You Don't Know What You Want Till You Know What You Want

I am late for an Easter Egg hunt. Desperate for my kids to get their fair share of plastic eggs, I roar out of my driveway and head for the highway. I hurry to my destination cursing slower, less egg-focused drivers. Once I get halfway to church, I calm down a bit and slide in one of my favorites, Joe Jackson's Body and Soul, to soothe my nerves. The familiar tones of Heart of Ice fill the car and then silence.

"What the f--"

I censor myself and eject the tape. Two seconds in, the tape had snapped.

I am always strangely sad when one of my tapes break. Of course I have made the inevitable transition first to CDs and then to iTunes. Nowadays, I mostly buy singles that I heard on the radio or that I remember from younger days. I rarely purchase whole albums on iTunes. Currently, I walk around with 732 of my favorite hits.

I am no music guru. I usually avoid talking about music because I know next to nothing about it and I enjoy my ignorance. I can get fancy and intellectual about film but I know my musical taste is sugary and wafer-thin and that suits me fine.

I miss my tapes. I miss hearing an artist's misses as well as his hits. I miss playing a tape over and over. I miss the squeal of rewinding to hear Prince's Kiss for the eleventh time.

Last week when we rearranged the bedroom my son James pulled out my box of tapes from under the bed. It had gotten wedged behind the wrapping paper box. My tapes are fragile and sound warbly. I listened to a few tentatively. Listening to my old music in its old format brought back memories of college and terrible boyfriends and laying on my dorm bed. I know I can replace my old favorites. Just the other day, I bought a bunch of Suzanne Vega songs including most of Solitude Standing from iTunes. I love hearing songs that I had not heard since my Vega tape suffered a major case of crushing a few years ago. Yet the experience was different and with each lost tape I lose a memory.