Obsession

I wonder if part of the below problem is the obsession I've developed with this mix tape. It's pulling me away from my life.

It's odd, really. I've always wanted to recreate it on CD, to preserve it. But I didn't seriously decide to do it until a month ago or so. And in the beginning, it seemed an almost insurmountable task. Trying to track down some song titles only identified by artists with whom I am unfamiliar. Finding songs among my own collection, and online. Deciding where to purchase them, or whether I could fly under the radar and download them for free--or from Russia.

It's become my evening task, to work on this CD. Our slow Internet connection has stretched this into a many-days project. I am absorbed in the downloading, the searching, the categorizing, and organizing.

And yet so quickly, I realized last night that there are but two songs left before I am finished. I could have continued working to complete the disc, but I didn't. I couldn't bring myself to. I don't know why. But I wouldn't be surprised if this compilation--previously a matter of life and death (ish) and immediacy--languishes for a while.

It suddenly occurs to me that I'm trying to bring my past into my now. Fitting, because I'm reconnecting with old friends, but at the same time, I'm forging new relationships with them. This CD is just a symbol, a party favor for a specific, smoky, friend-filled moment in my life.

What will it even be like to hear those songs, those memories, blaring in my car, in my home, instead of piping directly in my ear from a rickety Walkman, from a worn-out tape? (There's something so secretive and private about listening to music through headphones.) What will it be like sharing (what I'm now realizing is) an intimate part of myself with people who didn't know me in the moment these songs became connected? Do I even remember who I was in that moment?