I started going through my This is My Jam (TMJ) Archive and realized how badly I’d love to share those posts in this space. From July 15, 2013, to September 25, 2015 (the day TMJ closed) I posted 54 jams. Documenting, what was, in essence, my undergraduate experience. Over the next year (or few), I will pull posts and share them here. I was initially going to post-date the throwbacks, but I don’t ever want to confuse them with my first post ever made 😉 As such, they will be dated up top, in the title.
The inaugural TMJ throwback will have to be the one that prompted these entries. When TMJ announced their decision to close, I rushed and began posting as often as I could. At that point, my desk was piled high with scrap pieces of paper depicting scribblings of titles, authors, sentiments, and dates. It was a messy, backlog of the songs I wanted to post. The following is one of those backlogged songs. It’s a reasonably familiar song, but it was new to me.
Before leaving for college, I made a bunch of “random CDs.” In iTunes, you can generate music genius playlists from a single song. Since my entire family shared iTunes, I ended up with 32 CDs (labeled solely with a number, no track-lists) featuring a collection of varied and new-to-me songs. I still love saying, “let’s try #16 today”, finding everything from Celine Dion to Cat Stevens, and having to Shazam at red lights.
This TMJ entry holds notable value for me because of the description I attached to it.
“I feel as if a part of me will always associate this song with Gaming Innovation. I swear I’ve heard the song going both to and from that class… on both the sunny, warm, rushed, wonderful drive there and on the way back, in the dark and silence*.”
What I especially love about this entry is that my description takes me right back to that moment in time. On my undergraduate drives to that class, I often pulled out those CDs. The honest truth is that somehow, whenever it came time to get to Gaming Innovation class, random CD (#-since-forgotten) always started up on this song. I have no idea how that was possible, but it happened. I also love that this highlights the incredibly exciting aspect of my undergraduate experience; reminding me to be grateful for the opportunity I had there. How many undergrads get to take a class on inventing a casino game for patent?
* When I first read this entry after 3.5 years, I latched onto the words describing my car ride. Both there and back were accurately depicted, but I sort of smirked at the contradiction of the “dark and silence” description. I cannot emphasize how faithful to that drive those words are. The strange part though is that it was not silent, the song was playing, and it was not dark, because the Vegas lights never go out. That said, it really was dark and stilled, not in a physical way, but in the way it felt. It was a strange but beautiful serenity.
The sound quality of the video is iffy, but it’s a bit entertaining to flashback to your parent’s era and think my God, did they style like that too? The mullet… wow.