Last week someone from a past life sent me a mixed CD. When I started listening to the CD I was immediately caught up in the lyrics. Trying in all desperation to get some meaning from them, beyond just being songs. The mix was varied. Archers of Loaf, Marvin Gaye, The Killers, Beck, you know; the classics of youth who grew up on postmodern sounds; but nothing appeared to be beyond the norm of what I could or would expect. It was the slow recognition that I shouldn’t bother believing the person who made the CD was partial to designing a hidden code of meaning - but after fifteen tracks it became painfully clear that I’m still a naive girl at times. Either way, the CD promoted my feelings of cabin fever and deep melancholy that have been exponentially nurtured during this Midwest glacier envy. There truly is something genuine and profound about receiving a mixed CD. Especially nowadays. Recently, there has been some buzz about the mixed tape, and mixed CD, with some books and events and with the IPOD Shuffle, you can’t help but feel that the mixed CD may never truly die. Thurston Moore of legendary Sonic Youth has been keeping my kettle burning with his most recent solo album, Trees Outside the Academy. So the backdrop of my most recent poetic frill has been fed by his notably intricate, uniquely lush melodics. So having to write to a mix CD, with all of it’s sharp contrast and unexpected heights and falls I was lifted into crafting a poem resentful of my desire for meaning. Maybe I’ve conditioned my poetry in some unconscious way to methodically feel the pulse of the music I am listening to - but maybe in order to really capture what I want to say I needed this out, this shuffle, this constant interaction with my unresolved expectations.