Life Is a Mix CD, Part Four

A Holiday in Rome (Spring 2002)

1. “Very Unusual” (clip from Roman Holiday)
2. Piebald “Where Have All the Classics Gone”
3. Knapsack “Cinema Stare”
4. Creeper Lagoon “Roman Hearts”
5. “Thank you. No thank you.” (clip from Roman Holiday)
6. Vroom “Ella”
7. “Coliseum” (clip from Roman Holiday)
8. Jawbreaker “Sleep”
9. “All Off” (clip from Roman Holiday)
10. “Cut Your Hair” Pavement
11. “Today's Gonna Be a Holiday” (clip from Roman Holiday)
12. Weezer “Holiday”
13. “First Cigarette” (clip from Roman Holiday)
14. Joe Christmas “A Pretty Girl Never Lights Her Own Cigarette”
15. “The Mouth of Truth” (clip from Roman Holiday)
16. Starflyer 59 “A Holiday Song”
17. “Wall of Wishes” (clip from Roman Holiday)
18. Jets to Brazil “Sweet Avenue”
19. “You Weren't So Bad Yourself” (clip from Roman Holiday)
20. Fugazi “Last Chance for a Slow Dance”
21. “Leave Me” (clip from Roman Holiday)
22. Plankeye “Goodbye”
23. “24 Hours Can't All Be Black” (clip from Roman Holiday)
24. The Anniversary “Till We Earned a Holiday”
25. “Rome By All Means, Rome” (clip from Roman Holiday)
26. Green Day “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)”

The Fall semester of 2001 passed in a blur. I don't remember many things I learned from that one semester in general studies. I was leaning toward going in to the journalism department, so my class load was based mostly around the journalism catalog. On the morning of September 11, 2001, I sat in my Mass Communications class at 8 AM, unaware of the goings on in New York City. The rest of the class also seemed unaware, and if anybody knew anything, they certainly didn't mention it. You have to remember this was a day before anyone had the internet on their cell phone or even had a cell phone period. I didn't get my first cell phone until 2003. Text messaging was also a lot less commonplace: texting plans being expensive and not everyone even having a phone capable of sending and receiving messages. I arrived back at my apartment for a brief nap and thought to turn on the TV before heading back to campus for my next class. I stayed there for the rest of the day, watching the footage and hearing the speculation of what could have happened or what this could mean and then hearing the news: a terrorist group previously unknown to me called Al Qaeda had claimed responsibility for attacking the Twin Towers. I must have stayed up until two or three in the morning, unable peel my eyes from the atrocities I saw on the screen. I even had to call my mom that night. It was quite an emotional shock even for someone like me, who is generally level-headed and the very antithesis of overemotional. I needed to talk to my mom to let her know I was okay and to know she and the rest of my family were okay. The reason I can't omit the talk of September 11^th is because thus far it is the defining historical event in my life, the likes of which hadn't been seen since the Kennedy assassination or landing on the moon, and the likes of which certainly hasn't been seen since.

As I mentioned, I don't remember much from my classes in the Fall of 2001, that is except for the one English class I took. It was a survey of early world literature, and it was the only 8 AM class I ever took in which I made it to every single class. This class made me realize a love for literature, even literature that today isn't necessarily my cup of tea. I began to look into the English department and even before the halfway point in the semester, I had all my paperwork filled out so that at the end of the semester, I would become an English major with an emphasis in creative writing.

Spring 2001 saw the beginning of my creative writing curriculum, and the creative juices appeared to be flowing even into my mixes. This mix was the first mix I felt I had actually composed, and to this day, none of my mixes have had as tight a concept as this one. My roommate and I had heard Natalie Portman, who we were both infatuated with, compared to Audrey Hepburn, so one ill-fated night we rented Roman Holiday from Hastings. That night I fell in love with the incomparable Audrey Hepburn. I began to rent all of her movies and then had to own them all. My obsession has certainly faded over the years, but take one look at my DVD collection and watch Two for the Road with me, and you will see my passion for Audrey still exists and is still very real. The concept of the mix is a retelling of Roman Holiday, at least that is what I was attempting, and I impressed myself with the results. I made the movie clips myself from the Chinese DVD I had bought from EBay, as the movie wasn't even out on DVD in the U.S. yet. I genuinely still like all of the songs I put on this one, even the cliché “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)” to end the compilation. The mix encompasses godfathers of the emo/post-punk movement in Fugazi and Jawbreaker, and godfathers of the indie movement in Pavement, as well as some artists more current to 2001. I was able to acknowledge where the music I had started loving had come from. I had become a full-fledged music snob. It was rare to find my old high school pop punk sneak on to my mixes any more from this point on.

I continued to pollute the airwaves as a DJ at KANM, the non-top 40 student radio station. I was even the historian for a little while, but my days as a jockey of disks were sadly numbered. I just plain needed more money, and being a crew member at McDonald's wasn't paying the bills, so I asked to be promoted to a management position and was quickly awarded the opportunity. My schedule started to get insane, so I had to give up my historian position at the radio station. This would also be my last semester as a DJ at the radio station. Working forty hours a week and all of my classwork seemed like too much. Of course today I realize I could and should have been a much better student and probably could have managed the few hours of time a week it took to be a DJ.

I had made a lot friends over the internet, and this mix found its way across the country and into the mailboxes of many of those people. I wasn't just making these mixes for me any more. I was making them to hand out to other people. I was making a conversation pieces here, people. This mix found itself in the mailbox of a girl in Maine, and not just any girl, but a girlfriend-of-sorts. We were always reluctant to label each other as boyfriend/girlfriend, but boyfriend/girlfriend is pretty much what we were. Still, I use the term kind of loosely, but here I was in a relationship, long-distance though it was. We would spend a lot of our waking hours on instant messenger or on the phone talking to one another. We would write letters to one another. We would say the sweetest things to each other, the things you are supposed to say to one another. This was the first girl to whom I ever said “I love you” to and the first girl who had ever said that she loved me. I see it now for what it was: puppy love, but it felt good at the time. My poetry from this period still reflects some of poor and self-loathing bastard mentality, but some of my poems came out happy and embraced simple experiences from my life. I learned how to start enjoying some of the things happening around me. By the end of the semester, our “relationship” was over, and not just over, but ended by me of all people, the Former Loneliest Guy on Earth. I tried to make it as amicable as possible. I had nothing against the girl. I just knew I wanted something and someone different. I realized a relationship, any kind of relationship, wasn't what I really wanted, despite all my years with “any kind of relationship” as my mantra and slogan.

During this whirlwind year, I figured out what I wanted to do, or at least what I wanted to spend my time studying. I developed a passion for reading and writing. I liked talking to people about books and writing. I loved work-shopping writing and even having my own writing critiqued, which can sometimes be a painful process. I discovered more about myself and gained a true ability to think critically, all during this one school year through my examination of literature and writing. My passion remains today. I want to be a writer. I want to show others all that literature has to offer and its value in our society. I want other people be able to have those epiphanies about themselves they can only experience while reading great literature. I want to show others how to think outside the box and consider ideas that would otherwise never have occurred to them. Another piece of the puzzle that is me was fit into place.