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Mix Tape  Our story tonight is called Mix Tape. And it’s a story about a box of memories tangled up with songs. It’s also about the messages we send with the tracks we pick out, new batteries in an old Walkman and finding the music that helps you find yourself. There was an art to it. The first song had to be really, really good. It needed to pull you in and lay the framework for the mood you were attempting to build. But the second song had to be even better. It had to surprise the listener who had assumed that all the magic had been spent on the first track. Then it would pull back a bit, a song with less punch but more poetry. Maybe something a little odd, but catchy. And then a song you hadn’t heard in ages but loved and remembered every word of. With room for one more song on the first side of the tape it was time for another heavy hitter, something that would be rewound and played again before the cassette was flipped. Then the second side called for some nostalgia. Slower songs. Harmonies that you felt inside your chest when you sang along. The whole thing was of course a message of some sort. Shared favourites for growing a friendship. Showing off your taste or prowess as a curator, but very often it was a kind of covert love letter. And the second side was the best place to slip in a song or two that showed your heart. It was all deniable if need be. They were just songs. But they weren’t. And finding the one (or two) that might make the listener, with their headphones pressed against their ears, their Walkman clutched in one hand as they crossed campus, stop and wonder … or smile. Well, that was the point of it all. If you were really going to go all out, you named the mix and scrawled it out on the label stuck to the tape, something enigmatic and impressive sounding, or a scrap of an inside joke that reminded them of how you’d laughed together. You might even design a cover, some hand drawn art or a photo that had gone through the copier and come out a bit streaky. But that only added to the effect. Then folding it just so, so it would mimic the J-card that usually sat in the hinged plastic case. Did you write anything inside the cover? How brave were you? Did you just write out the play list? Or maybe you wanted them to discover it one song at a time. That’s how I liked to do it. It kept the mystery and hopefully weaved a sort of spell as it went from one track to another. I’d forgotten just how much thought went into those mixes. Almost forgotten about the idea of cassette tapes at all, until I found a shoe box full on a shelf in the basement. It was inside a bigger box full of things I’d cleaned out of my car. That car that had just barely gotten me through the last two years of high school and the first two of college. I couldn’t remember what kind it had been except that it was red and while it didn’t start reliably and the heat was hit or miss in the winter, it had a moon roof which I thought was the fanciest thing I’d ever seen. That box of cassettes, when I’d pulled off the top and looked down into the mess of them, had brought back a flood of memories. Some were tapes I’d bought at the music store and I remembered standing in front of the rack of new music figuring out if I could afford more than one … and if it was going to be just one, which one? I thought about how we’d listened to the same tapes over and over, how you could come to know the songs in order and when the flip to Side B would be. In the box were a few very beat up cases that had been carried in back pockets and book bags, passed back and forth at lunch and traded for weeks at a time. I swung open a few cases and took out the liner notes to read what the artists had written. Some were just lyrics and others had pictures of the band, drawings and quotes. These had felt so meaningful, so special when I’d opened them for the first time. There is something about finding the music that feels like it was written for you when you’re growing up. You’re trying on different ideas and styles and when something fits you down to your bones, it might be the first time you feel like you belong. That changes a lot. It’s no wonder we made these mixes with such care. They were a way of asking if we belonged with each other. In the bottom of the box, past the tapes I’d bought from the music store were the mix tapes. Most of them were loose, without cases, just a few words scratched out on the label, and suddenly I had to hear them again. I went through the boxes in the shelves around me. There must be a tape player somewhere here. I’d had a stereo that had a record player built into its top, an AM/FM dial in the middle and two tape decks on the bottom that let you record from one tape right onto the other, the height of technology at the time. But that had been sold in a garage sale when I was still in high school. I found a flat, black tape deck with a microphone attached and a bright red RECORD button and remembered that for a while folks would make all sorts of recordings with devices like these. We’d just talk into them as if they were our diaries. We’d record family histories or tape birthday parties to play back later. Though I can’t imagine that was ever actually done much. Beside it, in the same box was exactly what I needed. My Walkman. Bright yellow and with the headphones still plugged in. I rushed to the kitchen drawer for a couple of batteries and settled on the sofa with the Walkman and the box of tapes. I played a few I’d made myself. Songs for driving with the windows rolled down, Songs for amping myself up before a test or audition. Songs for a broken heart. I found some in the handwriting of my best friend. Funny how you don’t forget how someone writes their “e’s” or “m’s”. These songs made me smile and tap my toes on the living room rug, remembering how we’d listened, stretched out on one of our beds on Friday night, talking for hours and eating bowls of popcorn, ‘til one of our parents got fed up with the music and told us to pack it in for the night. Finally (and maybe I’d been saving it since I’d first spotted it in the bottom of the box), I played a tape whose case was still carefully preserved. The tape had my name written in red ink on the label. “FOR YOU FROM ME” it said. I turned the cassette over in my hands a time or two. I’d played it so many times that it was probably near worn out but I hoped it would play at least once more. I flipped it to Side A and slid it carefully into my Walkman and pressed play. Nothing Much Happens |
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