8. Mixtape – Hallie Goodman
A song can call up a memory so sharp I have to swallow hard to keep from crying in line at the coffee shop.
For me, music is often the best tunnel into a story. It's a strong memory trigger, in a deeply visceral way. A song can call up a memory so sharp I have to swallow hard to keep from crying in line at the coffee shop. So my favorite prompts tend to be music related. This one is called “Mixtape.” I'm pretty sure I lifted it from my friend Melissa Febos, who is the queen of such things—lucky you, you’ll be hearing from her in the coming days, too. I love the Mixtape exercise because you can use it over and over, and never wear it out.
– Hallie Goodman
Prompt:
Pick five time periods, ages, or moments from your life—they can be spread out or all clustered together. Don't think too hard about your choices, just write down the first one that comes to mind and move to the next.
Example:
1. First grade.
2. Jr. high.
3. Sleeping in a Buick (age 17).
4. Stripping in Texas (age 20).
5. Getting sober (age 25).
With me so far? Feeling admiration for my life choices? Great!
Next pick a song to pair with each moment. Again, try not to think too hard. Let it be a gut thing. Example: Jr. High—"Mother" by Danzig.
Now write a quick and dirty paragraph about each one. Then take the one that feels most interesting to you and expand it.
Abby Alten Schwartz
Location: Lansdale, Pennsylvania
About: Certain songs have the power to instantly transport me back in time to a kaleidoscope of places, sights, smells and emotions. This mixtape prompt was only the second I posted to The Isolation Journals and it unlocked the voice I am using to write my memoir—a step I never would have taken without this project.
Age: 53
1. 1970s. My family spends a month in Margate, New Jersey. We rent a house in Marvin Gardens, made famous on the Monopoly board. My older sister brings her cassette player and a tape: Carole King’s Tapestry. She doesn’t usually let me hang out with her, but this summer she teaches me the words to I Feel the Earth Move. Smells of honeysuckle in the neighborhood. Hydrangea must have grown there too because the sight of them brings me back. A little blonde girl I played jacks with. My dog Fred, only a puppy then, jumping on our beds in the morning, biting all four siblings to my terrified delight. The smell of Coppertone mixed with ocean.
2. 1979. Rod Stewart: Do Ya Think I’m Sexy? Spin the bottle, Bar and Bat Mitzvahs. Slow dancing with boys. My first pair of platform shoes. That first rush of hormones and nerves. My sister blow dries my hair for me in feathery wings. Andy Gibb’s Shadow Dancing. I’m at a boy-girl party and my kind of boyfriend Eric and I are sent off for seven minutes in heaven. We dance around the big question. Will we French kiss for the first time? We have a code for this. Are you still a Spaniard? (I know, but it felt so clever at 12). I hear someone yell to me that my dad just pulled up to pick me up from the party. Relieved, I leave. We stayed Spaniards.
3. January 1981. Steely Dan: Hey Nineteen. I am 14, a high school freshman and our marching band is one of several selected to be extras in Blowout, the new John Travolta movie being filmed in Philadelphia. My best friend Audrey and I carry the banner that leads the band and drill team onto the field. Tryouts for flag twirlers aren’t until spring; it is rare for freshmen to make the team but we got lucky, snagging these spots. For two nights we meet at the school at 10 pm and ride buses to Center City by the Penn’s Landing waterfront. The movie crew takes us out to dinner at The Middle East restaurant around 11 pm. Belly dancers circle the tables. I meet a boy in the band who is a few years older. While we are waiting for our call time, he and I wander off and I have my first real kiss. I’m no longer a Spaniard. We film at 2 am. It is January cold and we stand in the bleachers with no coats. From a distance I see John Travolta run past, take after take.
4. 1984. Freshman year of college, part 1. The Commodores, Sail On. I arrived only a day before, nervous and excited to live away from home for the first time. Class won’t start for another four days. Day two I feel such a deep loneliness I can barely breathe. I walk with Mary, my new roommate, toward town and coming up the hill is Gregg, my boyfriend’s best friend from home. For the last month we all hung out together at the camp Gregg’s dad owned. The same camp where I met my boyfriend, S. I leap into his arms. My roommate and I spend the next two days and nights living at his apartment, hanging with his friends, feeling safe and not so alone. He plays this song, late afternoon light cutting through the window, and it is so beautiful it hurts.
