What is love?

A few months back, I read what has become one of my favorite books: Love is a Mix Tape by Rob Sheffield. I laughed. I cried (a lot). I related. Rob & I share a lot of the same feeling about love and what a relationship is/should be. While I have not ever had to experience the horrible blow of the death of a spouse, I have lost people that were, and still are, very close to me. I do not handle death well AT ALL, which is probably why I was a blubbery mess! (But that’s a topic for another blog…)

Like Rob, I have always had an obsession of sorts with music. I played the violin for 10 years in school, and I’ve been known to dink around with a guitar & piano here and there. I can carry a tune but only choose to only in the privacy of my shower and my truck, unless I’ve had a couple drinks then watch out. And I love to dance! But I digress…

I have appreciation for all types of music. It is very easy for me to relate an event in my past with the song that was playing or the music that I listened to at that time, a kind of sense memory if you will. I, like most of the other children of the late 70s/early 80s I’m sure, LOVED to make mix tapes! I made them up into college, and I’m pretty sure I still have some of them. The last one I made, I made with one of my roommates in the dorm our freshman year. We had both been treated pretty crappy by the guys we were dating at the time so we put together all kinds of mean songs, labeled the tape “Asshole” and found a way to secretly give it to them. I think we only did it to one guy a piece because about a week later we realized that our attempts to “show them” backfired! As girls, we put in a lot of time & effort reading into the lyrics of the songs to find the ones that said what we wanted to but didn’t have the guts to say to their faces (c’mon ladies, we read into EVERYTHING…admit it). In actuality, we ended up making a pretty amazing compilation. The “track list” read like this:

                “Asshole” – Denis Leary

                “Break Your Heart” – Barenaked Ladies

                “Just a Toy” – Barenaked Ladies

                “Right Through You” – Alanis Morissette

                “Hidden Track” (from Jagged Little Pill) – Alanis Morissette

                “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me” – Violent Femmes

                “I’m Free” – Violent Femmes

                “Lies” – Violent Femmes

                “Dance, MF Dance” – Violent Femmes

                “Kiss Off” – Violent Femmes

                “Stand” – Blues Traveler

                “Look Around” – Blues Traveler

                “Spinning Around Over You” – Lenny Kravitz

                “Piggy” – Nine Inch Nails

                “Eraser” – Nine Inch Nails

So, I ask you to think back to all those mix tapes you made (or received) when you were younger… I’ll wait, just try not to hurt yourself J Aside from the “party mixes”, aren’t most of them about love? Cassettes have sort of phased out, but I would equate a playlist on your iPod or mp3 player to the modern day mix tape. Wouldn’t you? And it’s soooo much easier, right? No sitting in front of the HUGE stereo with all of your tapes & LPs, stopping, starting, timing the breaks just perfectly so you don’t run out of tape halfway through a song… Right now I have 7 playlists in my iTunes: 4 are playlists I’ve built for various road-trips (again, another blog), 1 is nothing but acoustic versions of some of my favorite music, and the other 2 are about love.

Love is a Mix Tape ends with what I consider one of the most brilliantly written truths. You may not agree with me and that’s totally fine. As a romantic that delves into music any chance I get, it speaks volumes to me. I actually keep it in the “notes” section on my phone so that I can refer to it whenever I need a boost. Don’t believe me? Ask me to see it next time you see me. Here it is:

                “What is love? Great minds have been grappling with this question through the ages, and in the modern era, they have come up with many different answers. According to the Western philosopher Pat Benetar, love is a battlefield. Her paisan Frank Sinatra would add the corollary that love is a tender trap. The stoner kids who spent the summer of 1978 looking cool on the hoods of their TransAms in the Pierce Elementary School parking lot used to scare us little kids by blasting the Sweet hit “Love is Like Oxygen” – you get too much, you get too high, not enough, and you’re gonna die. Love hurts. Love stinks. Love bites, love bleeds, love is the drug. The troubadours of our times all agree: They want to know what love is, and they want you to show them.

                

                  But the answer is simple. Love is a mix tape.”