Tag Archives: nostalgia

Mixed tapes

A couple days ago I shared how we had to wait for songs to come on the radio to record them. Today this 7 year old memory came up on Facebook:

Oh, the hours put into making the perfect mix. The frustration of making a great mix, but realizing too late that one song should have been left off. The too long gaps between songs, which were actually better than the too short gaps with a song getting truncated (which at least happened less frequently, unless you were recording from the radio and had to cut off when the DJ started talking).

The challenge of getting the volume of songs consistent. The stretching of songs near the start and end of the tape. The tangles, pulled out and then retracted with a pencil.

But above all, the time it took to make a good mixed tape… that’s a thing of the past that carries a lot of nostalgia, and would be hard to meaningfully share with someone who never had to do it.

I had to wait

A couple days ago I heard a song I liked being played and I opened Shazam. This handy app told me the name and artist of the song, and shared a link to iTunes. It was in my library in under 2 minutes. Growing up, this was a different story.

I’d hear a song I liked on the radio and maybe they’d re-announce the title and artist at the end of the song. If not I’d just have to hear it again before finding out more. If it became popular and I really liked it, I’d have a cassette recorder next to the radio and hit the Play and Record buttons together simultaneously to record the song to listen to it later… often trying to time when the DJ would stop talking over the intro, so I didn’t get his voice, but maximized the amount of the song I got.

I would only buy the song if I heard and liked enough of all the songs from the album to justify buying the whole thing. I remember having an entire side of a cassette with either Freeze Frame or Tainted Love ‘on repeat’ because I kept recording either one as I heard them on the radio.

And there was no YouTube. If I wanted to see a music video, I had to watch MTV, with 3+ minute long commercial breaks, hoping they would show the video I wanted to see.

We don’t often think about the conveniences we have today compared to our childhood. Conveniences that are now expectations for kids, but would have been pure luxury or us.

Family recordings on 8 millimetre film, that was played on a projector. Waiting for a roll of film to be developed, after waiting for weeks or months for the roll of film to be finished and ready for processing. Missing your favourite show and hearing everyone talk about the episode that you wouldn’t see until reruns started being played 13 weeks later.

We had to wait. That waiting doesn’t happen anymore.

The land of giants

I remember a comic strip where a son and father in winter coats were in front of a house with big icicles on it.

Frame 1: The boy says, “Wow dad, look at the size of those icicles!”

Frame 2: The dad says, “They were a lot bigger when I was a kid.” And the kid responds, “Come down here”.

Frame 3: The dad is kneeling down, eye level with the kid, and the dad says, “Wow, look at the size of those icicles!”

– – –

It’s not always easy to see things from the same perspective as we did when we were younger. For me, I remember people around me being giants (in more ways than one).

My grandfather, Leon Bernstein or ‘Papa B’, was one of those giants. Last night on Facebook Messenger, I connected with my 2nd cousin Lee, his full name is Leon, named after my grandfather. He is my grandmother’s brother’s son, but Lee is only 4 years older than me. Still, growing up in Barbados as the oldest grandchild on one side and second oldest by 5 days on the other, Lee was so much bigger and older, and I looked up to him when we came to visit.

I feel blessed because when I was a kid, all the giants in my life were good to me. Wonderful parents, grandparents that spoiled me, aunts and uncles who treated my like their own, 2nd cousins who taught me football (soccer) and cricket.

Some people have to grow up with angry giants, and some with monsters, my land of giants were exceptionally loving and kind. I truly feel blessed, and I thank Lee for reminding me of this.

Photographs in my mind

We used to take our negatives to a film processor to have them developed. Then we waited. Long ago we waited for a week, and eventually that time was reduced to just an hour. We’d collect the envelopes of photographs and before we left the store we were going through our shots one-by-one.

This one isn’t focused. This one has a blurry arm from it moving during the shot. In this one her eyes are closed. In this one he looked away. And this one, yes this one goes in a frame.

I say this with a bit of nostalgia, for there was something I enjoyed about the process. About the not knowing how good a shot was until long after I took the shot. About the surprise of a shot being better or, sadly, worse than I thought.

Film also gave me something else that I miss. As a photographer using film, every click of the shutter costed money. This made me more selective about the shots I would take… and not take.

It is an odd thing that I have photographs burned into my memory, but they are photographs that I never took.

There is the lost kitten jumping after a minister’s tassels during a wedding. I was being paid as the photographer and didn’t want to ‘waste the shot’ since they paid me by the roll of film.

The shot I did not take of the salt flats of Utah that faded into the sky without a horizon line. A brilliant memory that probably would not have made a good photo anyway.

There was the shot I lined up at Pike Place in Seattle, of an older man sitting on the hood of a parked car enthralled in a book, while cops on the street behind him tended to a fender-bender. I can still see the image that I did not take, feeling like I was invading his privacy.

We seem so much more free to take photos now, always having a camera in our pocket, and not a concern of the cost of taking one more shot.

But of all the shots I didn’t take, the photographs that still linger in my memory. These come to me from an era when film was the only option and the cost of the next shot lingered in my mind.