March 26, 2010 – Mixed Tape To Natalie, From Miles

The sun shone through the clouds in bursts of rays as I drove down leafy Park Presido Boulevard.  It was a couple of weeks ago.  The desiccated land needed rain badly and it was finally coming.  My happiness was the perfect balance of warmth, comfort and knowledge of the impending deluge; that, and the anticipatory joy of a free afternoon.

I was early for lunch so I pulled onto Fulton Avenue and parked a few blocks up from 25^th.  I grabbed my phone and walked into the thin strip of Golden Gate Park that runs parallel to the road.  After listening to my messages, I walked around aimlessly for a few minutes: closed my eyes and listened to the birds and traffic, checked out the blooming detritus of a homeless encampment which had been long vacated.  I imagined the lives of the people who had lived there and wondered at their contempt for society manifested and made flesh by such a magnificent collection of refuse.

I had fifteen minutes to get to the Tennessee Grill so I departed lazily and crossed Fulton toward my car.  As I was doing so, my eyes were drawn to a plastic bag which had been placed on the corner.  It called to me.  There is no other way to explain it. 

Upon looking inside, I saw it was filled with cassette tapes.  Believe it or not, both my cars have tape players in them and I continue to collect and use these seemingly ancient articles from the annals of my boyhood.  Still, it appeared that the vast majority of the tapes were blanks that had recordings on them, making them somewhat less “valuable” than commercially produced examples.  One voice inside my head screamed out, “Leave them, you idiot!  You don’t need any more crap in your life.”  But I couldn’t help myself.  I just had to have them.  As my old Uncle C always used to say, “If it’s free, it’s for me.” 

Blindly reaching into the bag I pulled out a tape marked “Roots and Blues 1925-1955.”  I saw names of artists such as Big Bill Bronzy, The Humbard Family, James Clark and Sister Myrtle Fields among many others.  Most of the artists I was unfamiliar with.  I popped it in the machine and hit the road. 

Almost immediately I was struck.  Bluegrass, gospel, folk, early blues and old-timey religious classics like “I’ll Fly Away” cascaded down like the impending gentle storm that was soon to be.  Somehow, it was exactly what I needed to hear at that precise moment. 

After a disappointing but sociable lunch with Rick, the two of us got into my car and I explained my find.  “These probably belonged to some hipsters,” he said.  “They love this kind of thing.” 

Yes, I agreed.  I had read an article recently in an airline magazine describing the resurgence of cassettes with the so-called hipster set.  But for all I knew the tapes were from the 1980’s.  We dug through the bag and pulled a few out.  One stood out of the stack we had created.  The inner sleeve song list had been meticulously typed in courier font – not hand written in pen – on an actual typewriter.  I was certain now that the collection was indeed very old until I read the side of the sleeve: “March 26, 2010 – Mixed Tape To Natalie, From Miles.” 

We set about our day with the “Roots and Blues” collection still playing.  We went to the zoo but decided against it after surveying the skies above and went instead to the De Young Museum.  Somewhere along the line we changed tapes and inserted one titled “Angel Dust: Music for Movie Bikers,” a compilation of 60’s B-grade biker movie soundtracks and film dialogs.  Later, while darkness and light rain descended, we sat outside near Irving Street and enjoyed a cup of coffee. 

We were finishing the night on Turtle Hill, sitting in the car, enjoying the view and a few one hitters from Rick’s Billy Bat.  The lights of the Sunset district shimmered in the night.  “Angel Dust” was our third companion, whispering masculine visions of open roads and surf-rock fantasies. 

“This album is fucking awesome,” he remarked.  “It’s a goddamned time capsule.  It makes me want to drive.”  This is the best assessment of it I can imagine.  The second best is my wife’s, who remarked distastefully when I forced her to take a listen a week later, “They should call this shit ‘Man Town, Music for People with Balls.’” 

Indeed they should.

As days passed, I went through a few of the other tapes but none of them really inspired me.  Some of them were really awful, others were just so-so.  The whole lot of them was worth picking up if only for “Roots and Blues” and “Angel Dust” anyway, I assured myself.  Finally, this morning, I decided to take a listen to “March 26, 2010” on my way to work. 

Side A begins with the song “Stop” by the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club: the band’s name a nod to Marlon Brando’s gang in The Wild One.  Side B finishes with Japanese cowboy troubadour Toshio Hirano’s “Thanks a Lot.”  In between are songs by Asobi Seksu, Mogwai and My Bloody Valentine, among others.

Somewhere between Novato and Petaluma I began to get shivers up my spine.  A visceral feeling of emotion washed over my body as the compilation progressed.  I did not even like all of the song selections, but collectively they were infused with an emotional quality where the whole was so much greater than the sum of its parts.  It has been twenty years since I made a mix tape for a girlfriend.  Why the overwhelming emotion?

Who were Miles and Natalie anyway?  Were they lovers?  I imagine that this is the case.  But my imagination does not make it so.  And who are they today?  And where?  How have their lives changed?  Was it she who left the cassette tapes on the street?  And if so, why?  Why didn’t she just throw them away?

I today feel more justified than ever in the fact that I still buy old records at thrift stores, that I never got rid of my CD collection, that I find art and music and books by accident, that I’ve never owned an Ipod.  Where before I saw the ascending generations just behind my own as mired in their pre-programmed digital world I now feel a individuated sense of kinship with at least some of them who are reaching into the past, grasping antiquated technologies and making them relevant once again.  Digital music, this approximated digital life, will never ever replace the tangibility and solidity of my analog world, I promise myself with a nervous lump in my throat. 

How can there be any mistakes in the reality we inhabit?  At this moment the idea of a random, meaningless universe seems utterly ludicrous to me, as does the notion that any thing can be said to be valueless.  Somewhere inside all of this, I am convinced, is a clue at the meaning of existence.  It is as if I can literally feel my destiny and purpose – banal as it often seems to be – pulling me forward not to an ultimate end but to a never ending beginning. 

And all this from a bag of cassette tapes.