Remember the good ole days of burned CDs and mixtapes on cassette? This one here does. It’s crazy how the new generation doesn’t remember these things and God I feel old for saying that but it really is a blast from the past, you know?
I remember when I asked a friend of mine to burn a CD for me for the first time so I could play it in the car. I gave him a list but he managed to put in a few pleasant surprises in there that really made me happy. It was a special feeling. Then I learned how to do it myself and everyone got CDs.
The way we share music has changed. Barely anyone has the time anymore to just check out some music you send them. The music scene is saturated right now so we have too many options and also, there are just way too many distractions online. With a video tempting you to click it with a clickbait title or a juicy social media thread; we’ve spread ourselves thin.
Nowadays we just pay a subscription fee and we can have unlimited downloads. I’m guilty myself of downloading music I’m never going to listen to. Whereas in the past we had to scour a file sharing site for the best quality upload so we could download it onto our MP3 player and risk getting a virus infection on our computer.
Mixtapes used to be personal. They had your name on it, they were your signature. You got the chance to be a curator, or a DJ. A tastemaker. And mixtapes came with their own titles like “music to listen to when you’re sad” or “music that makes you dance.” It was almost like the art of making a playlist as where if you had one skippable track on the whole thing then it was a dud. It’s crazy how romantic it seems now looking in hindsight.
I’m not saying I don’t like the advantage of having access to hundreds of thousands of songs in great qualify readily available. I just miss the times where we paid special close attention to the details. Where we tried to create music for an occasion. For the right moment. Music pairs well with experiences as they imprint memories in your head that last a lifetime.
All I’m saying is that if someone wanted to send me a mixtape titled “songs that make me think of your beautiful face,” I wouldn’t be mad.
I walk up to the kitchen window to observe the expansive blue sky. In my headphones I’m listening to a song that sounds like it’s pulled straight out of a soundtrack. This feels like the end. Or at least the end of one chapter. I’ve been here for two whole months and for a moment I didn’t know if I was going to be trapped here or not. I fly tomorrow and what I’ll bring back home with me I’m not sure but I’m confident it’s something.
I have a hope for the future. For a moment it was touch and go. These last couple of months haven’t been easy. I found myself praying a lot. Making myself to be a victim. Then I realized just how fortunate I am. Something clicked in my head. Now I feel like I have a mission. It won’t be without its tears but that’s life I guess. Whether I wait around forever for someone to “save” me is up to me entirely.
I like music because it makes me feel like a hero. Will I be the hero in my own story? I guess we’ll have to see.
There once was a boy who lived with his mother and two half siblings in a place known as The Land of Broken Glass. This dystopian land was riddled with heaps of garbage as big as some mountains and waste laid as far as the eye could see.
The family scoured the land for edibles or even something useful for their survival. The one thing they never had was a mirror. One day the boy asked his mother why he’d never seen his reflection.
“I want to see my reflection mother, please show me my reflection,” he said.
“You want to see your reflection?”
She picked up a piece of broken glass and showed it to the boy but he had none!
“See, you are so ugly that the mirror won’t even show your reflection,” she laughed.
The boy grew sour inside when she said this. Days passed of them wandering the land, making contact with absolutely no one when the boy stood up.
“Mother, all we do is worry about surviving. We never have any fun. We never enjoy ourselves. And if I’m so ugly like you say maybe you are all better off without me!”
“Good luck out there then, you’re gonna need it!” She laughed.
The boy walked off into the unknown. He wandered for miles and miles. There came a point where he was really tired and so he collapsed on the ground.
When he woke up he was inside a building but the sun shone through a hole in the ceiling.
“Oh, you’re awake,” he heard a voice coming from inside the building.
He propped himself up to see who was speaking to him and it was a girl. She wore rags and she was barefoot.
“W-who are you? And why aren’t you wearing any shoes? You’ll cut yourself!” The boy exclaimed.
“Because I don’t have any,” she retorted.
“Who are you?” He asked.
“I don’t know. I don’t have a name.”
The girl had no identity and neither did the boy. Neither of them had a name. After that the boy and the girl spent days scouring the earth together for bits of food or shiny objects and bringing it back to their habitat.
Without the girl knowing the boy nabbed a book and a piece of glass. At times when she was asleep the boy would look into the glass but not see his reflection and other times he would engross himself in the book.
The next day when the boy woke he saw the girl tending to a wound.
“When did you do that to yourself?”
She turned innocently towards him.
“While we were out in the fields…”
“I’ve been reading this book and there’s a character in there. Her name is Ellen and she’s a lot like you. So I think your name should be Ellen.”
The girl blushed and tried to contain her smile.
“Ellen?”
The boy just nodded.
“Okay.”
“Well now you have a name but I still don’t have a reflection. How can others see who I am if I can’t see myself?”
The girl merely sympathized with him.
Some time passed and the girl told the boy she had a surprise for him. The boy was much curious. When he came to find out, the girl had assembled an old broken mirror from parts she found out in the heaps.
“I think your mother put a curse on you. There’s an old myth that if someone can’t see their reflection that a loved one can restore them back to normal. Here, look inside the mirror.”
The boy peeked inside the mirror and indeed he saw his reflection. He passed his hands through his hair and touched on his face.
“That’s me?” He asked.
The girl nodded. After that he just sat there staring at it.
“Not what you expected?”
“It’s just my mother always said I was ugly. I think she was right.”
The girl grabbed his hand with one swoop and looked into his eyes.
“Don’t you ever say that. I’d been on my own days on days and something told me one day to walk your way and I found you lying in the sun. So I carried you back here. I think you were the sign I’d been looking for and when you gave me my name and told me about your situation, I couldn’t help but think this was meant to be… I love you.”
“I just met you not too long ago.”
“Doesn’t matter,” she said. “You are my blessing.”
She hugged the boy and the boy began to tear until he just wept and the girl pulled away from him.
“Don’t cry. For better or for worse you have a home now.”
The two lived together from then on happily despite having very little, eventually even having children. Who would also scour the earth and their children and so on.
Artistic Apathy 