So I had this idea. I have tried to use journal prompts before, but to no avail. So while on my way home from class this morning, I thought, why not the Ipod?

See, I kind of feel like the Ipod is my musical magic 8 ball. You can ask it a question, or think about a situation, hit shuffle and see what happens. I realize the fact that I do this is kind of insane, but it's all in good fun. So I thought perhaps I could use the Ipod magic to help me with my journal writing. Press shuffle and write about something related to the first song that comes up. So here goes nothing.

Singing In My Sleep ~ Semisonic

Got your tape and it changed my mind
Heard your voice in between the lines
Come around from another time
Where nobody ever goes
All alone on the overpass
Wired and phoned to a heart of glass
Now i'm falling in love too fast
With you or the songs you chose

And all the stars
Play for me
Say the promise you long to keep

I can hear you sing it to me in my sleep
I can hear you sing it to me in my sleep

I've been living in your cassette
It's the modern equivalent
Singing up to a capulet
On a balcony in your mind

In the city the lion sleeps
Pray to sony my soul to keep
Were you ever so bright and sweet
Did you ever look so nice

And all the sounds
Dream for me
Dive me down in a soul so deep

I can hear you sing it to me in my sleep
I can hear you sing it to me in my sleep

Click to download the song

I have always adored this song, because it was something I could so closely relate to. I mean the fact alone that someone would write a song about mix tapes just kills me!

It's just SO me. I have been a music whore my entire life. Honestly as long as I can remember. I got my first stereo when I was in 4th grade. I was living in Pittsburgh at the time, going to some weird Lutheran school where grades 4,5 &6 where all taught by the same teacher in the same room...it was a Christmas present, I remember it distinctly. We lived in this old mansion that had been converted into apartments, we lived on the 2nd floor and there was this tremendously long hallway that ran the entire length of the place, so at the end of the hallway was where my parents set up the tree and the presents.

I had radios or boom boxes as we used to call them before then, but this was an actual honest to god stereo...complete with a turntable. For which I had to immediately run out and buy an actual record. So my mom took me to the record store, and I bought Taylor Dayne's "Tell It To My Heart"....



And on the walk home from the store I asked my mom how to rewind a record. Haha. I was a child of the cassette era, what can I say? And even though I collected a few more records throughout my youth, my vinyl addiction wouldn't take hold till much, much later.

"Pray to Sony my soul to keep" Nothing could describe my childhood better. Cassette tapes, albums cost around $10 when I was a kid, and I spent every cent I had on them. I didn't have great taste back then of course. I was pop tart. Janet Jackson, Debbie Gibson, Cyndi Lauper, Prince, etc. My copy of Janet Jackson's "Control" literally had the words wear off of it from so much play.

I was always big into lyrics. My mom loves to tell strangers how I would sit in my room, probably about age 13 - with a legal pad, and a special radio of my dad's that had a knob you could turn to slow down the speed. I would sit on my floor with these things and transcribe lyrics. I think to me it was kind of like musical poetry. I'd always loved poetry too, so I think that contributed to my love of lyrics. You can add "word whore" to all my many whoredoms.

But what this is really about is the mix tape. There used to be (probably still is) this website called "Art Of The Mix". I always thought that was a very ingenius name, because it truly was an art. Again, I'd sit on the floor, notebook or legal pad, tapes or cd's surrounding my stereo and I would try to make something from these songs. Usually there was a theme, favorite songs, sad songs, songs with places in the titles, anything. But it was all about the perfect progression. About how many songs you could fit on each side, optimizing your space, and having a running list in your head of all songs under 2:30 minutes or so that would fit on that annoying little end space.

"Now, the making of a good compilation tape is a very subtle art. Many do's and don'ts. First of all you're using someone else's poetry to express how you feel. This is a delicate thing." ~ High Fidelity

And I always wanted colored tapes, or I would write on them with colored markers or put stickers on them. It was always something very special. If you meant something to me, I made you a mix tape, or 10! Even my husband and I made each other tapes when we were dating. And then we made them together. It's always been a part of my life.

Now things are high-tech. We make mix cd's now. And we do it on the computer where all we have to do is drag and drop songs from one folder to another. You don't even have to listen to the songs while you are doing it. There is no creativity, no legal pad. Sometimes we don't even send cd's just email people the music files from our computers. Now it's a playlist and not a mix tape.

But I do appreciate the high tech side. I love that I can have the equivalent of all my mix tapes right on my Ipod, and I don't have to search my house up and down to find *that* tape I want to listen to. The convience factor is fabulous. Somedays though, I'd like to just down on my floor with my legal pad and stacks of cd's and make and old-fashioned mix tape.

Sadly, I doubt the tape player in my stereo even works these days.

"The making of a great compilation tape, like breaking up, is hard to do and takes ages longer than it might seem. You gotta kick off with a killer, to grab attention. Then you got to take it up a notch, but you don't wanna blow your wad, so then you got to cool it off a notch. There are a lot of rules." ~ High Fidelity