Mix Tape Monday 2: Authenticity

This week's Mixed Tape Monday post took a turn from what I had initially planned. I wanted to share the first song, but when I reviewed it for lyrics, I realized that it spoke to a completely different theme even if it wasn't immediately obvious.

[See the first Mixed Tape Monday post for the background and how to participate if you want to play along! I'm going to do a couple more of these, and if I'm the only player, this will probably become a random, when-I-feel-like-it feature. (No harm, no foul, no pouting.)]

Authenticity is an important topic to me; in fact, it's the theme of my life this year. It's something I have struggled with my entire life and when I turned 50 last summer, I declared that my 50th year would be the year of Mel Being Authentic (technically the 51st, unless the year before we turn one is our 0st year).

Wow. I started writing this post on the weekend and it got LONG and turned into something very deep, so I'm going to take all that deep content and move it to a new post for some time in the future. 

Jann Arden: Good Mother (album: Living Under June)

This song has been deeply important to me for about 20 years, give or take. When I first heard it, my mother was dying, so I think the impact was immediate and obvious. It came on the radio, and I parked my car and cried. Then I bought the CD (may have been a cassette at first - I've had several copies) and listened the shit out of it.

The thing is, my parents, while they loved me, did not give me the message of "be yourself," as the song says. Discussing that kind of thing is probably best left for therapy and not a blog, but I'll just say that there's a reason I struggle with authenticity to this day. When I listen to the song now, I focus on the verses.

The lyrics that speak the strongest to me are in the second verse: "Cardboard masks of all the people I have been, thrown out with all the rusted, tangled, dented, goddamn miseries. You can say I'm hard to hold, but if you knew me..."

I used to wear a lot of masks. Being accepted, being liked, not ever upsetting or inconveniencing anyone... that was what I lived for. And it was a less than ideal existence. So I started throwing away the masks, along with their goddamn miseries. And I was hard to hold, hard to get close to, because, well, no shit. If you're not real, you can't fucking relax.

Cat Stevens: If You Want to Sing Out Sing Out (from Harold and Maude)
The only versions of a soundtrack for Harold and Maude that exist (last I heard) are ones made by fans & some random print available only in Japan. Several years ago, I introduced a friend to this movie on a day one or both of us was blue. (It's a dark comedy with a strong message of authenticity.) She LOVED it. So for her birthday, I put together my version of the soundtrack. I managed to get every song in the movie (had to buy several albums to do it), including some version of the classical pieces. It turned out amazing (I'll post a pic beneath the video).

This song is all about being yourself. I don't think it's "easy," like the lyrics say, but it's definitely possible.

Here's my version of the soundtrack. I was sad to find I only had small, poor quality images, but I think the full-size ones were lost in a hard drive crash, so I suppose I'm lucky to have any at all!