5. 1984. Freshman year of college, part 2. I take a Greyhound bus from State College to Pittsburgh to spend the weekend with S. in his six-person suite at Pitt. His roommate Bill plays Stevie Wonder’s Musiquarium over and over. It becomes the soundtrack for the movie montage I remember from that time. Taking the incline to view the city from above. Getting slices of pizza in Squirrel Hill. Long conversations walking together. Dancing around his apartment with Bill’s girlfriend, Jen, laughing and drinking and being young. Living for the City. Higher Ground. Superstition. The album so strongly imprints on my brain that six years later, I choose Ribbon in the Sky for our first dance as husband and wife.
Anonymous
1. Childhood — Hallelujah (Shrek soundtrack) 2. High school — Jenny (The Maine) 3. In love — Drive (Oh Wonder) 4. Last year of undergrad — Writer in the Dark (Lorde) 5. Grad school — Back in my Body (Maggie Rogers)
Was there something sad about me from the start? For most of my life, I lived in a small house on the same street as the church and the library. That means I grew up with God and was raised by fairytales. They were honeysuckle summer days, spent running through sprinklers, chasing ice cream trucks, conspiring with my older brother as he roped me into playing games when I’d much rather sit in my pink room making my Barbies fall in love. One day, my dad turned my small house into a big house — so that it towered over our neighbors and made my mom happy. And as I unpacked old toys in our new basement, I had a realization that I was too old to play with dolls. That made me sad enough to hide in the back of my closet for a few hours. There was an innocence in those early summer days that I never wanted to lose. In my baby brother’s laugh that I never wanted to lose. In the comfort of my mother that I never wanted to lose. I was mourning my childhood while I was still living it. All I ever wanted was for everyone to stop yelling, speak sweet. All I ever wanted was for everyone to like me, think I was cool enough to invite to pool parties. All I ever wanted was to dance. I wanted freedom. To run a thousand miles away. To have a thousand friends. To never have to leave.
Autumn wind flies in through open windows to chill me. I’m fifteen trying to figure out physics at my dining room table. The whole world has seemed so dark lately, like winters are lasting longer than I remember. Like the sun has been too shy to show its face. I’m wearing red lipstick leftover from the school day and drinking my third cup of coffee. My tummy rumbles and I think it might be okay to make myself a sandwich since I only had clementine’s for lunch. It’s kind of funny — my friends keep commenting on how little I eat, but the only thing I can ever think about is food. I laugh and act shy when they say things like this, but secretly I like it. They’re all so much smarter than me and I need something that I can be good at. I’ve always been good at being skinny. I’m allowed to go out to dinner with them if I order a salad. And I’m allowed to eat pasta as long as I run on the treadmill after. My mom’s always talking about how hard it is to lose weight, but I know you just need to have rules. Still I usually cry when I have to wear a bathing suit or if I want to wear a cute dress I love and then realize that it looks like my belly is sticking out. I shut the window and sit with my knees curled up to my chest to eat my cheese and mayo sandwich. My dad’s in the living room, asleep in front of the TV. I feel so far away from him. My hands are tingly from anxiety and caffeine. I’ve been putting off this homework all afternoon. I was so tired earlier that I fell asleep on the couch. Mom woke me up before dinner and I felt all panicked and mean, remembering how much I still had to do. Now, it’s close to 10 pm and I have no idea what I’m doing. I can’t believe how stupid I am sometimes. I keep thinking about this, so I can’t focus on the numbers in front of me. The panic rises. I bite on my arm until I leave marks. This helps make some of the anger and hurt go away. I finish my homework and fall asleep, crying.
We were born in the summer. I can’t believe how young we were then, figuring out how to touch each other in back seats and basements. I think I liked him because he kept telling me I was pretty. I had spent my whole life wanting to be pretty. To be seen. And he saw me, he really did.
