Confession

That song you linked me to… I clicked it immediately, and it was playing in the background while we chatted. But I'm not familiar with it, and I was focusing on you, so I didn't really hear it, you know? And then yesterday was… well… yesterday was yesterday. I did put the song on a few times… but it was background noise, and I still didn't have a chance to concentrate on it…

I only just now got a chance to really revisit it, to give it a real listen, and… oh, love.

So today I've decided to say “fuck it” — I'm going to send you to my Spotify profile. Maybe you've looked it up already, maybe you haven't. But earlier this week, I cleaned it up, and as of this morning there are exactly three public playlists — and they are all for you. Um… also… I'm a huge (tremendous!) dork, so they are each arranged to fit on a 60-minute cassette tape… yeah. They're mixtapes. I've been dying to make you a mixtape, and I guess now I sorta have…

I'm writing this before having sent it to you, but I won't post this until after. I know you haven't really found me here but… I'm still superstitious I guess, lol. And I want to make sure I actually talk to you before I pretend talk to you. Priorities, right?

So here's what I kinda wanted to tell you about them, but didn't want to use up too much of the too-rare and incredibly valuable chatting time I get with you jabbering about:

‘95 Mixtape — this was the first one I made. I started by trying to make it using only songs that came out the year (by my calculations) that we would have gone to high school together. But that proved far too difficult and limiting. So then I decided to instead make that the cut-off date — no songs that were released after I graduated. Also, they had to be songs I actually listened to while I was in high school. There are quite a few really great ones from before, but at the time I had zero awareness of them. This was to be a mixtape that I might have actually made for you if we had known each other back then.

But I quickly realized that memory — or at least, my memory — is a weird thing. There were quite a few songs that I would swear I was listening to in high school, but they didn't come out until years after. There are whole entire bands that I thought I listened to back then, but whose first album didn't even come out until after. So that led me to create a second mixtape — I mean, playlist:

‘99 Mixtape — same rules, just with a cut-off date four years later. But my musical horizons were starting to expand, so this one also includes one or two older songs that had entered into my awareness by then.

Nothing much more to say about that one, except that while putting it together, I remembered that when I used to make an actual mixtape, it was also just about sharing the music I loved. Plus, I didn't have an infinite catalog to choose from like I do now — just whatever was in my collection of CDs and tapes. So there would be quite a few songs that had nothing to do with love at all. And that thought led me to making the third and final mixtape:

I Had Bad Taste — This is just a bunch of songs that I loved during my teens and young adulthood. Some are about love, most are not. All of them are songs I've probably listened to half a million times each, while doing homework, or driving to my friends' houses, or walking home from school. Just a little cross-section of my musical taste 20-30 years ago.

I hope you get a kick out of them, even if you don't love all or even most of it. Some of those songs I can't even really stomach anymore… especially the ska, lol. Don't tell that to your neighbors a couple of houses down! They might not want to hang out with me anymore, lol (though I sort of secretly love that ska plays such an integral role in their origin story…). It was a fun, if silly exercise. And I had been listening to the playlists nonstop myself… up until this morning, where suddenly I have another song playing on endless repeat for some completely mysterious reason…

And I'm glad I shared them with you, however much you end up liking them (or not). And, while I haven't actually given you a physical cassette (though… I could, I do have a functioning tape deck, and blanks are available on amazon — I know, I checked, lol… but do you? I'm guessing not…)… well, now I can say I've given you a mixtape. Or three. And I'm pretty darned happy about that.

I hope you had a beautiful day, my sweet love. Talk soon.

Yours,
♒️

PS — The moment I finish this postscript, I'm going to go and give your link a heart reaction, which I should have done from the start. Of course immediately after that I'll be taking Z to drums and then who knows how the afternoon will go from there… So no telling when I'll get to actually get to send you the promised link… but I will. Today. Even if the timing is never right for us to chat. It's just… a thing I've gotta do.

PPS — We did chat! And it was lovely. And I love you. Gosh, I do just love you so… sigh