mix CDs.

I got a new computer this summer when my old mammoth laptop started dying, unprovoked, all the time. I had saved my music and pictures on an external hard drive, and when the new computer came, I never got around to transferring them. I have music online when I want it, or NPR, or the turntable. Still, 5 months later, I have no music on my computer.

It seems so strange when I think about just 5 or 6 years ago when the music I owned was so precious. I drove from Minnesota to Massachusetts in the summer of 2008, alone. I had a thick folder of CDs tucked into the passenger seat next to me, including various mixes I’d burned onto CDs to conjure up the right feelings.

When I lived in Massachusetts, on Cape Cod, I drove all the time. This was before podcasts were so much a thing, at least in my world. I listened to NPR sometimes, or the local classic rock station. And I listened to more mixes, burned onto CDs, to conjure up the right feelings. Broken heart mixes, wild and free mixes, independent lady mixes, etc.

And a few years later, I met Jacob. Within the first month we started seeing each other, I burned him a mix CD, carefully crafted to tell him that I liked him a lot, but not too much, because I was still a very cool and independent lady. Shortly after, he made me a mix. I can still tell you almost every song that was on the mix, not least of all I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend, which obviously said everything.

Awhile back Jacob subscribed to Apple Music, and he just added me onto his family plan this weekend. So now I have unlimited music at hand, whatever I want, whenever I want it. Today it dawned on me that the age of purchasing music, at least in my life, is done. Apart from the vinyl I pick up at Salvation Army, I’m not buying music anymore. I know that there are lots of ways to still make mixes (actually the youths know, I don’t really know), but suddenly I was grieving for those old CD mixes that soundtracked the emotional landscape of my 20s. So it goes, I guess. Every generation has to mourn the things that they watched disappear.