Buddy Holly - "True Love Ways" 2:51

February 3 marks the day the music died, according to Don McLean. While that song may not necessarily do justice to the cause, the deaths of Ritchie Valens, J.P. "The Big Bopper" Richardson, and Buddy Holly are worth noting for any true music afficianado (or a humble music junkie such as myself).

I've always been a fan of all three, but I am particularly fond of Buddy Holly. I think it was those glasses. His voice was distinct, with that lilt and clarity. Holly's voice had that way of making me feel the lyrics.

Tonight, Buddy Holly lives. Well, at least on vinyl. I have the 1978 compilation album, Buddy Holly Lives on the turntable at the moment. It is one of my favorite compilation albums ever. Probably one of my favorite albums, if I want to be specific.

For me, the craft of making a mixtape is my way of saying everything I'm feeling. As adept as I may be with a keyboard or as articulate I am in face-to-face conversation, I am awful with discussions pertaining to the difficult matter of navigating the stormy seas of L-O-V-E.

It's so easy to fall in love. The difficulty lies in expressing it.

I cannot say what I feel. Part of that could be because words often fall short to describe our deepest emotions. If emotions operated within the realm of words, therapy would be obsolete--We'd be able to articulate everything. That's why I always disagree with the sentiment that, to paraphrase, "Writing workshops are not Oprah. They are not therapy sessions." See, I think that they are--we are working out our neuroses on the page to be dissected by a panel. We are trying to say what we feel through narrative because the words do not exist within the realm of our human vocabularies. So we string words together with all the complexity of a double helix.

I was working on a mixtape for a fellow with romantic potential. He hadn't made me a mixtape, but I thought if I could pick the right tracks and arrange them with deft precision that maybe, just maybe, he could understand all the things I could not say. I wasn't thinking about the fact that he had not acknowledge me as anything other than some entertaining oddity, a Ziggy Stardust in our modern times. I wish I was being self-flattering, but I'm well aware of what I am (a subject for another track). I toiled on tracks, possible track listings, and had even started to record the cassette. I had copied some tracks from vinyl and others from my computer. I had even tracked down some tracks through the WFMU archive, timing them just right so that they would record perfectly. It was a complicated process, I assure you. I wanted 90 minutes on a Sony Hi-Fi cassette to be an answer, an explanation, for my confusing, complicated behavior. It would be the antidote that would cure my lonely nights. I was Scheherazade weaving together a series of stories that might save my [love] life.

You get the gist.

One of the tracks I used was the Buddy Holly & the Crickets song, "True Love Ways". It isn't one of the more well-known songs, but that doesn't make it any less memorable to me. It's a different sort of love song, the kind that says that together, as a couple, we'll have something to offer the world. That's what I was thinking when I considered putting this track on the mixtape. See, this fellow and I, we fit together like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle. We filled in all the right places with our differences that allowed us to complete the larger picture of our similarities. It was just enough. It wasn't some sort of grand love affair that makes you climb to the top of the Empire State Building or give sheath to a happy dagger. It was the kind of pleasant, innocent affair that, had it blossomed, would have led us to experience the sort of great transcendence that I dream can exist when people really, truly love one another. I don't know if I loved him, but I thought I could. And having even the slightest inclination towards love is, for me, quite an emotional achievement.

The mixtape was beautiful. It was probably one of the greatest mixtapes I have made to date. But I couldn't bring myself to give it to him. Instead, I made him a mix CD featuring some of the songs we'd often talked about. It had a nice, lukewarm reception. It wasn't what it was supposed to be. But then again, nothing ever is.

As for the mixtape, I kept it for myself. I don't plan on recycling it on another guy, as it was made with one audience in mind. I never recycle a mixtape. To give a mixtape to someone other than the intended listener undermines the purpose of the craft. It is an art. I should have destroyed it, erased it, or otherwise annihilated the mixtape. I keep it as a reminder, a way to preserve the integrity of my words of love.