Mix Tape Memory

In recent months, I have been resurrecting some of my 500 or so mix tapes and revisiting them and the interesting little histories that only mix tapes can provide. It’s about the music, of course, but also about the art and the naming, and where you were in life when you made the tape.

One in particular arrested me, and I am listening to it as I write this now, on a tiny little player, in mono! Neil Young is soloing on “Like a Hurricane.”

The tape is titled Urge, Urge and Urge after a line from Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. It was compiled during October, 2003. I was 39 years old. There is no track list only my scrawl of the sentence: “Ready to pack it in.”

That is a reference to my writing career at that point in my life. I was unpublished in book format. I had endured so many rejections for my memoir of being caretaker of a wildlife refuge, that I was ready to quit. There was so much crap out there but I couldn’t cut through the crap.

Ryan Adams is now playing.

But I wasn’t ready to “pack it in” yet. I no longer recall what prompted me to create Nestucca Spit Press and publish my books and run an end run around the regional publishing industry and get my Oregon stories out. I was probably cruising Nestucca Spit in Bob Straub State Park with the dogs and it was raining plywood walls.

Star Star by the Stones rocking now….and that priceless Steve McQueen line.

But I did create NSP and it was more than an act of defiance. Defiance doesn’t last as creative inspiration for 17 years. That’s only one limited tone. For all of you out there who have supported NSP’s unique editorial mission, thank you. More to come. A collection of Christmas tales this holiday season, presuming there is one.

The Breeders are now playing.