lindsayliveshere.org

My own mix

I have been a hoarder of mix CDs for years. (Tapes, you were before my time.) With my first real boyfriend came the dawning of the mix CD, where I’d spend hours searching for the hidden messages between the lyrics, playing the same mix over and over while thinking about who’d made it, placing those songs forever into their own category of You Are Here. Each mix I’ve received is its own time capsule — or really, capsule. I think of those old Dexatrim ads that showed the little yellow and red miniscule beads of medicine pouring out of a gel cap. Recently I made my very first mix CD. I mean, not just a bunch of songs that I thought the other person would like but a crafted mix with tonal shifts, attention to genre and volume, and song choices that were cryptic but not too cryptic. And I finally understood the lure of saying something with music that you loved and wanted to give to someone else.