the mix tape

you may read this and roll your eyes. but you and i both know. you've done this. sure you have. no? well perhaps not to the extent that i did the mix tape. i'll give you that. but, and here it's me who has to face facts, no one punctuates quite like me. you'd think i'd have grown out of the sudden welling up in tears of sadness, overwhelment (totally a word), frustration, that accentuate my emotional state like an exclamation mark. i should have grown out of this. and yet, no. not a chance. 

and perhaps it's the fault of the mix tape. all that late 80s and 90s cultivating of melancholy. all the intensity of feeling generated by the lyrics. how did the songwriter know exactly how i was feeling? the drum beat. the minor chord. and the unspoken knowledge that the singers had big hair and, if not actual shoulder pads, they had shoulder pads on the inside.

i would put together a mix tape of angsty tunes just to make myself feel bad after a break up. I believe i even referred to the tape as the break up compilation tape. Or BUCT. actually i never called it BUCT. i just did that now in some kind of wild attempt to distract you from the ludicrousness of what i'm expressing. i remember on one occasion...and actually this is the only occasion i remember, but i am sure it was not an isolated incident given the presence of the aforementioned punctuating to this day which is clearly the product of over-stimulation of the emotions...anyway, on this one occasion i was driving on the open road to join friends for the weekend, mix tape blaring, sinead o'connor belting out nothing compares to you, or perhaps it was the cranberries with some equally plaintive irish lament, tears streaming down my face. and who knows now who the person was who had provoked the whole mix tape scenario. probably no one in particular. i was probably just working those muscles of hyperbolic loss. in case i needed them later.

the mix tape

ho hey. the lumineers

carrying your love with me. George Strait

dream a little dream of me. Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong

all the world. Brighter later 

kiss me. Sixpence none the richer

when your mind's made up. Glen Hansard (from the Once soundtrack)

what life could be. Flip Grater

singing in my soul. Fly my pretties. 

little things. Trinity Roots

days are long, nights are longer. Tiny Ruins

la valse d'Amelie, Yann Tierson (from the Amelie Soundtrack)

and a little bit of country.