FOR A HEIGHTENED READING EXPERIENCE, PLEASE READ WHILE LISTENING TO: “ORIGINAL MUSIC FROM AND INSPIRED BY: THE DISAPPEARANCE OF ELEANOR RIGBY” BY SON LUX

 “The mixtape is the most widely practiced American art form.”

-Geoffrey O’Brien, American poet, essayist, film critic, and other hats

I would argue that it’s also the most personal mainstream American art form. No other medium allows for the creator to bear their soul like a mixtape. Regardless of purpose, they comb through hundreds of songs searching for a track—nay—the track that will send shivers down the listener's spine. Yes, the mix is often gift, but the essence of the mix lies in the creator of the mix. There is something spiritual, something divine about this act of creation.

Certain songs carry me up to a higher ground without taking a step. Others strip away superficiality. And still others leave my soul bare. The mixtape is God, and I am His pupil.

But what would God’s mixtape be for me?

What songs carry up a divine being to higher ground?

Would He be sitting round a campfire playing “Collide” by Howie Day? Would He—who built the stairway to heaven—bask in Zeppelin’s glory? Would He sit in a plush leather chair surrounded by mahogany bookshelves listening to Chopin?

I can’t surmise the contents of God’s mixtape for me, but what I can do is make one for Him.

This is my Divine Mixtape:

1. “Youth (Goblin Valley Live Recording)” – Daughter

My friends and I camped once just outside Goblin Valley State Park in southern Utah. The next morning, we planned to enter the park for a day of hiking. If you haven’t been to Goblin Valley, know that it is another planet. Over millions of years, wind whittled down giant sandstone pillars into small, goblin-looking formations called “hoodoos.” Hundreds of these “hoodoos” line the valley floor and transport you to a distant galaxy. So distant, in fact, that Hollywood caught wind and filmed the movie Galaxy Quest there.

The night before entering the camp—as my friends faded—I wandered off into the Utah desert to pee or get attacked by coyotes or think about it'd be like to have an Abbey burial. I walked until our camp’s dying fire was just a dot in the night. A breathing Earth replaced distant laughter. I lay down on the bare ground, took out my phone, and played the song “Youth” by Daughter.

The song’s ethereal melody rang through the valley, braiding seamlessly with the cool breeze and rolling sagebrush. Staring up at the sky, I saw Elena Torna’s harmonic voice leap from star to star until her last note trailed into a far-off constellation.

I had no prior connection to this song. It was any other melodic indie electropop track. However, when music intersected nature, everything changed. Chills climbed and plunged down my body in rapid succession. For a brief moment, I became the landscape, and because of it, my problems ceased to be only my problems. My worries were no longer only my worries. They were mine, the Earth’s, the stars’. They were God’s. I had nothing to worry about.

I finally understood how small, yet important, I am in the universe. So often, we stop at realizing how minuscule we are that we don't entertain the thought that we are as important as we are small. When something, some One, bigger than you absorbs your problems as their own, that thought becomes a reality.

When I returned to the campsite, my friends—who had not fully faded—were ripe with concern. I explained, “I got stage fright.”

2. “Wind Symphony” – Mount Timpanogos

Mount Timpanogos, reaching 11,752 feet, is the second tallest peak in Utah’s Wasatch mountain range. It’s common to hike through the night to watch the sunrise from the peak. I prefer to leave earlier in the day and campout at Emerald Lake, a small body of water at about 11,000 ft before making the final ascent the next morning.

My campmates pitched their tent on a small outcrop overlooking the water. I purchased a camping hammock only weeks before the hike and was anxious to try it out. I rigged the hammock between two pine trees a few hundred yards from the tent and settled in.

Even though summer was just beginning, the altitude coaxed down bitter winds from the peak. I struggled to sleep. Everything made noise, stealing away my rest. I paused, reimagining the noise. My hammock whistled quietly as the winds shot between pine trees. Hundreds of pine needles flirted one with another, tickling each others’ backs. My own breath ebbed and flowed. My jacked rustled against the nylon hammock as I shifted weight.

Everything around me created music, and I was an active participant.

I wish I could say this ambient song rocked me to sleep and gently woke me up a few hours later to finish the hike, but I cannot. Instead, a strange man woke me. He was peeing almost into my hammock. However, the song stuck in my mind as my friends and I descended the mountain. The more I thought about it, the more entranced by it I became.

