Playlists

 

Rainy weather has offered many opportunities to continue culling and clearing for our kitchen/family room remodel (which has been pushed back yet another few weeks as we make our way through an interminable permit process - oh my, THIS CONTINUED LAMENT will not be the point of today's blog post, I assure you, I assure me). 

Inside a large hope chest (really, a bench in our home), I found a treasure trove of music CD's and cassette tapes, long long forgotten. What to do with all these? 

The cassettes were problematic  - we have nothing to play these with anymore, and by and large, these were handmade playlists. Many of these I simply trashed; but, I made a small container of 'treasures' and we will see if anyone we know still has a cassette deck and whether these cassettes still play. In some cases, we are able to recreate (beloved) playlists again on our computer.

The CD sorting took an unexpectedly long time, as I opened each CD case to check for its corresponding CD, and created numerous piles:

- empty CD cases, requiring a further search through the large compilation cases

- a pile for donation

- a pile for trash (no corresponding CD can be found)

- a pile for each family member 

- a pile of "I DON'T KNOW, WHAT DO YOU THINK?" for everyone to look through

The individual piles for family members really confused me when I realized I had no music CDs for my youngest son; all the boys love music and have varied tastes - where/what/why does he have nothing? Then it dawned on me - he was ten years old when the ipod was created...he has always had music available digitally. Unlike his older brothers, he did not spend hours creating his own CDs for road trips and friends. He has no physical detritus to sort through! Extraordinary to think about.

It is astounding how clearing out this one chest led to a long, sentimental journey through time, remembering. 

It also led to a poem about creating playlists. I had a little fun with its visual structure, as I tried to capture how the technology of music collections has changed over time. Enjoy!

how to create a music playlist

imagine which songs to include? which to record first? which should be last in the set?

create the perfect music playlist romance friendship road trip dance party have fun

thinking this through you’ll need a blank cassette tape one by one spin the tunes

 on the turntable, line the needle up with the track, press record on the deck, &

build the playlist, yes there was such an art to it, don’t forget, hand write, no 

better yet, type the list of songs for the sleeve and if you really want to 

make this a gift, create vibrant cover art for the jacket, use your

imagination. later there were cd’s and computers so all

you had to do was gather songs from various cd’s & 

record an all new playlist on a blank cd 

yes a very similar process as before 

plus you could still create art

on the cd sleeve to add

sentiment and then

poof! there was

streaming &

nothing

at all

to

h

o

l
d

___________________

It's Tuesday and I am participating in the

 Slice of Life.  

Thank you, Two Writing Teachers, for creating this supportive community 

of teacher-writers!

Archeological dig

All this time at home has freed us to see what needs fixing, what needs changing, and what we can cull. Being retired is an added bonus - because we have the time to follow through. 

The past day or so, we've been tinkering with a small, narrow closet - adding and painting new shelving, adjusting some coat hooks. One set of coat hooks was set up for when our children were about three feet tall - and they have never been changed since that time, rendering them basically useless (unless you are partial to the look of floor debris clinging to the bottom of your adult coat). The shelves in the closet are (were!) - sadly - simply a series of stackable plastic bins, hastily set in place as a temporary solution right after we remodeled 30 years ago. These bins were immediately filled and overflowing with the stuff of daily living, and the original idea of adding 'real' shelves long forgotten - until now, that is. 

This closet is located right next to our side entrance, our main door to the house from the driveway; thus, these bins were the depository of all those things one takes off and gets rid off as soon as they enter the house. Coupled with a door that closes, hiding the ugly truth from regular eyes, this location became a treasure trove of forgotten artifacts. 

I set about emptying the bins themselves - what's in there? what can I toss? what belongs elsewhere? - while Tony began sawing boards for the shelving. There was so much forgotten junk in these shelves! Ugh! Suffice to say, I threw more things away than I saved; I had a small pile of donations. Lots of paper trash. (There is always so much stray paper in this house.) I was surprised by the "singles" - three separate gloves, each from a different pair, no match anywhere around; one single flip flop from a teenager (in other words, at least ten years old); one slipper...where are their matches? where did they go? why is it here and not the bedroom? I also found a pair of children's gloves. Itty bitty hands. No, they are not my grandchildren's. 

Here's a fun new chapter to this storytelling: I decided to wash this small find for future use by said grandchildren, when - I kid you not - only one small glove made it OUT of the dryer. What? Two gloves are washed and dried but only one comes out? Where did the match go? Do gloves have feelings? It's as if they cried out - 'what, you ignore me for 20 years and expect me to hang around now!?'

Sifting through the debris of this one little closet has sent me on a rampage through the house, culling, tossing, weeding, and organizing. I even spent some time in that truly forgotten space - our attic, opening up bins and clearing out clutter. It is amazing what time can do for these stored memories - yes, there are many things that I still love and want to keep, but there is a whole subset of extraneous, much less meaningful stuff with which I am easily able to part. I am excited for our trash pickup this week! 

Isn't it wild, though, how you can hold a piece of paper - say, a handwritten note, or an old ticket to a concert, or a child's drawing, and instantaneously be transported back in time - seeing where you were, hearing certain songs, remembering how you felt? 

We often joke that it's been thirty-plus years of deferred maintenance on our home...truth is, these years have flown by. Now, in this quiet 'stuck at home' interlude of the pandemic, we can finally focus. It's almost like being on an archeological dig, right? (Yay! I am traveling!) 

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I wrote this post for Slice of Life.  All participants are writing about one moment, one part of their day, on Tuesdays. Thank you, Two Writing Teachers!