Frozen Transparency

One of my compatriots in the blogosphere whom I like (if for no other reason than the fact that he and I share the same first name) recently posted an interesting entry in which he dug up an old burned CD of his. Having read it, the whole notion of old-burned-CD-as-soundtrack-of-an-era bubbled in my mind, until my recent re-organization of my CDs made me discover some of my old burned albums. I got inspired by the whole thing—to the point where I’m making a post totally out of order.

One in particular stands out; I called it my “Story Mix”, and it was the CD of my senior year of high school, really. My memories of these songs are tangled with the various drives around town I would have at the time, since driving is where I listen to most of my music. Interestingly, most of these were mp3s I had downloaded, as this was long before I began really legalizing my music collection.

The tracklisting is as follows:

1. Dreams of Leaving (The Promised Land from Final Fantasy: Pray)
2. To Travel Across The Seas (Voyage from Final Fantasy: Pray)
3. Arrival At The Island Of Glass (Schala’s Theme (Arranged) from Chrono Trigger 99)
4. At The Glass Palace (Au Palais Du Verre from Final Fantasy: Pray)
5. Spirit Of Adventure (Pray from Final Fantasy: Pray)
6. Softly, Beside A Lake (Mugen Houyou by Yoko Takahashi)
7. Beyond The Next Horizon (Yokan by Yoko Takahashi)
8. To Rest Beside A Brook (Hourglass by Liquid Tension Experiment)
9. Solitude Of Searching (Forbidden Gene from Evangelion Refrain)
10. The Wanderer (Toki No Hourousha from Final Fantasy: Pray)
11. Crystal Caves (Osmosis by Liquid Tension Experiment)
12. Subterranean Labyrinth (Genwaku No Umi Kara by Yoko Takahashi)
13. Endless Waves (Guitar, Flute & String by Moby)
14. The Snowfield (Death On The Snowfield by AmIEvil)

It’s relatively clear where my musical interests were at the time, I think. Many of these songs would get re-appropriated for future mixes, although not all of them. In time, I got an mp3 player, so CDs became pointless to burn, yet I still have an odd fondness for these songs being in this order.

Yet, it captures a point in my life to me. In a way, I’m glad for having burned CDs, just so that I can go back through memory lane like this.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 3rd, 2008 at 6:00 am and is filed under Musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.