RAMH@10: Still Hangin’ On (and a “Master Mix”)

[Image: “Wherever I Lay My Hat,” by an unknown user on Flickr. I thought the title especially suitable to my thinking about RAMH these days. (Aside to whoever took this photo — it’s been years since I snagged a copy: thank you very much… and do let me know if you object to my using it finally here!)]

Another year gone by; even less music… at last count, only seven posts assigned to the Music category since last April… How the heck am I going to build an anniversary playlist?

Wait — I know: I can combine all previous years’ mixes into one gonzo list!

Herewith, then, the “Master Mix” (to the extent that there is one). Below the little audio-player thingumabob I’ll mention some details about the mix and how to use it, and then move on to my usual April-style woolgathering. (I haven’t totaled up the length of the whole thing, but there are six earlier lists; each is about one CD’s worth of music, or about 70-75 minutes apiece… which comes to… um… seven hours of music?!?)

Note that this master mix is automatically shuffled; every time you load the page, you’ll get a new mix. (If you want to listen to the songs in the order they were originally played in, I’ve included — in a table below the audio player itself — links to the individual anniversary posts.) You can if you want pop out the playlist into its own browser window — see the “Popout” link at the top left of the player? The popout will be shuffled in the same order as the list shown; it will enable you to close this window, and to go on to something else. Dusting, maybe. Or Facebook (haha).

RAMH@10: The Master Mix

About this year’s mix:

I’ve been meaning to go back for some time and clean up a few of the earlier April posts, which were (to skip over the details) still clinging to old and no longer functional technologies. They’re all up to date now; you can see each of them by following the corresponding links here — each anniversary post includes links to the blog posts featuring that list’s songs:

(Note too that this master playlist allows you to download the song currently playing — that’s the purpose of the Download link to the right of the Popout button. The individual anniversary mixes do not allow downloads.)

Back in the 2014 anniversary post, I dwelt at length on the question of why bother blogging anymore, in the face of the social-media craze — particularly Facebook. I’d come to a realization about Facebook, I said, a realization about why I’d started blogging in the first place:

The reason I blogged, the thing I didn’t realize about myself until the world moved on from blogging to all those shallow, trivial, quick-and-dirty online venues of little to no “consequence,” was simply this: I needed people; I was lonely.

What didn’t occur to me then was the other side of the coin: so if Facebook (et al.) serve the needing-people need which originally drew me to blogging, why do I still blog at all? Especially to the limited extent I’ve come to in the last year?

There’s really only one reason I can see for my continue blogging now, even in the ultra-limited way I’ve been doing for over a year now: it scratches an itch not available elsewhere. For lack of a better term, let’s call it “self-expression,” particularly a form of self-expression uniquely my own: this site has my personal stamp on it in a way that my Facebook timeline doesn’t, in a way that my (newly awakened) Tumblr feed doesn’t, in a way that my Instagram account sure as hell doesn’t even remotely touch. Yes, all those other specific locales let me “express myself” in one way or another… but only in someone else’s contexts. They all present limitations which blogging — particularly WordPress blogging — do not, and none of them is, well, mine.

So I’ll continue with the whiskey river Fridays weekly series inspired by that anonymous blog (at least until whiskey river itself keels over, if it does). I’ll continue posting occasional — however rare — midweek and weekend “music break” entries. (Not sure yet about the Quirky Eclectic Christmas Mixes, though; they’re an awful lot of work for mere “self-expression,” and, well, having done a symbolic ten of them — maybe that’s enough even for me!) Yeah, I figure I’ll be here on or about next April 20th, too.

Until then, whoever you are who might be seeing this: thank you very much for visiting Running After My Hat!

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