My wife and I were a couple of real-life, high-risk, hard-quarantining survivors.
Now, with our vaccines, we have some flexibility back, and in the fall, if all goes well in the world, our kids will be back to school in person.
Our daughter will enter the eighth grade. What a year for a triumphant return! A hero, regaining her domain after long being absent. After enduring hardship and heartache, she deserves a soundtrack suitable to the moment. And how very complex and intense this moment must be for her.
So I made her a mix-tape. I don’t know if any of her friends know how to do this in this digital world. It wouldn’t be easy. But, that’s why I’m here.
In keeping with tradition, I began the mix-tape with a snippet of audio from one of her favorite movies. The first music track is a proper banger, something she can kick down those middle school doors too. Next on the list is something lower temperature. It’s a track she’s been into over the last year, but it’s maybe fallen off the charts, and it will remind her of months ago when all her family was around, for support, for comfort, and to get on her nerves. And since it has its roots in mid to late ’80s pop, I call on my own epochal past and throw a favorite track of mine next.
Great, so now I’m thinking of my own eighth grade year. I missed most of it to illness and hospital stays. But I remember the ridiculous high of being back at school at the top of the food chain. And I remember the panic of crushes and the hormones that shook me on a daily basis. I was pathologically shy. So I decide to start the next group of songs with my own milk and cookies song, my own crush song. It’s pure comfort to me, and luckily, I know my daughter likes it. I follow it with a track as melancholy and threatening as I, the father, am comfortable putting in my daughter’s mix-tape. Because comfort is fleeting in the eighth grade.
But your friends are never far behind, and hers are good ones. They’ll have her back when she needs it. And the next songs are preceded by another audio clip from a favorite tv show. Then the four songs are for her and her buddies to get rowdy, to make trouble and to find herself on her own hero’s journey.
Knowing I’m pushing the limits on the length of this tape, one more movie audio clip, and one more song. It’s a song of longing and connection, an old favorite of mine. And it ought to provide the feels all through high school too.
Now this project is a wrap, and I can work on a mix-tape for myself. Something completely self-involved and embarrassing. That’s where I’ll put the R.E.M. Yeah, lots of it.
Side one:
Elevate – DJ KALIL
Shining Lights – THE WEEKND
Laid So Low – TEARS FOR FEARS
Birdhouse In Your Soul – THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS
You Should See Me In a Crown – BILLIE EILISH
Side two:
Shut Up and Drive – RIHANNA
America’s Sweetheart – ELLE KING
Survivor – DESTINY’S CHILD
Fall In the Light – LORI CARSON and GRAEME REVELL
– Micah Clarke
Micah Clarke is a father of two, a husband of one, a son of two, and a brother of one. He draws a lot, paints very little, and writes children’s books. Is a book a book if no one has ever published it? If not, he’s still a draftsman and a very little painter. He likes his eggs over easy, with grits and crispy bacon. And he wants you to know that he’s grateful to you for taking time to read his posts.