I’ve come a long way from my box of pencil crayons and the glue stick I would use to decorate the jackets of mix tapes passed onto friends and lovers. And, it’s been with excitement and a heavy heart that I’ve come to adopt new technology these past ten years. My so-called need for music that plays faster, smoother, and smaller sits anxious and caffeinated beside my yearnings for a time when things were simpler. It was a time for me when a home-made mix tape from a crush was enough to make me swoon. I would trace my fingers over their hand-written playlist and the pictures cut from magazines that were collaged on the front of the case. I would listen to every word; allowing the words to come to me as if they were floating from his bedroom to mine.
Granted, over the years I’ve tried to make mix-cds and pass them on. There was even a time when I would go so far as to design a cover on the computer, print it out, and send it to someone special across the ocean. But, there was always something so cold and impersonal in its design and delivery. Maybe, over the years, technology has helped music to become entirely purified. Maybe, in the re-defining and filtering of all the notes and sounds, we somehow eliminated all the imperfections that lingered in the shadows between beats. Perhaps it was these imperfections that made my heart flutter, or maybe it was just my innocence
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