I’m going to make you a mix tape. It’s going to be all old songs, nothing new, songs that will seem familiar to you even if you haven’t ever heard them before. Maybe you’ll feel like you’re in a movie, to hear these songs playing while you go about your day. Maybe you’ll feel like someone is watching you in a theatre while you read a book and listen to my mix tape and you’ll think that person is me, and I’ll be thinking this is my new favorite movie. Maybe you’ll feel like you’re going down with a large ship and these songs are the last thing you’ll hear, unless help arrives in time, in which case you’ll always listen to it and think of how brave but frightened you and the people around you were. You might develop a habit of playing my tape when you do a certain activity, like cleaning your house or knitting. Maybe a friend will have a baby in a few years and you’ll have to think of something to do with the unfamiliar child while your friend is doing errands and you’ll put on the tape and start dancing and the little kid will start dancing too, and then you will have passed on the memory of that tape to someone else.
It probably won’t be an actual tape, because nobody does that any more, but if we both have tape players it will be a real cassette tape so that we know this tape was meant for you and not anyone else. It will have a cover design that I made and a list of the songs so that you can know their names and we can talk about them later. I will want to know what your favorite songs are when you’ve heard it, but I will have no way of knowing if they will stay your favorites forever or if your tastes will change over time. Or if someone dumps you and for some reason that one song was playing and now you hate it. I hope that doesn’t happen. These are your songs, from me, and you should always know that, even if you can’t bring yourself to actually listen to that one song anymore. Maybe that person won’t dump you and you will give the tape to a DJ while you’re planning your wedding and say It’s the fourth song on the first side. If I am at your wedding I might hear it and cry in front of everyone. I hope I don't miss it because I'm in the bathroom if that song is played at your wedding.
I’m going to make your mix tape and I hope you like it. You should listen to it at least a few times in your car.
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© 2006 Damion Armentrout. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.