'Tis the Season ... to Miss Mix Tapes

When I was getting ready to fly to Australia, I had a panic attack about 48 hours ahead of time because I realized my iPod only had about 6 hours of play time, and I was set to be on a plane for over 13 hours.

Now, if you know me, you know I can be very, um, particular about my music. So, listening to what was available via the plane's headphones would simply not do. Then I remembered that I had my old Walkman, batteries, and over 50 mix tapes stashed in my closet. Some of them are only two years old--proof that I held out for quite some time before giving in to the so-called digital music "revolution."

I thought of those mix tapes tonight as I struggled to put a playlist together on iTunes for a CD I wanted to make someone for Christmas--whittling the massive list down to 20 or so tracks.

The mix tapes I still have chronicle almost every major point in my life over the last 10-15 years, from my first road trip to college, to some spectacular flameouts with ex-boyfriends (hence the "You Fucked Me Over and I Hate You For It Mix"; thank god PJ Harvey's "Rid of Me" had come out around that time), and even some of the real high points. (I made Wayne a mix tape when we first met in 1999 and though I chose the songs specifically for him, I made a copy of the tape for myself and remember listening, wondering if he would be freaked out by the fact I put a song called "A Loon" on this tape that supposedly declared my "like" of him; luckily, he wasn't.)

The last six years, in particular, are well represented by the tapes in my closet, with titles for the cases that pretty much succinctly sum it up: "Let's Go To Iceland!" (for my fall 2003 trip to Iceland, natch, complete with Bjork and Sigur Ros songs); "Post-Apocalyptic" (made after Owen died); "No Decision to Be Made" (during a period when I wanted to quit my job); "Ethereal Elixir" (all music without any discernable lyrics I listened to when I had insomnia); and "Insert Catchy Title Here" (apparently, I could not be bothered to create one).

I grabbed a few of these mixes and they made it on my flight with me. In fact, I fell asleep listening to a mix tape rather than my iPod.

On my trip to New York last week, I didn't take the mix tapes, though I kind of wanted to. I even found myself wanting to make more tapes, and realized I no longer had the ability to. I wandered Manhattan's chilly streets between work meetings, trying to re-create the effect of the tapes with playlists on my iPod, but, as you might expect, it wasn't the same. There was no hiss of tape that was slowly disintegrating, no screwed-up lapses when bits of songs would bleed into each other accidentally, no weird one-minute blank space toward the end of the list of songs where you could sneak in a snippet of someone talking or something recorded off TV.

Waiting for the subway one day last week, I remembered that the last mix tape I made in New York was for the trip Nicole and I took cross-country in August 1998. The tape--"Music to Road Trip By"--is barely functional now, but I still listened to it yesterday, laughing at some of the inclusions I made, yet impressed by my segue between "California Love" by Dr. Dre to "Levitate Me" by the Pixies.

Music is a huge part of how I remember things. I place so much emphasis on songs that entered my life at particular moments--from hearing "True Colors" by Cyndi Lauper" minutes after learning my father died to bonding with Barbie over Helen Reddy's "You and Me Against the World" (yes, really). So, This evening, as I struggled to assemble playlists by dragging and dropping abstract song titles, listening over and over again to see if the songs went together and conveyed what I wanted them to, I realized just how intimate the act of giving music to others is for me. It's nice to think that I may introduce him or her to a song that will have some lasting personal effect. Not that I want the person to think of me. I just like the idea that I assembled a present and left it behind as an artifact as much as a collage of sounds.

If I hand you a CD, now you know how much I geeked out in the process of making it.

(Apologies to those who are getting something else from me for Christmas.)