk to the burn of the paper. so that maybe, without really 
inhaling, the whole cylinder could burn away by the time i got to my 
destination.

i gave up, and got rid of the thing the normal way.

there was a boy at the coffee shop. he bought a piece of cheesecake and a 
glass of milk, and i watched him cut the cake into asymmetrical sections, 
then place red coffee stirrers vertically in the geometrically pleasing 
squares and rectangles of cake. i never figured out what he was doing, but 
he looked up at one point and smiled at me, telling me he had wondered that 
day what it would be like if he had no preference for the taste of anything.

he ate the cake then, removing the red straws as he went.

he and i are both over the top, we agreed, and far too poetic for our own 
respective goods.

maybe none of us can cut something up and put it back together properly, 
save for eating the messes we make to the rhythm of a pretty song, a 
harmonica.

women dancing. bands we've never known.

growing fond of ending posts with lists of things, interconnected and 
disjointed. the assignment of meaning to nothing and everything, and filling 
all the space between with wasted time and imagined memories.

i have made the tape once. and now, upon listening to the finished product, 
i will make it again tomorrow, the way i should have made it in the first 
place.

love, l. lou

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