Sunday Mixtape #29: In the Distance, Out of Reach

Here is the track list for In the Distance, Out of Reach, a ninety-minute mixtape intended for cassette, completed as part of the first series of the 42/40 Explorer Series boxed set on January 25, 2023.

Side A:

1. Ariwo, Alafin (10:22) — from the album Ariwo (2017)

2. El Buho, Corazon de Rubi (4:14) — from the album Balance (2017)

3. Maya Youssef, Hi-Jazz (4:00) — from the album Syrian Dreams (2017)

4. Luka Productions, Dignetignena (5:44) — from the album Fasokan (2017)

5. Wildflower, Flute Song (4:38) — from the album Wildflower (2017)

6. Girma Beyene & Akale Wube, Tewedjign Endehu (Ahun Negerign) (3:34) — from the album Mistakes On Purpose (2016)

7. Matthew Halsall & The Gondwana Orchestra, Daan Park (6:23) — from the album Into Forever (2015)

8. Sonmi451, Hippocampus (6:00) — from the album The Limbic System (2015)

Side B:

1. Sarah Davachi, For Strings (7:47) — from the album All My Circles Run (2017)

2. The War On Drugs, Thinking of a Place (11:14) — from the album A Deeper Understanding (2017)

3. Kamasi Washington, Desire (4:37) — from the album Harmony of Difference (2017)

4. Alfa Mist, Keep On (10:47) — from the album Antiphon (2017)

5. Cat Toren’s Human Kind, Regression (9:59) — from the album Cat Toren’s Human Kind (2017)

---

Here is a book of the idle hours of travel. Nothing moves beyond the intensity level of pleasant, dreamy. Time is indistinct. Place makes no sense. You understand nothing and nothing notices you. But everything has a name, and since words don’t mean what they usually do, you assign them meanings of your own.

*

Alafin refers to the hour before you rise from afternoon torpor and re-button your shirt. You reach into the icebox and take out a handful of cherries. Nobody has contacted you about going anywhere particular this evening. You leave the rental, carefully locking the door, and walk just a block or two to an outdoor cafe where you order a coffee and sit looking out over the river.

*

Corazon de Rubi drifts above the chatter of the tourist district. If you were as ethereal as you feel, you would drift three meters above the sidewalk like a mist of words, a vapor of conversation. Meaning wouldn’t penetrate too deeply there.

*

You often wind up in Hi-Jazz because you refuse to take a break when your exhaustion insists that you ought. Sitting in the sun outside the cathedral, or paused beside a street performer, or waiting for a bus to another quarter of the city, suddenly you break into a sweat, or witness a trained parrot pickpocketing other members of the audience, or board the bus that is wrong by one number, and things get all riled up inside and tangly before they settle out fresh.

*

Dignetignena is the name you give to sounds overheard across the courtyard of your apartment while half-asleep. They are rhythms more than words, they are little melodies of their own. If you were awake you would understand them as commonplace phrases from ordinary interactions. But you are not awake so they feel like spells. You could translate them into poetry if poetry were dreamed and not recorded on paper.

*

Flute Song is a misplaced morning urgency. It will vanish with a few days’ inattention. But the allure, it is strong. Get out there, it says. Get something done before the day slips away. Days, though, slip away.

*

When you sit on the square at the tables outside a pastry shop, Tewedjign Endehu takes shape around you. It is the mild discontentedness of two co-workers dissatisfied with a new policy described by their boss. It is the disorientation of a fellow traveler who is less comfortable than you. It is the bad mood of the young man assigned to table service in the next quadrant of the restaurant. It can’t touch you, but around you it is taking place.

*

Daan Park is a mood you enter at night when you are several courses into a meal planned by others. No, it is more the mood you want to remain in when someone you trust is gently in charge of setting the agenda and steering the conversation. You drift along, like the tailwind to a wind, sure you’ll be taken around the appropriate corners when it’s time to turn.

*

You enter into the state of Hippocampus when you exit a satisfying interaction with an attractive or interesting local. You feel gently encouraged, or even like you belong in this place where you do not belong. Excited but not overstimulated, you walk easefully along in the direction of the port.

*

For Strings is the phrase you give to the wire you hold in the center of your mind as you walk through an exhibit of unusual artistic mediums in the National Gallery.

*

Thinking of a Place is the feeling you travel for. The purpose of going as far as you can in a direction is to imagine, from there, how much further there is to travel. As you lie down alone in an unfamiliar bed, your mind fills with other moments, some behind you and some ahead. It can be difficult to know with certainty which are which.

*

Desire is the feeling of remembering a quotation from a book you once read and were moved by, and knowing that you are remembering it imperfectly or even outright wrong, and knowing that you could look it up if you wanted to, and choosing to not look it up.

*

This is the moment when you realize that you’ve gone too far out on a walking journey. Keep On. You haven’t brought adequate food and water, and honestly you’re not entirely sure where you are anymore. Keep On. If you had anywhere else to be you’d be frustrated and your uncertainty would fill you with self-doubt. Keep On. Instead you spare a few dollars you wouldn’t allow yourself to spend at home. Keep On. You order a beer at the next pub and wait there for a cab to bring you back to your hotel.

*

You call it Regression when you begin to think of the approaching end of your travels. You open your work email. You reach out to friends about shared commitments for next week. In your journal you begin to make summative gestures about the meaning of your experience. And yet, there are days remaining. In those days, there are endless hours. In those hours, minutes extend beyond your reach. All you need to do is pull them close.

*

The hours of travel are full of presence. The hours of travel are full of longing. The hours of travel are full of gentle irritation that sometimes spills over into rage or alarm. Nothing changes around you. Whatever changes changes within. The hours of travel are full of you. The hours of travel are full of nothing else.