A Mix Tape Of Goodbyes

Mark's mix-tape had a place in Sarah's heart forever, but did it have a place in her room? She liked the idea of keeping it, but how often did she listen to it? The truth is, she hadn't owned a cassette player since 2001. 

The cassette tape knew it, too. His time was up. How could something so personal and loved not be needed anymore? No-one was safe. Even the CD's were getting packed up and shoved under the bed. 

Rachel was the music guru. She was one of the first to get Napster. She said, "mp3's will kill the CD", and they did. Rachel was so crazy about the songs that she filled up ten hard-drives with music. 

But Luke doesn't even have the mp3's. He streams it on Spotify and he watches the live versions on YouTube. It's like that everywhere. There are books in libraries and CD's in the garage and DVD's in the back room and they're all wondering what the hell their future is. 

Wayne watched 'Jurassic Park' a hundred times on VHS. He didn't think he'd watch it again but he planned to keep the tape. And for years he did. He argued about it so often with Nina that they came close to divorce. But then it hit. It was a Sunday, and he realised; it's not needed any more. It's just an old giant video cassette taking up space. 

Jake, James and Marcy were the purists. They shopped for Vinyl and they roamed the streets for second hand books. But then the economy stayed nowhere and they had to move somewhere smaller. They looked at each other and they looked at the books and they looked back at each other. It was time. They loved them, they used to literally scream for joy when they found crazy-random DVD's and ancient-smelling books. But that chapter was closing, the disc was being ejected. 

Now it's a single copy of 'Catch 22' between them, the mix tape that Mary made before she died, and the Billy Wilder box set. Everything else waited by the door. Jake was okay about it. Somewhere across the world, I guess Wayne was fine too. Even Rachel and Mark had made peace with it. Everything goes away and changes into something new. They learned to accept it. 

But the books didn't. The beat-up and broken copy of 'The Great Gatsby' had been with Marcy since the beginning of time, and now it wasn't even being put into circulation, but in the trash. The videos are gone and the cassettes are gone and now the DVD's and CD's are praying for one final spin.

Care to share?

Tweet

The Black Box

We were sitting on trains, walking through parks, and laying on beaches. It didn't matter where we were, we just couldn't get enough of it. Each of us obsessively eating into our data allowances as we messaged our friends and read news articles we forgot soon after.

We were in London, or Paris, or a mountain in some far away land. It didn't matter where we lived, because we lived in a box three inches from our faces that we kept glued to our hands.

And moments weren't between two people anymore. You write "I'm in a wonderful restaurant in Berlin with Sally". The world knows. Your school friend Bernard knows you're there. And @screenwriterharry22 has been informed.

You're not in a restaurant, you're in a little box of electrics. You tell a joke to your brother and its so funny that you instantly tell a version to Twitter and tag in Judd Apatow just in case he thinks you're hilarious. But the joke is no longer between you and your brother.

Because nothing is private anymore. Nothing is shared between two people. The world knows.

Never in history have we been so connected yet so isolated. We're closer to strangers across the world than people we're eating dinner with. Except we're hardly close at all. We're just people on opposite sides of the world staring at the little black boxes we keep glued to our hands. And old buildings are forgotten and old friends invited to a Facebook Fan Page. And we sit in a train or coffee house in London or Tokyo or somewhere else in the world, but nobody is there, because they're in their little black boxes doing critically important things. All except one thing: talking to the person on front of them.

Two people and a fireplace. That doesn't happen anymore. The flame is burning out, and I need a phone upgrade.

That was us in 2011.

Care to share?

Tweet