Not Knowing is Important
How the loss of mixtapes means we know too much and miss out on the important things in the moment
I once made a mixtape. It was the very early 90s. If you're my age you did it, too.
Weekends meant that radio programs were different, and the one I listened to played a lot of music from other countries. I can hear it now, one of the songs that caught my attention and drew me in.
A chorus of voices, a language I didn't know, strange harmonies mixing and blending and sweeping over me with quixotic emotion. I didn't capture the name or the album or the year, and even now if I could play that tape (who has a player?) I wouldn't be able to recover more, and - this is important - I don't want to.
Mystery is gone. Thanks, Google. You ruined it for me.
Mixtapes have garbled sound. You can hear the audible click when recording starts and ends. Sometimes things overlap, or the recording beneath peeks through in between songs. Twitchy adolescent fingers waited, breath caught in lungs, ears at the ready for the radio announcer to start the song and Please God stop talking already so I can record Heaven is a place on earth already, man! And if I could listen to that tape now, 30+years later, I would relive all of those feelings and sensations all at once with the music to guide me.
How many times have I shouted at the fast-moving form of my wife, her hands reaching for a phone to look up the artist, the year, the film title, the director, the brand of toy, the ad jingle - "don't do it! You don't have to know everything!" Only to see the scornful look from her that yes, yes she does.
But this! This is a moment worth preserving too! I don't NEED to know!
I can live without it. I am better without it. I am okay with less in my head, with unresolved moments, with incorrect song lyrics (rock the cat box).
Not knowing who wrote or performed or recorded that song I captured on cassette is a kind of homage to it, to the fuzzy-edged moments in time grasped in hurried tapes jammed into players in hopes of remembering or finding or keeping.
We don't partake in this ritual anymore, and I'm not sure we're better for it. Did you trade mix tapes with people you befriended or dated? I mean... I did. And I thought my talent at recording just the right songs was Amazing (to say the least). I did not limit myself to any one genre. Sometimes I captured the DJ saying something funny or stupid and kept it as evidence that I existed in that moment, that I was in that room listening to that show. Sometimes I caught a song or excerpt without meaning to, only to love that sample later. I almost never knew the artist (except for you, Belinda Carlisle), I never knew album titles. I had no fun facts or trivia teasers to prove my coolness (since I wasn't cool), and I thought old songs were new songs (but anyone could make that mistake with David Bowie).
The moment cassette tapes departed, we lost this ability to live in the moment without the constant barrage of too-much-information at our fingertips. We replaced it with burning CDs and then buying our first iPods, and now we stream everything, always with the title, artist, album in plain sight (even in the car).
But if you close your eyes can you hear it? Can you hear the poorly recorded radio sample of a song you never did know the artist for? The recording of that radio program you couldn't find now if you tried? That thing that was lost to time and never kept on tape, even the reel-to-reel your father taught you to wind by hand (like mine did)?
I really hope you can hear that. I still can. And I'm so glad I can't look it up and find out more. Not knowing is powerful.
Your trans friend,
Robin
Rock the Cat box! Wow, does that bring back memories. I loved making mixtapes.
I can take you back a bit farther, Robin. My late brother had an 8-track tape player in his first car. I used to like sitting in the parked car (I couldn't drive yet) and listening to Inna Gadda da Vida by Iron Butterfly.