Mixin' It Up: Part 2

I was thinking about these songs and my liner notes the other day after sending the notes to a friend. I’d mentioned the mix to her and decided it would be enlightening for her to read some of my most personal writing.

Thompson Hall at Western Illinois University.

I knew it was personal. I knew it was uncomfortably detailed in some spots. I’d forgotten how specific I was in naming names and giving blow-by-blow description in some places (pun intended). After I began this little blog filler idea of sharing the notes publicly, I thought it might be wise to review what I’d written before diving in the way I had when I sent the notes to my friend without having read them again first.

So let me confess here and now, I will be censoring the notes. I think mostly I’ll change names or leave out last names (probably a good legal move). But some of the content is explicit (hey, I was recalling with vivid vigor the joys of being a college guy 20-some years ago). Many of my women friends have read “Fifty Shades of Grey” and my guy friends, well, are guys and we talk about this stuff anyway (so do you women, amongst yourselves). But my parents read my blog and occasionally my daughters read it. As much as none of us wants to think of our parents or our kids having sex, we all know it has or will happen. We just don’t want to think about that.

Mum and Dad, girls, this is your fair warning, like a spoiler alert in a movie review: Do not read further if you’re afraid of reading about my youthful exploits. Tell you what, I’ll attach a bold Explicit label to each entry that merits it. That way you can read the other stuff and avoid the bawdy parts.

Well, I didn’t run far enough today to get into the raunchier notes so I’ll have to repeat the above disclaimer in my next entry. That’s OK, I’m sure I’ll need the filler.

I’m stretching to find photos to use with these posts because I have so few from my college years. And of those few, most are from my final year and a half. To this day I regret that I threw out Marybeth’s letters and what few photos I had of her. I see her clearly in my mind’s eye still, but I can’t show her to you. Not that you care, but it’d be nice to have appropriate illustrations.

On a running note, I should confess that my 4.25 miles were indoors on the track here in Swing’s Leisure Apartments, the old Knox County YMCA. That’s 144 laps on the tiny track. Boring. Easy to think about life and memories and all, but you have to keep track of laps, too. That’s hard work for my brain.

Today's Stats

Temp: 5 degrees F (outside, -15 windchill; I ran indoors on the track)

Distance: 4.25 miles

Weekly Total: 4.25 miles

Treasure: None.

iPod Playlist (Sweet WIU Mix: Part 2): 

Part of my room, 1218 Thompson, sophomore year. The
Judy Garland photo is on the shelf below and to the right
of the fantasy poster of the maiden and black unicorn.

9. I Want to Know What Love Is (Foreigner): I have a vague memory of this song playing at night in the car, too, kind of like "Waiting for a Girl Like You" on my KGHS at Night mix. I want to believe it, too, is from the night at the farm. Which was really nothing big. We went and saw some smelly cows and left. No rolls in the hay or sheep dip or anything untoward.

10. Easy Lover (Phil Collins): This is kind of embarrassing. The girls on Thompson 12 where MB lived were having a party toward the end of the semester or something and they started doling out awards, playing songs where appropriate. MB was humiliated when they bestowed the Easy Lover award on her, playing Phil Collins' hit to cap it off. I heard about it through our friend and fellow 12th-floor girl Bonnie R. Not cool, girls.

11. Rosanna (Toto): During better times with the 12th-floor girls, many of whom knew me and accepted me enough to keep quiet and watch out for the RA when I had to make a middle of the night potty visit, this song reminded me of MB's neighbor Rosanna, a swimmer. Her roommate was Celia, also a swimmer. I just like sharing meaningless memories like that because someday I won't even know my own children's names.

12. Stay the Night (Chicago): And we did. MB and my relationship went on hiatus early because of Christmas break. (We’d only met on Dec. 1.) But I kept her in my memory by playing Chicago 17 relentlessly during break. Bought it at Musicland, when there were still stores in Sandburg Mall. Played the album on my parents’ Garrard turntable.  

Corbin Hall, my junior/senior home.

13. An Innocent Man (Billy Joel): Billy was a frequent troubadour to MB make-out sessions, but this song actually applies more to later girlfriend Ann B. It took a long time for Annie B. to come around. She claimed a fouled-up relationship with an older man back home. I never doubted her story until the other day as I was thinking about all this. Now I'm not so sure, but I'll give her the benefit of the doubt. I practically wanted to shout the lyrics at her.

14. Only the Good Die Young (Billy Joel): MB and I lost our innocence with each other. This is as good a reason as any. Although I would claim we were in love. She once told me she wanted to cool things off a little because she realized she had placed me above God in importance in her life. I was always kind of sacrilegiously proud of that. Shame on me.

15. Careless Whisper (Wham!): After MB and I broke up I cried my eyes out listening to this song from the dynamic duo's "Make It Big" album, singing the words to a framed photo of Judy Garland as Dorothy in the "Wizard of Oz" that I bought at the campus bookstore. At one point I even wrote out a line-by-line analysis of the song's application to our split. It was totally my fault.

16. The Night Is Still Young (Billy Joel): Like many of the KGHS songs, this song takes me to a specific, yet general, moment in my WIU life. I hear it while working the front desk in Corbin Hall, midnight to 4 a.m. shift, junior, maybe senior, year. Always made me think back to MB, who by that time had transferred to school in Arizona, I believe.

17. Don't Let It End (Styx): That's what I kept saying after I fucked it all up. How apropos that a song from one of my earliest WIU musical memories should apply also to one of my saddest moments there. "Kilroy Was Here" was one of a handful of tapes I had when I started at Western. Add "Synchronicity" and a few Billy Joel albums and that was all I listened to early on.