He saw that I was smart and kind, he saw that I was funny and sexy, he saw that everything I did was to make other people like me. We lived on the beach — we were tan and tired on sandy towels. We walked through magic streets in Warwick, New York. We flew to each other, spent entire weekends in bed. We drove to each other — late at night, through the snow. He felt like a compulsion. He felt like an addiction. He felt like relief. He felt like home. He felt like I couldn’t live without him. That I was nothing without him. That I was nothing. But I was so happy. For moments at a time. In museums in D.C. and as the sun set around the pentagon. On the top of the world in New York City, laying in the grass in central park. Eating crab cakes on rooftops in Charleston. In the passenger seat. But I was also missing out. I was also making myself small. I was also crying in the car as the lightning struck, trying to make him hear me. I was also embarrassed and trying to hide him. I was also curling away from him when he touched me. I was also running away. I was also afraid to be alone.
My life is one of those montage scenes — dancing with my roommates in the kitchen, convincing them to do my hair and makeup, taking too many shots before we make it to the Uber, wandering away from them as soon as we slip past the bouncer with our fake IDs to find someone who will pay attention to me. I’ve never been more confident or felt more beautiful. I know as soon as I see someone whether he’ll kiss me — I haven’t been wrong yet. It’s the same thing. Every weekend. I’m on the floor of the shower, wondering how everything went so wrong. I think maybe a tattoo will make me feel better. There are fights outside of rundown bars. There are slammed doors. I think maybe another drink will make me feel better. There are strangers eating the food in my kitchen. There are my best friends looking at me like I’m a monster. I think just one more kiss might make me feel better. There is a funeral for a girl that died while her boyfriend was driving. There are policemen who listen to me cry. I think maybe you will make me feel better.
I begin to enjoy the life I’ve built. My apartment is on the first floor, in the building right across the street from Market District. It’s close to Trader Joe’s, Target, and a pet store. A collection of yoga studios and restaurants live a few blocks down. So do my friends. I walk over to their house in my slippers, in shirts that are too big for me, in sweatpants. The short walk always feels therapeutic. So does curling into their beds or on their couch. My favorite times with them are when we wake up in a collective hangover and drink coffee lazily on the couch, piecing together the night before. I had to crawl through the mud to get here. I kept making mistakes, holding on to leftover anger and putting it in the wrong places. Healing was an obsession. It was ten months of therapy sessions. It was that time we had a picnic in my bed. It was when I realized I finally had room in my body to wash my dishes and clothes. Did my pendulum swing too far toward safety? Why is the sky always grey? Sometimes, I feel bored on bar stools. Most of the time, I feel warmest in my own bed.
Chelsey Crabbe
Location: Massachusetts, United States
About: I'm a young woman trying to find her way in this complicated and beautiful world. Music is my inspiration always and it was the backdrop to a road trip that I took around the country after I graduated; driving to find answers.
Age: 25
1. Pocketful of Rainbows- Elvis Presley (Elementary School, in love with Elvis) 2. Thrift Shop- Macklemore (Bought a Jeep Grand Cherokee in High School) 3. Help Me Lost My Mind- Disclosure (Freshman Year of College) 4. America- Simon and Garfunkel (Post-Grad Road Trip) 5. Bella Donna- Stevie Nicks (This past year)
I don't necessarily feel like writing a quick and dirty paragraph on each of these this morning. Elvis was my first love, so I've been rocking a little since before I was born. It also made elementary school quite interesting for me. I bought a car and did donuts in the high school parking lot blasting Thrift Shop because my car was a thing of antiquity. I spent my freshman year of college listening to Help Me Lose My Mind while quite literally trying to lose my mind. I'll expand America. And this past year, I've had to tell myself to come in out of the darkness almost every day.
This life, and all its suffering...
4. Road Trip- America
After college, I took a road trip around the U.S. to try and find some answers. Without a job and finished with school for the moment, I was an astronaut un-tethered. I went with two people in similar situations: my best friend and his college roommate, who I happened to be googly-eyed in love with at the time. Interesting combination for a month on the road...
It's no matter, the road is life.
We had driven around the country in phases. The excitement of it all was felt down the East Coast, the wonder of it all, across the desert. California was the end of the new and we also started to get a bit annoyed with each around there, but we persevered!
