Mix Tape for Dead Girl

December 11, 2002 1:30 PM

Mix Tape for Dead Girl. Writing a eulogy used to involve hours of revising and a good thesaurus. Joshua Allen opts for a cassette of field recordings and madrigals instead. Found sounds find their way to lost loved ones.
posted by botono9 (11 comments total)

Wow. Sad.

The morning news is a great page, I've been going there regularly for a few months now.
posted by atom128 at 1:43 PM on December 11, 2002

i'm not usually a fan or mr allen's work, but reading Mix Tape this morning, i found it enormously poignant and well written. kudos to him, and indeed - it's worth reading.
posted by Marquis at 2:10 PM on December 11, 2002

I wanna hear it.
posted by Espoo2 at 2:21 PM on December 11, 2002

wow. i saw the teaser earlier on tmn and didn't read it because i thought it would be something a little tacky; like actual commercial songs, instead of the greatly moving collection of sound moments the author has put together. thanks for the link.

Quiet American is a site that may be of interest to those who enjoyed this piece, or to those who enjoy found sound/field recordings...

i had the privilege of hearing a live set by him out in the forest last june -- it was absolutely lovely.
posted by fishfucker at 2:22 PM on December 11, 2002

Great link. Sometimes it seems like millions of people on the Internet are furiously writing, trying to attain this kind of perfect mix of the trivial and the significant, but almost no one actually manages to get there.

Is it fiction or memoir? Or a little of both?
posted by fuzz at 2:41 PM on December 11, 2002

Josh Allen has a habit of just making shit up and passing it off as true. Knowing that, I have trouble getting into the writing. Sort of a "won't get fooled again" mentality, I guess.
posted by cardboard at 2:44 PM on December 11, 2002

Yes, absolutely! Shame on Mr. Allen for daring to present an alternative to consecration and coffin. California golden poppies and assorted goldenrod reams upon Mr. Allen for -- tsk! tsk! -- using his imagination, tapping into his viscera, and -- alakazaam! -- representing something that may be fact or fiction, but that cannot exist somewhere in between for readers demanding words to wolf down in minutes. If it weren't for writers like Mr. Allen, why, we'd probably be spending all day reading bland op-ed columnists and literal-minded warmongers.

Is this thread really necessary? Beyond a brief discussion over how writing relates to writer, it seems more of an excuse to either laud or condemn Joshua Allen for writing something beyond the pale.
posted by ed at 3:10 PM on December 11, 2002

Mix Tape for a Dead Girl could tour with Black Tape for a Blue GIrl.

okay okay.
posted by xmutex at 4:08 PM on December 11, 2002

God bless you, Ed, for being able to over-react to threads like this for the rest of us.
posted by cardboard at 9:40 PM on December 11, 2002

Are any threads on Metafilter really necessary? When was the last time you thought "thank goodness this thread exists. I might have killed myself otherwise, along with the rest of humanity. All hail the thread of life!"?

Enjoy or hate the link. No one necessarily cares.
posted by botono9 at 8:44 AM on December 12, 2002

Ed, you obviously have some literary insights that other people might find helpful. Unfortunately, your manner of delivery means that nobody is really likely to listen. But I hope the sarcasm helped you feel better.
posted by stonerose at 8:58 AM on December 12, 2002