mix tapes

in the spirit of first bras and kisses, i have arrived rather later than my peers to the downloading and burning of music. suddenly there is a whole new world of personalized gifts for friends, not to mention my dad, who went out and bought an ipod for himself after he tried out mine; "that's amazing! that's so cool!"

i burnt my first cherry, uh cd, this week in an effort to have some different music to listen to during my open art group on the ICU. months of the beatles, norah jones, enya and phil collins have been my precipitating factor. the new "background sound" triggered a rather interesting and lucid discussion (particularly as most of these guys are detoxing hard or waiting for their meds to kick out the auditory and visual hallucinations) of music that evoked different memories or just lifted their spirits in general. in my never ending quest for new therapeutic interventions to do with my higher functioning groups i purchased some blank cd cases and asked them to think about "the soundtrack of (their) lives". lyrics that resonated, tunes that took them back to their happy places, or songs that just made them want to get out of their seats and dance (i did have one rather precocious patient get out of her chair and start pole dancing). they identified their playlists and created front and back covers to their own personal albumns. what a rip roaring success. popular choices included lenny kravitz, steppenwolf, cher, lynrd skynrd and metallica.

i am dreadful at remembering names of songs and bands, most of them have been re-titled "ooh! ooh! i like this song! i have this one! what is it?" however, in the spirit of narcissism i too created my own personal "mtv:flashback to the soundtrack of my life". i can "leave on a jet plane", be "forever young" camping at the red sea, get up and dance to "lion sleeps tonight", think about my first love to a little hot chocolate, and another one on our first road trip to a little cake. stocking stuffers will be pretty predictable this year, but they will serve as reminders of good times, good road trips, and a lot of out of tune sing-a-long duets.