Mar
26
I’d very much like to tell you about a letter I received today from someone in Scotland. I think I should wait for that person’s permission before sharing their story with the whole world though. The letter got me thinking though, about what we are talking about when we talk about mix-tapes:
Music connecting people and pulling them apart again. Music is a type of magnetism, it pulls people towards particular dipoles and away from others. it can also anchor you in place hold you rooted to the spot. Maybe the spot where you first kissed your lover, the corner of a street where you said unkind things to one another on the way home, after a long day. The damp cold living room where you warmed each other after being caught in a snow storm, your faces lit by the LED of the cheap MP3 player you bought in the January sales, as you share the headphones beneath a blanket. The first time you saw your ex holding hands with someone else in the corner of the pub as the jukebox blares out Radiohead.
These things collect up. My CD racks (yes I still have those, and shelf of vinyl too, reprehensible hipster that I am), they resemble photo albums with music as a memory storage device.
Some liner notes scrawled in a CD cover given to you by an ex. The look she gave you the first time you hand her one of these things. So it goes. And the sound track to the end of the relationship is the sound of the needle in the groove at the end of the record as it crackles ceaselessly. Well that’s what I’m talking about anyway, when I talk about mix tapes.