Us, three New England kids, drove up into the wild, all the way to Glacier National Park. We felt open and vulnerable up north. We had shed our skin and just were for the sake of being. We were alone, no one, but the three of us could find ourselves on a map. Un- tethered? Yes. Living? Emphatically so. One particular sunset sticks in my memory like a flag on the moon, as one of those perfect moments, an uber-concentrated moment of pure life.
It will all sound cliche, as a disclaimer; it won't sound real, but it really happened. Nothing exciting, we didn't communicate with a rogue bison, but it was magic.
On an endless drive from Denver to somewhere near Jackson Hole, we fell into an extremely spirited sing-along. In our defense, it was a long day on the road, ending in the middle of nowhere. Why not sing? As far as we could see were mossy fields to our left and right, a road going right down the middle. The sun going down over a perfect
little somewhere, struck us through the windows. We sang to a crowd of three, for ourselves, no one else around for miles.
First came Rocky Mountain High paired with a expertly crafted joint. Then as the sky turned lilac and the sun burned orange, on came Alaska. In that moment, you and I, us against the world, there was air in-between. (I just re-watched a 10 second clip of that specific moment and my memory proves true. The sky was burning and there was nothing, but road. We could be vulnerable, sound-tracked by that perfect song.)
Then came the big dramatic ending. America by Simon and Garfunkel came on. WHAT a cliche, oh but it was so perfect.
So I looked at the scenery, she read her magazine, and the moon rose over an open field.
Together, we were singing quite loudly like we were drunk at a karaoke bar.
I'm empty and aching and I don't know why! All come to look for America.
If I were to package the ethos of that trip into a tiny, ziplocked moment, it was that. We erupted in song and looked for America, for answers that we found within ourselves.
Fiza Pirani
Location: Atlanta, Georgia
About: I'm Fiza, a writer and editor—and the founder of Foreign Bodies, a mental health newsletter and community for immigrants and refugees. This prompt gave me a chance to reflect on my younger, pre-diagnosis state(s) of being by reconnecting with the music I once held onto. Only in retrospect have I noticed not-so-subtle cries for help.
Age: 28
Write down five time periods, ages, or moments from your life.
1. New immigrants on the block (childhood)
2. Young love and heartbreak
3. Road to independence (college-ish and early adulthood) 4. Lady’s home (age 24)
5. The chase begins: Writing as a creative career (age 28)
Next, pick a song to pair with each moment.
1. All Star - Smash Mouth
2. Here Without You - 3 Doors Down
3. Oblivion - Bastille
4. Sunrise - Norah Jones
5. A Sunday Kind of Love - Etta James
Oblivion marks a transition to controlled softness in my life, an appreciation of the fleeting and changing undercurrents of existence and the will to move the needle of my own accord.
My Oblivion days begin around age 23. They begin early, before the chime of an alarm or heavy footsteps on cheap vinyl planks across the hall. Unlike the periods prior, which distinctly embraced the night owl in me, this new era thrived on darkness before dawn and basked in solitude under sunlight. This era traded coffee for green tea, HIIT for yoga, body for soul.
Oblivion by Bastille. It’s the song I listened to every morning on the way to the library for LSAT prep, on the way to my secret bench by the river for test practice, on the way to my part-time law office job, on the way
home after a long day of studying and work. On repeat on repeat on repeat.
According to Genius.com, the song is about Bastille lead singer Dan Smith trying to understand the severe depression his friend is experiencing while working through his own problems at the same time.
The lyrics:
When you fall asleep
With your head upon my shoulder
When you're in my arms
But you've gone somewhere deeper
Are you going to age with grace?
Are you going to age without mistakes?
Are you going to age with grace?
Or only to wake and hide your face?
When oblivion
Is calling out your name
You always take it further
Than I ever can
When you play it hard
And I try to follow you there
It's not about control
But I turn back when I see where you go
Are you going to age with grace?
Are you going to leave a path to trace?
It’s only in retrospect, through this little writing challenge, that I’m beginning to understand why this was the song I couldn’t let go of. It reads like a letter I would write to myself in and out of episodes I once struggled to comprehend—or perhaps was too afraid to embrace as part of my being, too afraid to define as a diagnosis. I couldn’t admit then, with all the endurance and zest and power I believed I had, that I was in pain. I couldn’t admit that I felt I was wasting away. Seeing and ignoring myself in pain forced me to reckon with it later on.
