I have a collection of homemade mix tapes, ranging from my freshman year in college to a couple of half-finished attempts I made a couple years ago when I realized that I didn't buy as much new music as I used to and all my favorite songs were already on at least one other previous mix tape. The point is, I can't get rid of these tapes, even though I never listen to them anymore (my car only has a CD player), and I've stopped liking half the bands whose songs comprise the tracklistings. They're like time capsules; they instantly take me back to a certain period in my life -- a boy I had a crush on, a movie I liked, a dorm room or apartment, the car I was driving. Some tapes have fancy covers that I either drew by hand or created from pretty patterns cut from magazines, and others simply list the bands and songs. Making mix CDs will never be the same as making a mix tape. There's something about carefully thinking out the order of the songs (the first song was always my current favorite), pre-winding a bit of the tape with your finger so that you didn't cut off the beginning of a song, letting a couple of seconds of silence lapse after a song before hitting "pause" so that you had a nice, unhurried transition, guessing how much time was at the end and picking a short song to fit. And then there was the first listen. I would always wait until the next time I drove somewhere. I purposely hid the cassette case from view, so that I'd be surprised when the next song started -- oh, I totally forgot that I put that song on here! With a CD, you drag and drop some files, hit "burn", and you're done. Where's the fun in that?
I don't make mix tapes anymore, but I want something that I can look back on in the future to remind me of things I did and things I liked. I've never been very good at consistently keeping a written journal, and besides, I can type faster than I can write (which still isn't fast enough to keep up with my thoughts). However you found your way here, welcome to my Digital Mix Tape.
