"Every reassurance just magnifies the doubt/ Better find yourself a place to level out..."
I just bought a plane ticket to Indiana for next week. I'm actually going. I'm actually a little nervous. All I know about Indianapolis is a lot of various and opposing opinions from the close friend I'm staying with out there, a handful of pitying words from others, and this place, which may prove to be a good place to crash at day's end, if they actually let me in. Oh, and there's an enormous, beautiful library downtown, and a racetrack, and Kurt Vonnegut's literary and literal birthplace.
And, the tornadoes, because Indiana is right in the middle of Tornado Alley, and it sends a brilliant curling thrill up my spine to think about the number of thunderstorms I'll see.
It's somewhere new, it's somewhere with lots of things to discover and new people to meet, it's cheap, it's far enough from home and close enough to Oberlin for comfort. It's a place with new languages to learn, and dialogues to pick up on. It's a place to forget and find myself again, and a place to set out from on a road trip to California in August.
So, I made a mix. It's a little bit for me, and a little bit for you. A little too sincere for its own good, and a little too silly. It's bigger and slower and folkier than most of the mixes I make - meant for packing, or driving, or waiting in the airport. One of those sorts of things, where there's a lot of time to wonder, and worry, and prepare.
Click here to download it: Stormsickness - Music for the Cross-Country Tornado Traveller
Love,
a
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1. I Don't Know if I'm Coming or Going - Billie Holiday & Her Orchestra
2. Texas Woman Blues - Taj Mahal
3. Put a Penny in the Slot - Fionn Regan
4. I Know I Know I Know - Tegan and Sara
5. Another Travelin' Song - Bright Eyes
6. If You Gotta Go, Go Now (Or Else You Got to Stay All Night) - Bob Dylan
7. Washington, D.C. - The Magnetic Fields
8. Packing Blankets - Eels
9. Indiana (Take 2) - Lester Young
10. Road Trippin' - Red Hot Chili Peppers
11. California - Phantom Planet
12. Paris 2004 - Peter Bjorn and John
13. She Just Likes to Fight - Four Tet
14. The Weight of Lies - The Avett Brothers
15. Let Me Go Home Whiskey - Amos Milburn
16. Tangled Up In Blue - Bob Dylan
17. When You Go Back to College - Paul Baribeau
18. Further On Up the Road - Johnny Cash
19. Road Movie to Berlin - They Might Be Giants
20. Mingualy Boat Song - Richard Thompson
21. Don't Go To Strangers - Joni Mitchell
22. Back in Your Own Backyard - Billie Holiday