January 23, 2007
Love is a Mix Tape by Rob Sheffield
Rob Sheffield tugs all the heartstrings in his memoir Love is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time. He writes an elegy for the 1990s: “Remember Brittany Murphy, the funny frizzy-haired, Mentos-loving dork in Clueless? By 2002, she was the hood ornament in 8 Mile, just another skinny starlet, an index of everything we’ve in that time”. His subtitular “loss” is the death of his wife Renee, who loved music as much as he does and died of a pulmonary embolism in 1997. And he tells the story of his life through mix tapes, one per chapter with full track listings– and even the shameful tracks.
In spite of the tugging, Sheffield surmounts bathos. He’s a good writer (contributing editor for Rolling Stone says his bio) and his material is appealing for anyone who grew up in and around the same era. More than an elegy for his wife, Sheffield writes a celebration of her life and the time they shared together, and it’s a joy to read. The book’s mix-tape chapter structure is fun, engaging and inspiring. There is a certain High Fidelityness to it all, but without the pretension. Rob Sheffield doesn’t seem to take himself or his music too seriously, in spite of making a career of it.
Because music is music after all. After his wife’s death, Hanson came out with “MmmBop” and Sheffield regretted that she would never know it, because as cool as she was, it was a song they would have loved together. In the chapter “The Comfort Zone”, he uses a “dishes tape” to tell the tales of domesticity. He taped most of it off Casey Kasem’s American Top-40 countdown, including The KLF/Tammy Wynette with “Justified and Ancient”, Kris Kross “Jump’, “I’m Too Sexy” and “Baby Got Back”. Etc. Also featured was Tom Cochrane “Life is a Highway”: “Tom Cochrane had nothing to say, plus a stupid way of saying it, but he helped me get the dishes done.” “A Little Down, A Little Duvet”, a mix Renee made to fall asleep to at night (and the chapter in which they get married) contains Van Morrison’s “Sweet Thing”, which is my favourite song in the world. These guys were cool. Sheffield writes about the grunge and 1993, when “the music we loved had blown up nationwide”. But then his mix from that time also includes Tag Team and and Lucinda Williams. And I like that.
He doesn’t get all up on new technology either, as might be expected. Though the cassette holds nostalgic appeal for Sheffield, he uses the term “mix tape” figuratively (though he’s certainly not the only one who does that). He welcomed the advent of the recordable CD, admits to loving his iPod “carnally”. But it’s the “romance” of the mix tape, and those of us with cardboard box-fulls of the stuff packed down in the basements of our past can certainly understand that. “The rhythm of a mix tape is the rhythm of romance, the analog hum of a physical connection between two sloppy, human bodies… Love is a mix tape” says Rob Sheffield, and his thesis convinced me.
I loved his book like a souvenir of a good time.
January 23, 2007
Shopping
Today I came home with the following in my bag: a bundle of spinach for our supper; an AS Byatt novel from the library (purchaed for a quarter); a Montreal-style bagel for my lunch; and two passport photos. The new passport photos mean I will no longer resemble a fat Italian man internationally, but I will now be going abroad as a fat Italian woman. Yesterday I got brand new brilliant winter boots, and a black turtleneck sweater. I might hasten to say that I’ve got everything I need.
January 22, 2007
Don't say you'll stay cuz then you'll go away
I am talking about the writer/reader connection. I am thirteen years younger than Rob Sheffield, author of the memoir Love is a Mix Tape, but I think we bookended the same formative years. He gets sentimental for the 1990s, and I knew I’d like his book. But then. He’s waxing nostalgic. He notes, “On 90210, Dylan and Kelly were making out on the beach to ‘Damn, I Wish I Was Your Lover”. That’s what I’m talking about, because I was watching. It was the year the 90210 season ran into summertime, and Donna and Brenda went to Paris while Kelly stayed home to steal Brenda’s boyfriend. But not steal, exactly, because they were meant to be. And I was thirteen or fourteen years old, watching that scene to that Sophie B Hawkins soundtrack, and I felt more longing than I’d ever known in my life. All the angst in the world wrapped up in my just-teenage heart, but Dylan and Kelly felt it too, and one day that was going to be my life. Or something like it, and it would involve kissing at the very least.
Rob Sheffield was twenty six at the time, and I doubt that scene for him was also merely a most hopeful crystal ball, but he remembered it for whatever reason, and just for that, his book will mean something infinitely more to me.
January 21, 2007
Confronted by Fiction
The book I just finished, I am embarrassed to name, and the book I am reading at the moment, I don’t like much at all. This state of affairs is a deep dark hole which doesn’t please me, and I’ll be climbing out of it in a day or two.
