I have them stashed in a dresser drawer, sitting on my backseat, slipped into a visor organizer, cataloged on my ipod. My world is wrought with albums not of the shrink-wrapped, shiny artworked, and $16.99 kind.
Mix cds, or, as we called them when I was but a wee lass, mix tapes.
For every season of our lives we hold a soundtrack, perhaps Radiohead on repeat or No Doubt on loud. Dixie Chicks with our favorite chicks and Our Song for our first date. The strains are heard and we are tumbled back into fun and tumultuous and difficult and fear and oh sweet memories.
I have a stack of mix albums, "Music for Chicas in Guatemala," "Good Songs," "My Favs for My Fav," "Road-Tripping I, II," "TN Mix," "Remember, Remember Too, Remember Again,"and more--mementos of times and friends and relationships. Some tell stories with the music, some make it up as they move along, some walk me through my life like a wax museum--strange likenesses of a life that really was and now just isn't.
Each one breaks off a piece of the artist, the real artist--the one who coupled these songs together, Latin near Jazz, followed by Folk and Instrumental, finished with Worship and Soul--gives himself when he makes a mix album. It's not just favorite tunes, it's a part of us, pieced together in our apartness by music.
So when I leave one stage of my life and head to another, and a friend slips a CD into my pocket, my luggage, my hand, I hold to it tightly. It is the soundtrack, sometimes the only way I know that I lived, really lived and laughed and loved and then left a place I called home.
They are a timeline of my life.
Mix cds, or, as we called them when I was but a wee lass, mix tapes.
For every season of our lives we hold a soundtrack, perhaps Radiohead on repeat or No Doubt on loud. Dixie Chicks with our favorite chicks and Our Song for our first date. The strains are heard and we are tumbled back into fun and tumultuous and difficult and fear and oh sweet memories.
I have a stack of mix albums, "Music for Chicas in Guatemala," "Good Songs," "My Favs for My Fav," "Road-Tripping I, II," "TN Mix," "Remember, Remember Too, Remember Again,"and more--mementos of times and friends and relationships. Some tell stories with the music, some make it up as they move along, some walk me through my life like a wax museum--strange likenesses of a life that really was and now just isn't.
Each one breaks off a piece of the artist, the real artist--the one who coupled these songs together, Latin near Jazz, followed by Folk and Instrumental, finished with Worship and Soul--gives himself when he makes a mix album. It's not just favorite tunes, it's a part of us, pieced together in our apartness by music.
So when I leave one stage of my life and head to another, and a friend slips a CD into my pocket, my luggage, my hand, I hold to it tightly. It is the soundtrack, sometimes the only way I know that I lived, really lived and laughed and loved and then left a place I called home.
They are a timeline of my life.
posted by Lore at 16.2.08
2 Comments:
i was listening to a song i havent listened to in a long while, and thinking about this exactly... i guess just about how every song or mix of songs has its own flavor and takes me back so automatically to another time in my life. its a weird feeling. so anyway, as im thinking this, i click a link to your site and read your post.
man, i havent talked to you in like, years. well. some day. ;)
leslie
What's funny lor, is that when I burned your c.d. I also kept the playlist on my computer so I could listen to it as well and remember.
Sometimes it's not just what another person gives to you, but what you give away that defines that season in your life.
All music aside, I can sit in silence in be overwhelmed by the sounds, smells, and sights of our time together.
I'm longing to talk to you... soon hopefully.
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