I introduce the mix tape.
If the only playlist you know of is on iTunes, this all may be hard to understand. A mix tape was so different.
It was the 80’s way of recording songs onto one device so you could listen back to the songs later. Often times, you’d make a tape for someone else…usually your best friend or your secret admirer. You’d wait up all night with bated breath for the radio DJ to play that song. You had to know the first few chords of the song. You would wait for that magic moment that the dj stopped talking so you could hit record. Then you sat back, with a smile on your face and a bob in your head. Until the next magic moment: the end of the song just before the commercial began. Sometimes, if you hit it on just the right night, you’d get a second song mixed into it…and if it was a song you would have chosen anyway…bonus track! (however, you hoped and prayed the radio station wouldn’t SAY bonus track with an echo effect as the song mixed in). And unlike the playlists of today, deleting a mix tape was not simple. Sure, you could record over it…but you would most likely hear your old track playing under your new track at some point. There was no completely deleting a mix tape: unless you set it on fire...I may know this from experience.
If you were a child of the 80s…you totally know what I’m talking about.
I saw the picture above on Pinterest and it got me thinking: If life is a mix tape, I need to choose my playlist wisely.
There are days we don’t get to choose what happens to us or to what we are exposed. There are days where we wish we could delete by just pushing a button. But much like a mix tape, we are sometimes left with little remnants of the tune we’d like to get out of our head, playing in the background muffled by the new song we so long to hear.
In the last couple of months, I’ve been learning a new way to tackle the negative tunes in my head. I’m learning that although I don’t have control of some of the circumstances in my life, I do have control of the thoughts that I’ll let repeat. I do get to choose the playlist.
I get to choose a playlist of words of life or death…and I choose life. I choose truth. I choose faith. I choose love.
If the only playlist you know of is on iTunes, this all may be hard to understand. A mix tape was so different.
It was the 80’s way of recording songs onto one device so you could listen back to the songs later. Often times, you’d make a tape for someone else…usually your best friend or your secret admirer. You’d wait up all night with bated breath for the radio DJ to play that song. You had to know the first few chords of the song. You would wait for that magic moment that the dj stopped talking so you could hit record. Then you sat back, with a smile on your face and a bob in your head. Until the next magic moment: the end of the song just before the commercial began. Sometimes, if you hit it on just the right night, you’d get a second song mixed into it…and if it was a song you would have chosen anyway…bonus track! (however, you hoped and prayed the radio station wouldn’t SAY bonus track with an echo effect as the song mixed in). And unlike the playlists of today, deleting a mix tape was not simple. Sure, you could record over it…but you would most likely hear your old track playing under your new track at some point. There was no completely deleting a mix tape: unless you set it on fire...I may know this from experience.
If you were a child of the 80s…you totally know what I’m talking about.
I saw the picture above on Pinterest and it got me thinking: If life is a mix tape, I need to choose my playlist wisely.
There are days we don’t get to choose what happens to us or to what we are exposed. There are days where we wish we could delete by just pushing a button. But much like a mix tape, we are sometimes left with little remnants of the tune we’d like to get out of our head, playing in the background muffled by the new song we so long to hear.
In the last couple of months, I’ve been learning a new way to tackle the negative tunes in my head. I’m learning that although I don’t have control of some of the circumstances in my life, I do have control of the thoughts that I’ll let repeat. I do get to choose the playlist.
I get to choose a playlist of words of life or death…and I choose life. I choose truth. I choose faith. I choose love.
