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Recently on a long drive home I got caught up in a good (make
that great) Air Supply song (I have a vague recollection of belting out said
song in a downtown Keg drunk off two Keg
-size strawberry daiquiris – have I mentioned how much more fun I am when I’m
drunk?) It got me to thinking about the numerous mixed tapes I once spent hours
in my bedroom making. Mixed tapes that
were mostly full of sappy (but amazing) love songs that I made in memory of a
dead, or dying, relationship. There were
also tapes made that captured the great classics of the day. Bust a Move (or Buster Move as I
believed it to be called for a shamefully long period of time) got a lot of air
play on many of my mixed beauties in eighth grade.
And then there were the hours I spent compiling the perfect
mixed tape for the many loves of my life – I am happily married to the actual love of my life but the folly of
my youth was to believe that every boy who gave me enough attention (and even
those who didn’t) was worthy of this title. Those mixed tapes were special.
Time was devoted to the careful printing of each song on the cover of the tape
– and even the singer/band if the spacing was well-planned enough.
The art of the mixed tape and sending it off as a love
letter, that in essence captured that moment in time in so many ways, has been
lost. It has been replaced by the
playlist and with it the romance has died.
Today’s youth will never know the joy of giving or receiving a tape that
expresses to the loves of their lives what only a great love song can. They
will never know the joy of rediscovering an aged tape – deep inside a box at
the back of your closet – one that when you see it you are instantly
transported back in time. It’s sad I
think - an archive of the past never to be.
The same can be said of the love note whose ink was
thoughtfully put to paper by your one and only; a record of a fourteen year old
or twenty year old’s devotion to you.
The love letter left us with the advent of email and the nail in the
coffin is our new obsession with texting. An entire generation will not have a
box of letters to rummage through – one that chronicles their romantic triumphs
and follies.
Even the phone call doesn’t exist anymore. Who doesn’t
remember sitting beside their awesome purple phone from Zellers and hoping that
if they stared at it long enough they could actually will it to ring? Who doesn’t remember talking to their
boyfriend or girlfriend for so long it felt like your ear was going to fall
off? What was really great about those
days was the fact that we, like everyone else, had only one phone line and my
idiotic sisters (whom I love dearly now) would absolutely ruin my life by
picking up the phone a thousand times during one phone call yelling at me to
get off the phone.
We need to remember the importance of creating records of our lives that won’t be lost in cyber space forever. Listening to Air Supply reminded me of the importance of all of these pieces of the past. A good song always stirs feelings in us and those feelings need to be captured in some way. And while I won’t be making anymore mixed tapes I will be sure to try and continue writing notes to my husband and children so we all have something to hold onto and remember once the moment has passed.
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| A few gems I found -without having to look too hard. I particularly like the Mega Mix from Hell title - classic |
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| The Mega Mix from Hell playlist - I know you were curious |
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| A book I made for Eric that holds all of our correspondence from just the first year we met |