But at the time, the helper in me, the friend in Dan Smith, sought tangible, friendly solutions. Turn the night owl into the early bird. Turn the coffee addict into a love of gentle herbs. For years I suffered with an insufficient attention span, bouts of memory loss, unexpected weight
gain and a toxic reliance on toxic men. During my Oblivion year, everything shifted. I was in control, and under my own control, I reigned supreme. There was a new will to prove that I could be better, that I would be better. Better meant doing the opposite of what I knew.
This era began one autumn and ended sometime the following spring. At least seven months of studying and working in a field of no interest until fate led me where I belong: in writing. To some, that’s more than half a year wasted. But don’t you see how much was gained?
This was the era that showed me what I could be, what I could do, what I would do if I could just make the stars align on my own terms. Like I said, it was the era that gave me a new will to prove I could be more. But note: The stars only align every 5,200 years, and never do they behave as we plead. And note: As essential as it was to understand my potential during Oblivion, this was not the era that helped me understand why I deserved better at all. That would begin with Lady.
Heather Viviano
Location: Seattle, WA
About: Based on the prompt, I reminisced about 5 different men, all named Bob, who inspired me musically. I chose a funny and beautiful memory with Bob H, because I needed a happy memory that day. Covid-19 fears were escalating and it seemed high time for a happy memory.
Age: 51
For reasons I don't understand, the first thing that went through my mind after reading today's prompt was all of the Bobs who influenced me in various stages of my life: Bob B, Bobby Y, Bob H, Bob Dylan, Bobcat. They all bring touching and/or influential stories to mind, but I'm choosing my favorite Bob H story because it's fun and funny, and I need fun and funny today.
I woke up with that dread in my chest again. John Prine's passing from covid-19 really got to me. I must have sung Angel From Montgomery a thousand times driving around in my car. How many more deaths will we hear about? What will the post covid-19 apocalyptic world look like? What obstacles will my children have before them? Yes, today I need to recall the Bob H. story.
It was my birthday. A cold January evening and there was snow on the ground (which isn't always the case during a Seattle winter). We were at the dining room table about to enjoy some birthday cake when we heard a curious sound....
Earlier in the day our friend Bob called. No reason, just random, as Bob is a random fellow. I teased him though---Oh, Bob, how kind of you to call on my birthday, how thoughtful! Long pause. Uhhhh, I'll call right back. Bob calls back and reads me my horoscope. I told him that was lame, not a good gift at all, and being that he was musical, I expected something more like a serenade for my birthday. He sort of stuttered and stammered and said maybe I'll see you later. We hung up. I didn't hear from Bob the rest of the day.
Flash forward to my birthday dinner that evening. It was sort of a late dinner so my three girls (who were quite young at the time) were already bathed and in their nightgowns, wispy curls and dangling waves of hair drying over dinner. We were about to enjoy some birthday cake when that curious sound began.
The girls looked from one to the other inquisitively--what the heck is that?? My husband and I looked at one another. Was there a battery dying in one of the kids' toys? Was there a sick cow moaning somewhere off in the distance? Suddenly I saw a lightbulb go on in my husband's eyes. Bob, he said. It's Bob.
We peered out the dining room window into the darkness and there, right in the middle of our snowy lawn, was a quasi-sober Bob serenading me for my birthday with an accordion.
The girls absolutely lit up. Bob! It's Bob!!! All three of them sprung out of their chairs and ran outside in their nightgowns and bare feet, hair still damp, to dance with a sufficiently buzzed, accordion playing Bob. My first instinct was to stop them---it's winter! Bare feet! No coats! Wet hair! Drunk (yeah, let's just call like it is) Bob! Gah!!! But no, this was one of those moments that I just let them go.
I watched through the window and time seemed to wind down to slow motion, like it does in the movies, as I watched my girls leap and dance with abandon, twirling and giggling, with their bare feet in the moonlit snow to Bob's impromptu, novice, accordion playing serenade.
My heart was full.