THE MIX(ed) TAPE: Now there's a walk down Romance Lane... yes, the boys I was dating would give me mixed tapes and, by 2000, mix-CDs. I'd even get these from boys I had only met through ads but hadn't actually met. These tapes were great!! The mix tape sent by mail (late 1980s, early 1990s) served as an introduction to the boy's inner landscape and deepest feelings in a way that words and letters could never do. The tapes said, "I'm tongue-tied around you - but this music shows you that I have deep feelings." Then there was that one guy who wasn't on my dance card so he stayed up late making mix tapes and dropping them off in my mailbox. I heard the longing in songs like this that one boyfriend put on his tape - this song says, I love you, but I want to be alone. Or maybe it says, I wish I had a boat. I wish you were a pony. The mix tape is about musical tastes but it is also a kind of autobiography of love and pain. tng: I will not play - but I would like to receive the mix tape you make for someone else. I'll send you something appropriate in return. Note: you posted two shout-outs to me in the list above. I feel so special!
The girl I referenced in this poem was one of the first recipients of a mixed tape from me. I made her MANY of them. I was head over heels for that girl, obviously I still have dreams about her. She made me a mix once too and for the most part it was a steaming pile of poo, but I still LOVED it. I remember it had Journey's Faithfully. I figured out how to play that on the piano as a young man, just in case I found myself alone with her in a room with a piano. Unfortunately, that never happened. Some of the first songs I wrote, I wrote for her and put on those mixed tapes for her. I would record on to a tape, then put that tape in another tape deck and record myself playing another track over top of it on another tape deck etc. Essentially multi-tracking in the crudest way possible. What I wouldn't give to hear those songs now. I wonder if she kept those tapes? I'd be more interested in hearing those tapes than I would be in seeing her. -Okay, that's kind of a lie. Is my wife on Hubski? jk As for me sharing my mixed tape I make for my exchange with you, I'm afraid I must decline. As you mention in your comment, these things are personal and when done properly, should be specific to their intended recipient. It would detract from it if I sent the same one out to others. That said, I would be happy to have a mixed CD exchange with you lil. You send something my way and I'll gladly reciprocate. :-)
The first mixtape I ever got was all Tori Amos. It started with this. To this day I have no idea what, if anything, she was trying to tell me. I interpreted it as "head for the hills". The first I ever gave started with this and went downhill from there, so I can't really talk. That one worked out in spite of me though.
After checking out your music recs for the last few months, the idea of someone giving you a Tori Amos mix is almost too hilarious for words. EDIT: lil - tell us about your first mixtape, made or received, would make a solid hubski post, if it's never been done.
YES -- you've no idea (or maybe you do). That strikes me as a stinking good writing topic, although I feel bad even suggesting one because of how rarely I actually write for them.On the other hand, the present is so intense I may not have time for the past.
Anyone can use the #todayswritingprompt tag and suggest something. I love the past - what a place!! whoo-hoo. And not just my past. Whenever I can, I hang out in 1944 in my uncles' war letters or in the 1909 London census where a genealogist (not me) discovered the cousins -- my cousins -- that my grandfather stayed with when he escaped from Siberia. Shit, when I get into the past, I'm lost. Mixed tape relationships and the stories in them... there's a deep pit I could fall into and spend the night. Meanwhile, back to the intense present.