Amanda Bloomberg
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True Love Begins with a mix Tape
When I was a child the music around me was what my parents chose to provide. Their own musical journey had evolved throughout their own lives and they shared this part of themselves nearly unintentionally. Tom Petty, the B52s, steve miller band and the cranberries were some of the first artists of the soundtrack of my life. Music was used as a teaching aid as I learned the alphabet song to learn to read and nursery rhymes for lessons and memory tools. My mother, being a devout catholic, also introduced hymns and christian music as part of of the musical palette I experienced. Whenever I went to my grandmothers house she had classical music playing softly in the background. Music is everywhere, playing in the background at department stores and enhancing all of our movies and tv shows and selling us products through jingles. My family listened to the oldies station in the car on our way to anywhere and everywhere. In the 80’s and early 90’s the oldies station made the soundtrack of my life expand to include the beatles, motown hits, aretha franklin, chuck berry and elvis to name a few. My sisters and I watched musicals like Annie and Jesus Christ Superstar and the Sound of Music and we had most of these soundtracks on vinyl that we listened to together on an old record player at my grandparents house. In high school in the 90’s I started feeling more freedom to make my own decisions about my listening pleasure. The first cassette tape I ever bought was Don McCleans American pie album. My sisters and cousins and I pretended to make music videos while lip singing to en vogue and wilson philips and I started my ongoing love affair with weird Al Yankovic. I got my drivers license and played aerosmith and blink 182 and weezer while I drove myself and my sisters to school, all of us singing loudly together. I had first and second and third boyfriends and was consoled after breakups by the cure and Alanis morisette. At this point in my life I discovered the joys of mix tapes. A variety of music of my choosing with no commercials?!?! Pure bliss. It felt like a true art to decide the combination and order of songs. Do you start out slowly and ramp things up to bring it back down again? Does this mix start fast and heavy and stay that way? I made party mixes with music to dance to and study music to learn to and sleepy music to drift off to sleep. We had moved on from cassette tapes to CDs when I started making road trip mixes. Tom Petty and steve miller band were still showing up on the soundtrack of my life. This is also when I was introduced to the grateful dead and janis joplin who are a major staple in my continuing soundtrack of my life. I exchanged music with people and it felt like love and connection. Music defined friendships and romance and seperated us by genres. Some people defined themselves by their loyalty to a specific genre. Many of us would claim to love everything but country and rap. I made this claim myself until realizing that even those genres had some incredible gems. When I was pregnant with my daughter I was so excited to share music with her. Elton John and I sang to the Tiny Dancer as she danced around in my growing belly. I made a mix for big delivery day that would set the tone for relaxing child birth and ended with etta james singing “at last” at which point I was hoping to be holding the baby in my arms. We listened to the mix about three times while I labored and though this did not go exactly according to plan I did at long last get to hold that sweet baby and all of the songs on that playlist are a magical part of my playlist that still connect me to the first love of my life. She is 18 now and I love that she has her own style and soundtrack but still loves much of the music from my soundtrack and includes it in her own. I dont want my son to be just a side note in this story because his birth was equally significant and he is my special little fella. This is the story of the soundtrack of my life though and his soundtrack was quite similar to his sisters. Six weeks after my sons birth my grandmother passed away. This was the first real significant loss for me and it was very difficult. After her death I had six more close family members die over the next two years. These years were dark and my childrens father did not have the tools to support me through these devastating losses. We got divorced and I had one more lost relationship to grieve and two children to raise nearly on my own. A dear friend started making me mixed tapes and helping me through things with stories of his own experiences with loss. I fell in love with him and the soundtrack of my life expanded to include mason jennings, amos lee, rory mccleod and billy bragg amongst others. There are songs that I can never remember the name or artist but when I hear them it brings me back to that time and place with him. When he died tragically as well I would listen to the many mixes he had made me in that magical year together and deal with the waves of emotions as they rushed over me. About two months after he died a friend told me that I needed to get out and dance and she took me to a local concert venue. The band was called dgiin and they called their style “french flamenco gypsy funk”. The music filled my soul and I let my body move and be filled the healing magic of rhythm and dance. Music helped me through the next decade and a half of single parenting and struggling to make ends meet. I met people who added music to my soundtrack and gave me hope. I struggled against the indoctrination of the religion I had been born into and discovered that I am gay. I met an amazing woman who started sending me music that filled my soul and deepened our connection. She shares my love of weird Al and Bjork and we saw them both live. She has expanded my soundtrack to include leslie hall and kat edmonson and so many more. She also has brought new meaning to some old favorites. She sent me some rolling stones songs that now remind me of her because she is my rainbow. So now at 42 I am making my first ever wedding mix! I am nervous about getting everything ready for this big party we are trying to throw but so excited to see where this soundtrack of my life continues taking me. As the eels say in my current favorite song… I like the way this is going ❤️
By Amanda Bloomberg3 years ago in Beat