Part two of the Treatise of Zadie Smith. “To read The Virgin Suicides followed by The Idiot followed by Despair followed by You Bright and Risen Angels followed by Bleak House followed by Jonah’s Gourd Vine followed by Play it as it Lays is to be forced to recognise the inviolability of the individual human experience. Fiction confronts you with the awesome fact that you are not the only real thing in this world.” (Oh Zadie I swoon!). Edith Wharton in France. Go Hillary! (How refreshing– a chance for a better world!)
The Robber Bride’s TV adaptation is on tonight. I’ll be watching, mainly because I’ve just started a knitting project and TV becomes handy then– particularly when it’s bookish.
January 21, 2007
Call for Submissions
Now seeking submissions is echolocation, which through its last two issues has proven itself one of the best new literary journals in Canada. (Watch for the Issue 6 Launch on Feb. 1 details to follow). As fiction editor, of course, I’ve calling for short fiction submissions in particular. See here for details, and email me if you have any questions.
January 19, 2007
More than words can say
I like words a great deal, but I’ve never been tempted to decorate my house with them. Except in the form of bookshelves of course, but does that not go without saying? No, I’m talking about those letters you can buy that spell out “JOY” or “HAPPY”. There’s something just a bit too desperate about them really. I mean, my ever-battling Enrique-blasting basement neighbours have a cream PEACE spelled out above their fridge, and I don’t think it’s doing them much good. Yesterday I saw “IT’S ALL GOOD” spelled out in glitter script, for sale at the local card store, and I just wondered how manic must you have to be to want to proclaim that insipid phrase in your home decor. “LAUGHTER” is another one, though if I had it at my house, I think I’d just assume the walls were mocking me.
January 18, 2007
How I wasted my time today (and what I learned in the process!)
Productive mornings never make for productive afternoons, but I guess I’m just grateful for my morning. Nevertheless, I’ve still received quite an education today.
All right, we begin with the lyric “Love of my life, you are all I’ve ever wanted”, which has been running through my head for years now. Where from? I consult the Great God Goog. And after much searching (and I realize it’s “you are all I ever wanted”), I discover I’ve been fixated by “Dream Come True” by Canadian Rock Mullets, “Frozen Ghost”. Of course! “I’ve been waited my whole life for you, you’re my dream come true.” Further investigation reveals that half of “Frozen Ghost” was the early eighties band “Sheriff”, which had a hit with legendary power ballad, “When I’m With You”. And more research unearths the fact that the other half of “Sheriff” went on to be “Alias”, which soared to the top of the power ballad heights with “More Than Words (Can Say)”. Which explains so much: mostly why “Dream Come True”, “When I’m With You” and “More Than Words (Can Say)” sound like the exact same song. Who knew? I mean, other than the Great God Goog.
And so then I head over to Youtube (as you do), hoping to hear a bit of Sheriff. and I discover there is someone whose hobby is using clips from Three’s Company to make Jack and Janet Love Videos, set to beautiful music (like Sheriff and REO Speedwagon!). As far as I know, Jack and Janet never got together, which must cause this individual particular regret.
How absolutely fascinating. So I’m learning all the livelong day.
January 18, 2007
Joons and Places
Last night’s Asian meal out was brought to us by Joons for Korean with Curtis, and I had bibimbap– the deliciousist. We have to stop going out for dinner though, before we become chronic. In other news, I’m reading The Hunters by Claire Messud, which is actually two novellas. The first was stunning, and the second currently has me in its grip. Remarkable too, as the first story (“A Simple Tale”) takes place in Toronto, and the second (“The Hunters”) is set in London. And of course, The Emperor’s Children, which I read last November, is all about New York. I like that writer can evoke so many different places, but then again Claire Messud gets around.
January 17, 2007
The End of the Ugliest Boots in the World
Last winter we were going through a period of great impecuniousness. I had just started graduate school, and Stuart was in the midst of a long wait before receiving his permanent residency and being able to work in Canada. And so when the snow came in late November 2005, we didn’t have a lot of choice in terms of winter boots. We had to buy the Cheapest Winter Boots in the World, which were on sale two for one and came to about $80 for both pairs. And the Cheapest Winter Boots in the World were also the Ugliest Boots in the World. I was absolutely ashamed of them. They were also horribly uncomfortable too. We both hated them from the start, but they were what we had. And I’d forgotten about their awfulness until this week when I hauled them out of the back of the closet. I wore them to work and back Monday and Tuesday morning this week. Last night I showed Stuart the damage to my ankles which had resulted: blisters bubbling up on the bone, and the top of the boot also cut in through my skin a few centimetres above. In addition, these boots put holes in socks. Anyway, the happy ending is that upon seeing my ankles, Stuart proclaimed that I can buy new boots this weekend. He’s not being so generous. He hates his boots too. I am pleased, however, as I was intending to put in another season on account of thrift. Thrift schrift, though, apparently. How nice.
