Today I saw a man on the subway and he had on his lap a discman. I found myself filled with a strange sort of envy as I stared at the ancient technology. I wondered how many cds he was carrying with him. I wondered if they were favorites from years ago or if he just went and bought a new cd, from an actual store. I haven't bought an actual cd from an actual store in 3 years. I wondered if he had mix cds in his bag and if he did, who they were from or if he made them himself. I wondered if he had a car and used a cassette tape converter with the discman in the car. I wondered why he didn't have an ipod.
Then I started to reminisce about the first person I knew who had a discman. I was 14 and on a school summer trip abroad and he was the nephew of my principal and essentially the only boy on the trip. I stared at that discman with envy, too. How cool was a discman in 1994? That was the summer I was introduced to Billy Joel, an artist who would lay down a large portion of the soundtrack of my life but I didn't know that then. All I knew was those were the only cds this guy chose to pack for his discman. When the trip was over he made me a mix tape of the songs that filled that vacation. A tape I still have and will never throw away, even though I don't have a cassette player for it, there will always be something about a mix made just for you.
The mix tape. A forgotten art. Sure we make mixes now. We drop and drag songs we like into a folder and press a button. A minute and a half later a cd pops out and with a Sharpie you sign and deliver. But the mix tape. The mix tape took time and thought. Spending the night rummaging through the shoebox of cassettes, planning out and writing down the right songs for that mix and then sitting in front of the duel cassette player as you fast forwarded and rewound each one to the appropriate song and then play, record, stop, repeat. The finished product was an accomplishment and had heart. You couldn't half ass a cassette mix.
By the time I stepped off the subway I was lost in memories of favorite mix tapes, bad 80's love songs and long nights driving around a town filled with first loves, great friends and unbridled musings of a high school girl. My first thought was, "It was all so much simpler then." But truth be told, it was not. It was confusing and complicated and wrought with all the emotions of the typical teenager just trying to figure it out. But we had Heart and Chicago and REO Speedwagon to help us along the Journey. It wasn't simple, but it was innocent. Perhaps it's the intricacies that make it innocent. As you gain experience, if you're lucky, you finally begin to really understand that the hardest to learn was the least complicated. But there are nights like tonight that I would trade the ease of adult understandings for another night of analysis with an old friend and mix tape made just for me.
