Tapes recorded in my bedroom
When I was fifteen, my friend William taught me how to cover the tab openings of an old cassette tape to record over it. It was 2011, and there was no particular reason for me to be making tapes other than the illusion of coolness that came from using vintage technologies, my indulgence in nostalgia for a time before I was even born. At this point in my life, I was just beginning to figure out my own identity, and walking around Atlanta with my headphones on (savoring the tape's low hiss that whispered underneath the music) allowed me to construct fantasies in my head in which I was free from my spatial, temporal, and physical realities. I spent countless hours making mixtapes, and each mixtape was the soundtrack of a different life I led in my dreams. In these dreams, I cut off all my hair, played baseball while the sun set, drove through the city with a girl I had a crush on. I was rugged and boyish and untouched by shame.