Love is a Mixed Tape
I got rid of a lot of my tapes, but I can't seem to get rid of the collection of mixed tapes that I've amassed since 1991. My best friend in college was the QUEEN of delaying schoolwork by crafting. She showed me not only how to make colorful stickers out of packing tape, magic markers, and binder paper, but she also introduced the beauty of the mixed tape. Soon, I was making "To Study" tapes--tapes that would apparently help me study. Sometimes I made tapes just for Wednesdays, or to mark the end of the semester.
Nearly every boyfriend I had since 1991 got a mixed tape. A number of long distance friends too. My parents even suffered a few. I had a system down: 22-24 songs fit on a 90 minute tape (depending on the song length); I had to start both sides with a ROCKER, a call to arms, and end with a sort of quiet, thoughtful note. They were like letters that I wanted to fill the recipients with. I tried to woo boys I liked with tapes. I tried to keep my friends near. In a way, I captured my own life with these collections.
I look at them now and they do feel like their own diary. The ones I made for myself chronicle the arc of my musical taste and thus the arc of my personal development. The earlier ones are filled with a mishamash of what was popular at the time, and music I collected from the hallways of 1990's dorm life--Indigo Girls, The Sundays, Paul Simon, etc. I look at disbelief at one and see a MARIAH CAREY song listed (for PETE's SAKE!), followed by a Lenny Kravitz song (from a CD I sold SO LONG ago). It makes me QUAKE in my shoes to see such relics! Then I see how everything changed when I learned to play guitar and wanted to be a Riot Grrrrl--then it's girl rock all the time, baby! Patti Smith, PJ Harvey, Liz Phair, Hole, etc. etc. It goes on like that.
It seems appropriate that the last mixed tape I made was for my husband. This is when we were "just friends", which meant that I was his friend, but I seriously had it BAD for him (which is the PERFECT climate to make an epic mixed tape). I spent TWO DAYS on it, culling and rethinking and wondering what this song would tell him and what this song would do for him. We had already had the "do you like me" talk, but it wasn't going to happen. He was moving to New York in a week and that would be that, and I was heartbroken and happy at the same time. The tape was an old letter I was writing to him. It said, Take me with you.
And as it happens, he did.
posted by Summer Pierre at
7:38 PM
6 Comments:
beautifully written
Oh wow, what a great post! The moment I saw the pictures of mix tapes, I immediately got a visual of all my mix tapes that I can't bear to get rid of either. Half of them won't even play anymore, but the cover art and even what was written on the little stickers on sides A & B are too valuable to throw away.
I also made mix tapes for everyone I ever dated (or wanted to date), and of course countless tapes for my friends. I made tapes for when I liked someone, for when I was in love, for breakups (those were especially dramatic), for roadtrips, for summers, and just as a way to document how I was feeling at a particular time in my life. I poured over what songs to start and finish a tape with, and what to write/draw/collage on the cover...mixtape making is an art form!
Thanks so much for writing this post. It really made my day :)
that last line kills.
Yowza! Talk about a time/space continuum. I guess playlists are the new mixed tape. Without the cool artwork. Alas.
ugggh, that's SO ROMANTIC, in a mixed tape kind of way!!! (which qualifies as WAAAAAY romantic in my book...oh, for the days of mixed tapes...)
Thank you for sharing the story of your mixed tapes. I love your writing!
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