Daisy Fumes

It’s a beautiful week if you are receiving gifts and practicing deep listening. That is the type of week I am having.

The first deep listening exercise I did was extreme slow walking. It felt freeing to do this exercise. The stress that had been in my head was overwritten by the focus on slow walking. I had memories hitting my mind reminding me of being younger and putting me in that place. Hyper aware of myself and my surroundings, I felt the sounds in the room were having a conversation and I was involved. My legs felt like a wave alternating between heavy and light. This made me think of the ebbs and flows of life and nature.

The second deep listening exercise I did was the 4 modes of thought. Nearby I talked with my friend Pim who had also done extreme slow walking. Pim’s physicality was the focus of his movements. His upper body felt like it was in plaster and his legs felt free in the air but he struggled with his intuition of the floor’s location. He was so fixated on the view in front of him that it became static noise. He felt more confident by the end of it. He was less internal with emotions, but he did develop the feeling of confidence over time.

The third deep listening exercise I did was arm swinging. Standing there swinging my arms, it was difficult to get a rhythm at first but it was immediately goofy. My knees hated the part that involved bending them along with the swings. The awkward goofy at first turned to a happy silly goofy by the end of it. There was also a fire alarm going on while I did this so it just felt incredibly comical.

Receiving Ryan’s gift

The gift I received from my classmate Ryan. He made a fully produced, designed and distributed record. He reached out to a musician he was a fan of and asked if he could make her a record and she said yes! He figured out how to source the materials, find a record printer, designed the elements, and distributed it.

This resulted in a friendship that is still active today and that is so inspiring. This also came from earlier explorations in his life where he was making mixtapes for his friends. A repeating concept in his life, music as a tangible art form and love language continues to be a passion for Ryan.

This sat with me all day as I thought about the times I’d seen many mix cds exchanged among my friends. One time one was made for me, but I have never made one for someone else. I could help but ask myself why I had never done even though I kind of knew. It’s not that I haven’t thought about it before.

Many of my playlist that I have made myself have been in reaction to the people I’m surrounded by and the emotions I can feel around them. But sharing that is so scary and vulnerable. You say so much with a song and oftentimes I decided to just not say anything. People hear too much from me anyway.

So what if I made a mixtape? I do love music, but would people really care to hear the music I’m enjoying right now? At 32 I’m basically just listening to the same music I gathered from those teenage feelings gained from people that no one around me even knows anymore. If I’m going to give someone a playlist, which is different from making myself one, I need to consider my audience. What do they like? This made me think okay, I can go ask them about their music and make a playlist for them, but they surely already have plenty of those. I however do want to know the music they love despite not wanting to share mine.

This made me realize something. Maybe we all want to share and know a little about each other. I could make people feel seen and cared for as a group. Instead of finding one person to make a tape for, I will find a few connected people.

This is how I came to the idea of the micro playlist zine.

I went to the first staff member on the 4th floor that I had the courage to talk to. That was Sam De Armas. I asked her for a song, and a quick thing about that song. I then took her picture and asked her to nominate the next person. This caused a link of connected humans of our floor to create a playlist together.

After gathering a total of 6 people and their songs, I added one myself and got to work.

I hit up the ER and asked for my old quick production friend: the lightbox. Then I printed the photos I had taken in a collage format. And got to work tracing them for the internal poster of the zine. It was terrifying tracing their faces for a quick project, but I had to ignore that fear for the sake of making.

Speed was my girlfriend in this project. I just kept thinking “go go go.” I loved it. I needed a quick cover that would express what this is and tie myself to it. Luckily I’m working on my person brand and have a really cute illustration of the daisy fumes ghost wearing a cool hat. “Cool” felt like the perfect direction for this. When I added I realized I also needed a link to the songs within this zine.

I decided to put them all on playlist and link to that on the cover with the ghost. The playlist is called Daisy Fumes IMA mix #1. I was having so much fun I decided to leave room to make it a series.

Having the cover done, and the inner poster done, and the contributions mapped to the pages. I was able to print the first test book. This is when the trial and error for the mapping occurred, but not for long.

I was able to successfully print the pieces and then distribute them.

Hands down the best part was giving the final pieces to the contributors. They were so touched. They wanted to see who contributed what and loved seeing the faces of the humans they are so connected to on the back.

I can’t wait to do more of these. It was so fun to get to know these people and see their willingness to be vulnerable with a near stranger.

10/10 exploration in making experience for the creator.