For some reason, I’ve recoiled from current and pressing projects into clutter clearing activities that I’ve always meant to do but conveniently ignore… in some cases, for a good five years.  This week’s tasks:

1. Scrapbooking my Tori Amos concerts/roadtrips, thus organizing plastic bags and totes full of ticket stubs and other goodies
2. Once I got on a roll with this, scrapbooking my entire ticket stub collection (several shows are missing, probably because I keep them in a billion places, or so I’ve learned)
3. Organizing old magazine articles saved for future scrapbooking
4. Going through my storage box of CD bootlegs and cassettes(!), ripping to iTunes and then backing up in a few data discs, thus eliminating a huge space hog

Going through my Tori Amos shows was kinda fun, albeit emotionally loaded.  There are people I met on the road who are now former friends, people I loved and laughed with.  Stumbling onto pictures from days gone by was rather bittersweet.  I sat poised over my garbage bag, holding photos of someone I haven’t spoken with since 2004, and froze.  I couldn’t ditch them.  Instead, the once friend in me contacted a mutual friend, and through the wonders of the post, I’ll be mailing photos to her indirectly.  We’re not talking photos of she and I, mind you; I have photos of her now husband, from one month into their whirlwind but definitely meant to be relationship.  Sweet couple pics.  Nice casual shots.  Pictures of her cats.  I would want these things, if someone were kind enough to send them to me.

Then, I scrapbooked my theatre tickets, making light of my Spring Awakening obsession.  Again, I found photos of friend no more, and my heart twinged.  Everything is orderly and tons of garbage and scraps have been chucked (I’m a borderline hoarder at times), but I did not expect so much emotion.  I should have.

The music archiving…  that has been both intriguing and trying.  CDs burned in 1998 are chugging on my laptop drive, their cheesy picture labels making things annoying.  The replacement of cassettes has been a nightmare thus far and will continue to be:  I have concerts stretching back to 1992 on cassette and no way I know of to convert them.  But the most fascinating part of the process has been finding my old mix tapes.

The High Fidelity mixes here on the blog are hardly a first for me; since age 15 or so, I’ve been making personal mix tapes to suit my moods or life events.  Many of them were chucked long ago, given my lack of cassette player, but a few lingered and crossed my path today.

It is strange, looking at your life captured in blue ink on a white label.  It’s surreal.  And yet, not much has truly changed.  Many go-to songs remain the same; sometimes, the song’s changed but the artist is a constant.  Little snapshots of the woman I was standing in juxtaposition to who I’ve grown up to be.

I look at these lonely mixes and think, “I ought to make these iTunes playlists.”  I want to listen again, without the aggravation of space on each side screwing up my desired sequencing.  I’m pretty particular about flow – thematically, lyrically, narrative-wise.  I want to see if what I claim to have captured on the label is what’s still there for me.

Maybe I just want to go back, to when my time was more free to indulge in projects like these.

Before clicking submit and disappearing back into a world of archiving concerts traded to me from 1998, may I present two snapshots, captured around 2001-2002…  Similar, yet different.  Maybe you will see pieces of yourself.  Maybe you will share yours in return.

Anger Mix

Disposable Teens – Marilyn Manson
Just Got Wicked – Cold
Control – Poe
Got You (Where I Want You) – The Flys
Wait and Bleed – Slipknot
Suffocate – Finger Eleven
Between Angels & Insects – Papa Roach
Question Everything – 8Stops7
Dead Souls – Nine Inch Nails
Fire In The Head – The Tea Party
The Reckoning – Godhead

Sugar (live) – Tori Amos
Make Yourself – Incubus
Bullet With Butterfly Wings – Smashing Pumpkins
Change (In The House Of Flies) – Deftones
99 Ways To Die – Megadeth
Trinity Bellwoods – Treble Charger
Judith – A Perfect Circle
One Step Closer – Linkin Park
Ana’s Song (Open Fire) – Silverchair
We’re In This Together – Nine Inch Nails
Drag You Down – Finger Eleven
Sparkle and Shine – Econoline Crush

*No label, but one could safely call it “Music For Dark, Troubled Nights”*

Last Resort – Papa Roach
Bleed – Cold
Innocent – Fuel
Spark – Tori Amos
Born To Kill – Matthew Good Band
Psychopomp – The Tea Party
One Step Closer – Linkin Park
Crawling – Linkin Park
We Float – PJ Harvey
Awake and Dreaming – Finger Eleven
Clumsy – Our Lady Peace

Coma Black – Marilyn Manson
Silence – Tara Maclean
Otherside – Red Hot Chili Peppers
Dying – Hole
Pardon Me (acoustic) – Incubus
Imaginary Friend – Chantal Kreviazuk
Mayonaise – Smashing Pumpkins
Talk Show Host – Radiohead
Medication – Garbage
Leave It Alone – Moist