Old School, Part II

So I finally broke down and threw away the last of my cassettes. For those of you born after 1985, a cassette is a recording medium, like MP3 or AAC, but the information is contained in a long spool of magnetic tape instead of a digital data stream. Remember those CD’s you used to have when you were younger? Well, the cassette is to the CD what the CD is to the MP3. Ask your parents.

I had a LOT of cassette tapes. Like hundreds. I didn’t even own a CD player till like 1992, and I was a big music fan. Most of the cassettes I had were 80’s glam rock and 90’s flannel alternative, with some other stuff mixed in for good measure. Once I got the CD player, I immediately bought all the music I LOVED in that medium, and then slowly migrated the tapes from my music shelf to a drawer, then a box under my bed, then a box in my closet, then in the storage unit in the basement. Finally, I threw out all the ones that I also had on CD or MP3, but there was a last bunch of holdouts I could never bring myself to throw away, even though they are obsolete and pretty much worthless, even on eBay.

The main reason I couldn’t throw them away is that they were a link to my past. Those songs were the soundtrack to my life in high school and college, and that’s no small thing. Listening to them is like reading a diary entry about your first romance or studying for your chemistry final, or hanging out with your friends.

We were cleaning this weekend, and I found that box of holdouts, and I said to myself “Fuck it.” I went on iTunes and went through a stack of tapes, buying the songs I loved and then tossing the tape in the garbage. Bon Jovi. Bonham. Robert Palmer. King Missile. 10,000 Maniacs. REM. Whitesnake. Love/Hate. Extreme. The Pandoras. Pink Floyd. Squeeze. Mr. Mister. You get the idea. I must have spent over $50 on songs, but it was worth it for both the space I cleared and the flood of memories.

Another interesting thing that happened over the weekend is that Del Rey told me they want to use the character avatars I drew for the manuscript of my book to show whose point of view each chapter was in. You can see them on my Creations page. They are the crappy B&W line drawings.

I think the avatars are important, and I wanted very much for them to be in the final book, but I always assumed that we would get a professional artist to do them, because my art sucks. My editor likes them, though, and wants to use the originals.

This freaked me out for a while. I mean, on one hand, I always wanted to be a professional artist, and here was my chance to have my art reach a mass audience, but on the other hand… I suck, and I don’t think it’s being modest to say that a few of those drawings are not professional enough to be shown anywhere other than on a raw uncorrected manuscript and as a goof on my website. Particularly the spear, which is half-assed, and the mortar & pestle, which looks like a bowling pin in a flower pot.

So I insisted to my editor that I at least be able to fix the ones I didn’t like, and she agreed. So I dug out my sketchbook and the little tupperware thing I keep all my art supplies in, and got to work. While I was drawing, I put on the “Cassette Mania” playlist I made in iTunes from the old music I just bought.

Wow. What a mind trip. I used to draw constantly in High School, and it always takes me back to simpler times when I do it now, but to be drawing AND listening to Bon Jovi? Holy 1990. I keep checking to see if my jeans were ripped and I have a ponytail.

Posted on March 19, 2008 at 11:39 am by PeatB
Filed under Craft, Life, Musings, Writing
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