“The making of a great compilation tape, like breaking up is hard to do. It takes ages longer than it might seem. You gotta kick it off with a killer to grab attention. Then you gotta take it up a notch. But you don't want to blow your wad. So then you gotta cool it off a notch. There are a lot of rules.” Rob, “High Fidelity”

I never thought this day would come.

Who would’ve thought that it was real. So much.. too much.. I thought. And now, here I am. Staring at you. You, full of my love, my anger, my outlet. You, full. Completely full.

I love you, 30gb 5th Gen ipod video. And now, I’ve filled you up with so many songs, pictures, and movies that any new slew of content presents itself as a constant fork in the road. And here I am with new music to add and hard decisions to make.

There are songs that I never listen to. I think some of these songs have been on my ipod since I first bought her. (Yes, she’s a her. She’s Laura. See “High Fidelity”.) These songs, thriving in ever ignored playlists, are pieces of an identity that I, maybe, had four years ago, and, more likely, one that I was desperately grabbing at to become. Or maintain.

Underground hip hop. The lyrics. The beats. The freshness. The antithesis of the what the radio world had succumbed to once the record companies bought all the utilities, all the railroads, and Park Place and Broadway. It was the counter culture that I needed to tap into my veins as I was evolving from snot-nosed College student into, sorta, blue suited professional. I was never going to be a soulless cog of the machine and El-P, Immortal Technique, and Non-Phixion were gonna make sure I kept to that promise.

Then there are other pieces of who I was way back when – an artist, an unapologetic love-fiend, a suburban hippie of the 21st Century – a lover of craft and organic beats. Then there are the remnants of loves left unrequited: the punk list for her that sparkled in irreverence, the dancehall list for her that oozed sex appeal in her subdued chill, and that 90’s alternative list for her that made angst fun for angst’s sake.

But, four years since, I still hold them in my soul, but I don’t bump them in my ears.

Have I changed? Have my tastes changed? I can listen to any of these songs to this day, but I don’t.

Instead, I’ve been on a steady diet of the music from high school – the original era of MY hip hop, the slow jams, and the nostalgia – and the WB style pop that oozes so much self-indulgent pity that I can’t help but feel sorry for myself and love it.

But that’s not the question at hand. The answer I seek is the decision of which songs to remove from my ipod, and effectively remove from my heart’s memory. It’s the truth, right? Who in their right mind needs access to 30gbs of music at any given whim? These songs are the only pieces we have left of some people in our past, some eras of our lives, and even some core parts of ourselves. When we’re clearing memory on our drives we’re actually erasing the memories from our being. Yeah, they’ll be there forever, but songs bring us right back to every happy accident, every worrisome night, and every sharp jab that our hearts have had to suffer. The immediate timewarp to each physically emotional moment will be gone.

I suppose I can remove the aforementioned ghosttowned playlists – the ones that still exist but inhabit none of my attention or dedication. That’s simple. But after those are gone, what next? Inevitably, I’ll pick up more music and approach this same dilemma. To who am I going to say goodbye? Or what part of me will officially be so distant that it deserves its Viking funeral?

Okay. The other truism to this situation is that it’s not as big of a deal as I am making it out to be. Digital media can be backed up hundreds of times on hundreds of drives. I can easily upload music that I’ve removed in the past. I get that. But this is a bit of an existential moment. Consciously boxing days gone by means that you should have worthy experiences to take their places. But, does that really happen?

Just like getting older makes you live life differently, it also makes you listen to music differently; especially considering that we are getting folded into having full libraries in the palm of our hands. Gone are the days of buying one or two albums at a time and listening to them from beginning to end – we would pop them into our decks and vibe until the vibe got repeated too much (or if they were so good they made it onto our special mixtapes or cds). Nowadays, we buy singles at the 99cent clip and if we do buy albums most of us hit the shuffle button and don’t listen to the journey of the tracks the way the artists intended them to be heard.

Our mixtapes and cds had 17 to 20 songs at most. Our playlists are infinite. How do we make relationships with most of the music we now encounter inconspicuously? Yes, there will always be the song that was playing when you first realize the person in front of you was worthy of a playlist and the song that played last in the rental car that you and your homies took for a road trip. Those persist. Those become part of our lives. But the rest? Good luck. They’re as anonymous as the hundreds of new people we pass on our commute to and from work everyday.

And maybe that’s what this ipod issue is really about. There is warmth and reality in old songs no matter how much they’re not listened to. But new music? It’s cold. It passes. It’s lost in the crowd – just like we are.

Maybe I’m scared of losing touch with that love – the love that I felt – that I knew. Immature and fleeting love was real no matter how unfounded. Adult love is complicated with rules and reasons-not-to.

But here we are. I want to put in this new Nas. This new U2. This newly explored pre-Funkadelic Parliament.

I have to say goodbye to someone and hope for the ever elusive connection in my “nowadays”. My now-a-daze.

We can’t live in the past, nor do I want to. But I can still feel – at least one more time – for the people and those experiences that meant so much at some point before because I’m sure I’ll never feel that way again.

posted by: breakfast boy

Bell's ringing @ 9:38 PM

 0 hands raised