As I was working on the cookie drops, I developed a portable gift to drop while traveling. I had already been making mix tape (CDs) for Tokens of Kindness, so I decided to make an actual cassette tape version of this. My hope was that the mixtape would be found by somebody who was either unfamiliar with the music, or somebody who was a fan and would re-gift the tape to somebody in order to share the included music with another person.
Along with the tape I included two Tokens of Kindness cards, which were based on smile cards. These cards encourage people to do a kind act, pass the card, and log the card’s location. My Tokens of Kindness cards are individually numbered so that they are able to be tracked using an online form.
I dropped the cassette tapes all over Los Angeles, Des Moines, Ames, and St. Paul.
Here’s the footage.
Tokens of Kindness: Bowie Mixtape Drop from Calee Himes Cecconi on Vimeo.
Nobody followed up with the surveys, so I don’t know what happened to the tapes. Through this I learned that a gift with an obligation is no longer a gift. However, in the place of one of the tapes I found a Thoreau quote:
Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you imagined. As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness.
This quote seemed to reinforce that people are meant to be together.
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Have you ever made a mixtape?
