In 2000, a friend of mine made me a mixed tape. It was filled with great music, but the sad part is that I can't tell you what most of it was. Not because it would be wrong, or because I'd 'have to kill you' or anything like that, but because I honestly don't know. However, I can tell you now that two of my favorite songs on the tape were by Soul Coughing: Screenwriter's Blues and Circles. I know this now - the names and artist of these songs - in part because the keyboardist and sampler of Soul Coughing, Mark De Gli Antoni, wound up playing my keyboard in Mat and Emily's wedding last year. But I didn't know this information at the time he was actually playing my keyboard, nor did I know it during the six years I would periodically pick up and listen to this mixed tape. No, I only made this fortunate discovery about a week ago, and it proves my theory that, if it wants to, serendipity will find you - in spite of yourself.

But . . . I don't understand. How is it that you listened to something for six years and never knew the name of the songs nor the name of the band that played them? This is a very good question. And I completely understand your confusion. The short answer is this - and I'm letting you in on a secret here: I can sometimes be a bit of a flake. (If by 'sometimes' you mean 'frequently' and by 'bit of a' you mean 'huge.') The long answer is a little more complicated . . .

People who listen to a lot of music can generally be placed into two types: those who are organized with their collections, and those who aren't. Unfortunately, I fall into the latter. My collection of music is spread out over my apartment in several different locations. There is no formal classification system, by artist, title, genre or otherwise. None of that shit, brother. I don't believe in it. I am decidedly anti-organizational when it comes to music. To me, music is far too emotional to place into some sort of rational taxonomy. There is only a general sense that CDs of such-and-such a type will almost certainly be (more or less) precisely right here, unless, of course, they are exactly over there, or - if it's a leap year - they might be underneath this thing here or - wait, wait, scratch all of that, I know where they are - in the car. And CDs of this other type - well, they're probably on top of this thing over here, but if not, they're most certainly way up there somewhere, unless they're in the batch that I put over here last month. To say there's absolutely no order is not quite right, because I do have a very good sense of where they might be. It's just that I have absolutely no sense of where they certainly are. To make matters worse, a lot of the CDs I purchased from college until about three years ago no longer have their jewel cases. I threw them away during a frenzy of life-compacting I went through about five years back, where I decided I would keep all my CDs in leather-bound folios. I have since decided I'm not a fan of this approach, which kind of sucks because all those jewel cases are now gone, along with their back insert. (I did keep the front inserts, though. I'm not a complete monster.)

The lesson for you audiophiles - people like Mat or my college roommate Frank, people who really do alphabetize their music collection - is this: do not lend me your music, at least not in CD form, unless you are honestly trying to get rid of it.

But digital music files have changed everything. I now know exactly where most of my music is at all times: On my hard drive. Or my iPod. Simple. Things lacking physical form are much easier to keep track of. And the beautiful part is that music is even stored alphabetically for me, with no additional effort on my part. Now, when I purchase something, I rip it in iTunes, sync my iPod, and carefully and deliberately put the CD in a precise location in my apartment that makes perfect sense at that particular moment in time. Then I never think about it again. I might look at the insert once, but sometimes I don't even do that. (I know this is probably a sin on par with adultery to many of you, and all I can say is I'm sorry. I've got nothing in my defense except a general laziness and ambivalence when it comes to thumbing through those little brochure-like inserts.) What matters is the music. But here's the problem: because I don't often look at the CD insert, and because I always play my iPod and iTunes while engaged in other activities, and in 'shuffle' mode, I rarely know what song I'm listening to. Oh, I have a general sense of the artist's name, and maybe what album it is, but the song title, or what order it is in on the CD is completely lost on me. So in conversation I can't even refer to a song like I used to, as 'track 3' or 'the last track,' because I never listen to an album in the same order twice. Or if I do, it's not necessarily the same order that is printed on the album cover. Sure, I could simply pay attention to the track name when it comes up, but come on man, what do you want from me?

So wait a minute, what does this have to do with the mixed tape and the Soul Coughing keyboardist? Again, good question.

See, when my friend made me this mixed tape, I promptly lost the case, as well as the insert upon which she had probably written the name and artists for all the songs ( I say probably because I'm not even entirely certain she did this.) Then, a short time later, I promptly lost the friend herself. Not 'lost' like 'where did she go?' but more in a metaphysical sense, I guess. This left me with a brilliant mixed tape, which I played frequently in my office when I wanted to hear something 'different,' but on which most of the songs remained anonymous to me. Because of my personality and music-listening tendencies (as outlined above) this was only a minor nuisance to me, instead of the incredible annoyance it might have been to others. What was more of a nuisance to me was that the song which I now know to be 'Circles,' a song I really, really liked, was cut off mid-way because the tape ran out. Apparently, it had just been a 'filler' piece. Why, oh why, did she make this particular song a filler piece? What cruel joke was this? The song was so fun and groovy, and when it would cut off abruptly like that, it always left me a little on edge. But it tended to throw enough anguish and mystery into my otherwise routine day job, that I guess I kinda liked it. I would anticipate the cut-off, would feel it coming, and then it would happen: Silence followed by the horrible 'click' of the tape deck stopping. And I would feel a momentary sense of anxiety and panic, a sense that all is unfair and unjust in the world. But then the feeling would subside and somebody would send me an email concerning some mind-numbing task, and everything was back to normal. It was a momentary segue into the dramatic before dull reality would sink back in.

This pattern continued, off and on, for years. No idea that the song was called 'Circles' (though I could probably have ascertained this from the chorus) and no idea that the band was called Soul Coughing. I was blissfully ignorant. It's almost embarrassing to admit it now.

So when Mat asked me if he could borrow my keyboard for his wedding so that his friend, who happened to be the keyboardist from Soul Coughing, could play it, I was like, 'Sure!' I had a vague sense of who Soul Coughing was. I knew I'd probably heard their music before. But I couldn't really name a song. And again, as you can probably tell by now, this didn't really bother me all that much. I met Mark at the wedding, he played my keyboard, it was all good, as has been described, and that was that.

Fast forward to last week. I was checking out Mat's playlist on last.fm and noticed the song 'Circles' by Soul Coughing. I remembered this was his friend Mark's band and that he was the guy who had played my keyboard at Mat's wedding. Also, the name 'Cirlces' sounded familiar. I thought, let me check this out . . .

And here we are today. Let me just say that it's been an incredible journey and that enlightenment is an amazing thing. It's simultaneously freeing and numbing, like a Novocain high. If I knew during Mat's wedding what I know now, I would have been far more excited about Mark playing my keyboard. But it's okay. It's just peachy, in fact. Knowledge tends to happen at it's own pace, and I'm okay with that. In the end, it's good to know that, eventually, things will come full circle.

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