Floorboard Mixtape of Great Mystery

As previously mentioned, I was born in 1982. I remember the fall of the Berlin wall and the collapse of the USSR in 1989-1990 clearly, as well as plenty of other things about the 1980s, but they're a little blurry because they're all before age 7. For example, I have much clearer memory of what cars, stores, houses, and people's clothes looked like than of what the music was like, because the music I heard up to age 7 was made up mostly of classic rock radio (my dad); Sesame Street, Raffi, and Sharon Lois & Bram cassettes; and my parents' vinyl, a lot of early Queen and Bowie, Frank Zappa, etc (my dad) and Billy Joel, Jim Croce, Elton John, Don Henley (my mom).

So I'm familiar with a lot more 90s and 70s music, because in the 90s I was of an age to be around pop radio more often and also eventually to start caring about contemporary music somewhat (although for most of them I still preferred to listen to early Queen); and 70s music was on in the background thanks to my parents.

As I'm reading fiction set in the 80s, I keep running into artist and song names that I recognize, but have no idea what they sound like, so in the past few weeks I've felt compelled to look up a lot of them. Finally earlier this week I asked Wax, who did pay attention to music in the 80s somewhat (both because she was 14 at the end of them, and because she was more interested in music as a kid), to help me make a playlist.

And in the process of this Wax said, at one point, "This song was on my floorboard mixtape. Yeah, it was a mixtape that I found under the floorboards on the balcony in the dorm at the arts & crafts school in Åland that I went to for one year before high school."

So apparently, in 1992, when my wife was 16 and at art school, she dug up some balcony floorboards and found a grotty, grimy, unlabeled cassette tape, and she took it back to her room and painstakingly cleaned the tape by pulling it out and winding it back up, and then she listened to it a lot for years without knowing what the songs on it were, for the most part, because it was still a number of years before the internet made it possible to google the lyrics. Her floorboard tape included:

1. Somebody's Watching Me by Rockwell


2. Self Control by Laura Branigan


3. Don't Go by Yazoo


4. Send Me an Angel by Real Life

... she can't remember the rest, and failed to identify the cassette in our box of cassettes (but our cassette-playing stereo broke a few years ago anyway, so we'd have to buy another one even to check).

foe marble really catches my fancy, actually

1. smiled at how contempt he looked in his sleep


2. it might've been another one of her elaborate rouses


3. a foe marble mansion


4. Leaning on his enclosed fist


5. a small string of cigarette buds scattered across the floor


6. jumbled around for a response as quick as possible

I imagine "Foe Marble" is a common sentiment (i.e. CURSE YOU, MARBLE!) because Carrara marble, the classic grey-veined white, which is incredibly easily scratched and stained, has enjoyed a big resurgence as a material both for countertops and for tiles in bourgeois, trendy Insta-style interiors in the last couple of decades, and when something is THAT popular it's guaranteed to be installed in lots of places where its unsuitability* will drive its owners crazy.

*Marble is a suboptimal surface for countertops because it's scratchable and is too porous, hence easily stained, and results in too much wear for most people's taste. But stone is an ideal substrate for baking on - for rolling out doughs and especially pastry doughs, and it's easy to see why marble (easier to cut and polish, often considered prettier) would win out over granite in many cases. Of course, if you don't mind the stains and scratches, then there's no reason to avoid it; it's not inherently bad, except inasmuch as harder counters are more likely to break any dishes you drop on them, but this applies to all stone and porcelain surfaces. And of course, it's waterproof and heatproof, which is an improvement on butcherblock and laminate. (I still wish I'd put one square of stone next to the stove, for hot dishes and pastry. We couldn't find an affordable chunk the right size.)