last night i went on a mixcd safari for several hours. out of nowhere. well, not nowhere. but i was sitting there sipping a stout margarita on the rocks, labeling a copied cd for a friend, and i realized i had one blank cd left. so i was trying to think of an appropriate choice in my collection to copy, to make best use of the last blank cd.

my first thought, naturally, was a cd that i subsequently couldn’t find amidst my unpacked boxes. the search for that particular cd took about half an hour and accomplished little but foster self-loathing for my lackluster organizational skills.

during this fruitless excavation, i’d been changing the record on the turntable, and on occasion bringing the needle back so i could hear certain songs over again. i made a half-hearted mental note to earmark one song in particular for a mixcd. it was percussive without being overbearing. emotionally evocative without being gratuitous. sexy, but not slutty. i replayed it twice. and then my half-hearted mental note caught a spark and was suddenly lit ablaze.

i knew what song would come after it. and then two more songs that would fit well with the theme later in the mix. during the early peak.

but i needed a third track cooler. something to smooth out the shotgun blast of summer heat from the first two tracks. but not too cool.

just a sultry thunder rumble to follow the initial lightning strikes; all a precursor for the balmy storm yet to come.

literally, within five minutes i had a good quarter of the mixcd mapped in my head. fifteen minutes after that, there were several dozen records at my feet pending consideration and a rough draft of the mix written in frantic scrawl on a couple pages of paper.

inspiration hadn’t just hit. it had fused to my brain and taken control, allocating all mental resources to the selection for and structure of this unborn mixcd. unmitigated fury of purpose. wild-eyed moments of mumbled one-person dialogue.

i hadn’t felt that kind of headfire in a while.