The Mixtape Project

I remember being surprised because Martin and I hadn't been all that close and, you know, making a mix tape takes time and commitment. I was very touched that he made this for me. I've listened to it many times over the years is one of the very few tapes I kept through many moves. The tape feels like an anchor back to a very specific and beautiful time and community, which I left behind. 

Remember mixtapes? I do. I loved them. Everything about them. The physicality. Those rattly plastic cassettes, the jewel cases, handwritten track lists and liner notes. I loved making them, receiving them, sharing them, finding them. I loved tightening up the tape with my finger before popping them in. I loved that satisfying clunk whir of pressing play. And I loved the discovery of listening. A track I’d never heard before making me run my finger over the track list to find it, “who the heck is this?” A track I knew taking on new significance based on what was right before it, right after it. Mixtapes were more than just a collection of songs—more than just a playlist. The order of the songs meant something. Mixtapes were dialogues, declarations, poems, conversations. We expressed ourselves through them—our longing, our love, our frustrations, our hopes, our fears. We bragged through mixtapes. We sent out secret messages in them. We searched. We hoped to be found out, discovered, heard, understood. But then, like so many things, mixtapes just faded away. The medium of the cassette tape was replaced by the unsatisfying plastic of a CD, and then an iPod, and then streaming. And now our music lives on Spotify and Apple Music, on Tidal and Amazon. It’s become like the air. And that’s OK, that’s the way it works. Nostalgia can be one of the most toxic impulses, especially when we try to hang on to what was and miss out on what is—but I can remember the mixtape and the place it held in our lives and hearts without resorting to those toxic impulses of the older generation.