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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
One in particular arrested me, and I am\nlistening to it as I write this now, on a tiny little player, in\nmono! Neil Young is soloing on \u201cLike a Hurricane.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The tape is titled Urge, Urge and\nUrge<\/em> after a line from Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass<\/em>. It\nwas compiled during October, 2003. I was 39 years old. There is no\ntrack list only my scrawl of the sentence: \u201cReady to pack it in.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n That is a reference to my writing\ncareer at that point in my life. I was unpublished in book format. I\nhad endured so many rejections for my memoir of being caretaker of a\nwildlife refuge, that I was ready to quit. There was so much crap out\nthere but I couldn’t cut through the crap. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ryan Adams is now playing. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n But I wasn’t ready to \u201cpack it in\u201d\nyet. I no longer recall what prompted me to create Nestucca Spit\nPress and publish my books and run an end run around the regional\npublishing industry and get my Oregon stories out. I was probably\ncruising Nestucca Spit in Bob Straub State Park with the dogs and it\nwas raining plywood walls. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n Star Star<\/em> by the Stones rocking\nnow….and that priceless Steve McQueen line. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n But I did create NSP and it was more\nthan an act of defiance. Defiance doesn’t last as creative\ninspiration for 17 years. That’s only one limited tone. For all of\nyou out there who have supported NSP’s unique editorial mission,\nthank you. More to come. A collection of Christmas tales this holiday\nseason, presuming there is one. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Breeders are now playing. \n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6018,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[6,993,9],"class_list":["post-6017","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meditations","tag-matt-love","tag-mix-tapes","tag-nestucca-spit-press","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6017","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6017"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6017\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6020,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6017\/revisions\/6020"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}