What if the wind symphony atop Timp wasn’t the anomaly, but the rule? What if we are all constant participants in a divine orchestra? Many instruments produce sound because there is a thin reed nestled within the instrument’s body. The musician then blows in air, causing the reed to vibrate and produce sound.

Was I not a reed on the mountain, vibrating to produce sound?

The pines, my hammock, the grass, the water in the shallow lake, we all produced sound as a result of Timp’s winds. Each of us an instrument by which God, Allah, Buddha, or whichever divine being in which one believes creates music. The Earth, and all its inhabitants, is one enormous symphony conducted by the Divine.

3. “Throw Your Hands Up” – mun_E

I have an 11% serious rap persona called mun_E. I didn’t pen the name. 11% serious rappers don’t have the luxury of doing so. My friend’s wife did so after a particularly poor impersonation of Macklemore, who is a rapper that used to be cool. It’s embarrassing, I know. Even more so now that I’ve solidified mun_E—cough, cough—my existence on paper. No, I don’t have an EP. No, I don’t play shows or emcee events. Mostly, I just make a fool of myself freestyle rapping with—but mostly at—my roommates. They are usually amused, even if it is more out of courtesy than praise.

One very late night, I drove to McDonald’s by way of University Avenue. There was no traffic. I hadn’t eaten all night and was tasked to pick up milkshakes on my way home. As is almost always the norm while driving alone in my car late at night, mun_E stole the show. The first rule of freestyle rap: never stop rapping.

“Throw your hands up, toss ‘em up to the sky.”

“Throw your hands up, cause I’m gon’ die.”

As the word “die” left my lips, a deer bolted in front of my car. I slammed on the breaks, but the doe did not budge. I felt my eyelids pulling back around my eyeballs. I felt a deluge of blood retreating from my face. I felt my body tense everywhere at once, bracing for impact.

There was no impact.

Well, that’s not completely true. I did hit the doe, but she wasn’t injured. My Santa Fe startled her, and then she bounded away. Had I reacted only half a second later, I would have needed a new car and a friend to pick me up from the hospital.

I didn’t have some existential experience in this moment. I didn’t see my life flash before my eyes. I didn’t commune with God. But I did recognize that God has a sense of humor. And maybe He’s telling me my rapping is so bad it’s going to get someone, or myself, killed.

Maybe that’s communion enough.

I sometimes forget that God can perfectly relate to me. I don’t believe He is the stiff at a party who can’t give or take a joke. I mean He created all of us. That gives him at least 40% ownership of every joke we make. Of course, I think His humor is likely more refined than ours, but I know He understands. He’s probably like my friend Joey, who has a perfectly masked pity laugh. You can make the absolute worst joke, and he will laugh without fail. And you will feel great. God is much more like a Joey than, say, an evil meteorologist raining down hellfire.

4. “4’ 33”” – John Cage

John Cage is an American composer lauded for his unconventional use of instruments. “4’ 33”” is no exception. There are multiple recordings of this piece available online. I recommend viewing the live recording at London’s Barbican Recital Hall.

“4’ 33”” is interesting because no notes are played. The composition consists of three movements of varying lengths, each initiated with the conductor’s down stroking baton. Silence, or seeming silence, follows. However, the silence quickly breaks. Individual coughs from the audience strike like staccato piano keys. Palpable tension builds in the room. The silence crescendos, culminating with a release of breaths, sneezes, and chuckles between movements.

How can silence be a song?

John Cage said it best, “There is no such thing as an empty space or empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear. In fact, try as we may to make a silence, we cannot.”

I think Cage’s goal with this composition is one of self-reflection. It’s to place us in an environment free of distraction. Here, though silence is the goal, sound is amplified. As are your thoughts, your sense of self, and your ability to ponder them. Four minutes thirty-three seconds to pause and reflect. Four minutes thirty-three seconds to travel back to Goblin Valley and search for Elena Torna’s melodic tones. Four minutes thirty-three seconds to be a reed in a divine symphony. Four minutes thirty-three seconds to remember that God understands and appreciates us, no matter how bad we rap. Four minutes thirty-three seconds to be carried up.

If I had the means to send a solid gold record out into the cosmos like Carl Sagan, I would. But I do not. I only have a mixtape. Will I hand deliver it to God? Doubtful. However, I can listen to it. I can let the songs carry me up to that higher ground where God sits in His plush leather chair surrounded by mahogany bookshelves. I’ll slump down in a chair next to His, and we’ll let my divine mixtape fill the room. We’ll each slump up from our respective musical stupors, look over at the other, and silently nod in approval.