ideas are like songs on a burned cd

For tech-savvy millennials in the late ’90s and early ’00s, burning a CD was the perfect substitute for a hand-written love letter.

When I was younger, I was skateboarding a lot. I was listening to music and skateboarding. There were two songs, that are widely different: DJ Shadow’s “Building Steam With a Grain of Salt,” and Bob Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice It’s All Right.” And I remember skateboarding to them and they made me just stop. And the world felt so cool. I would look a... See more

As I got older, the thrill of receiving a mix CD was supplanted by the thrill of making one. I burned them for everyone I had a crush on in middle school, painstakingly adding and removing and re-adding songs to the tracklists, changing up the order (and changing it, and changing it, and changing it again) until I was satisfied that it said "I like... See more