kthread reads: love is a mix tape
Dar Williams refrains filled the cul-de-sac, and the wireless networks were named “TJistheman”, “PabstBlueNetwork”, and “moonbaker” (the last, perhaps belonging to a baker at Mellow Mushroom pizza near campus).
I thought about how hard it is to leave this place, and the first time I heard the author’s name of the book I was reading, Love is a Mix Tape. Rob Sheffield, like me, was once in Professional English Nerd School at the University of Virginia. Now he’s a contributing editor at Rolling Stone, so perhaps we’re the same type of academic flake. Charlottesville formed us in many ways, but we had to leave the field to use what we learned here.
The best explanation I’ve found for why this particular track of graduate school remains a ludicrous idea happens on page 90 (I will say knowing how to survive on $14k a year is a useful skill in any economy and also that I have close friends who I do not doubt will be successful at this):
My friends and I assumed that we would soon be tenured professors, which is an excellent life goal–it’s like planning to be Cher. You think, I’m going to wear beads and fringed gowns, and sing “Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves” on the way to work every morning, and then one day, I’m going to get a call saying, “Congratulations! You’re Cher! Can you make it to Vegas by showtime?”
I know I channeled Bob Mackie when I dressed to teach class.
The music scene was different when Sheffield lived in town and the highlight of the summer was the Pavement show, but there are still a few people from Charlottesville who make music; I’ve bought eggs at Dave Matthews’s farm, watched Carbon Leaf rise to national prominence, and wished for better sound in Satellite Ballroom for Dave Berman (of the Silver Jews).
And there are places to buy records like in that book everyone references to talk music and record store culture, but an elegiac tone elevates Sheffield’s book from what could be a trivial subject. Like the wind that whips around town in winter months, the prose reveals a narrator smarting from the death of his wife and the included music must be intimate and loss-y.
MP3s buzz straight to your brain. That’s part of what I love about them. but the rhythm of the mix tape is the rhythm of romance, the analog hum of a physical connection between two sloppy, human bodies.
The dialogue between the two, Rob and Renée, flickers at that wonderful level that will never translate for a mainstream blockbuster audience:
“Where are you parked?”
“I walked.”
“What’s a catachresis?”
“A rhetorical inversion of tense, kind of like a transumption. Let’s go.”
Hot.
Even narrating Renée’s “big, messy, epic” life, the author finds room to celebrate that forgotten classic music video “Justified and Ancient”:
a few pages to brood on quibbling couples shopping in the middle of the night at Wal-Mart (173), imagines gonzo names for chain restaurant carb offerings (175), and insists that the songstresses run away from the “Magic Man,” a troubling song I’ve always avoided too (199).
Inexplicably, you leave parts of yourself in Charlottesville. For me, it was the first time that I had a group of friends, a whole group, that mixed and mingled and was largely, incredibly cohesive. My role was to throw parties and feed those that sat on the chairs by the kitchen and, through that, to heal the parts of me that I stayed in Charlottesville to repair, to remember.
The book echoes that sort of affection for the place while voicing a big love for a woman who changed the author. The narrator closes with a meditation on strong women in rock during his tenure in Virginia, wistfully hoping they still exist in pop music. He talks about Renée’s sewing, and how the clothes she made (often to wear at shows at Toyko Rose) fit her body as it became more like the women before her.
And so the mix tape playlists that begin each chapter add explanation to this real woman’s actions rather than reduce her (or the author) to a series of lists, ranked in order. This was a true, I’ll-love-you-even-and-especially-when-your-hips-spread love. Like a really good album, that kind of relationship nudges forth nuances each time you listen closely.
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Posted by Kristen Taylor on Monday, March 9th, 2009, 7:38 pm * Filed in Books. * Tags: ache, book, charlottesville, grief, kristen, kthread, love, mix, mixtape, tape, taylor, virginia. Follow responses through the RSS 2.0 feed. Leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
March 9th, 2009 at 10:46 pm
Ahhh, your post made me miss Charlottesville, ginormous hills and all! I can’t believe I spent four years trashing it (verbally) and not taking full advantage of it. Now, I’m stuck in the land of corn and ranch dressing, looking for a Blue Moon Diner that serves artisan bacon.
Re: banana doughnuts. They turned into rocks overnight. Apparently, I need to examine the recipe and my baking skills!
March 9th, 2009 at 10:52 pm
Soul-tuggingly true what you say about Charlottesville. Even in the short time I was there, I fell in love with everything: the mountains, the wine, the market, the music and so many people. It was two years of falling in love and falling hard and I hope I never recover.
March 10th, 2009 at 5:34 am
Mica, it’s probably a sign of good baking that the doughnuts were fleeting. We’ll have to seek out a good diner up there.
John, glad to know you feel the same. Look forward to seeing you tomorrow night in that place you live in now–
March 10th, 2009 at 12:06 pm
Kristen, do you remember me playing for you that justified and ancient video. I resurrected it last year and remember showing it to Will and Dana, but I can’t remember if I showed it to you. Anyhow, you can return to Cville and continue to repair me (I require constant reparation)anytime you’d like. Wonderful, as always, to see you this weekend and to invest further, and fabulously, in our bank of Charlottesville memories.
March 10th, 2009 at 12:28 pm
Ben, I do indeed. Your vast knowledge of music and music videos continues to amaze. I think we need a few more Charlottesville memories before you’re off, so I’m planning to return as soon as the trees turn green again—and I can’t imagine the Cville years without you, so glad we both took those classes together first year—