Hey Slowdown listeners, today's episode is one of our favorites from the archives.

I'm Major Jackson and this is the slowdown. Lately all of my free time has gone to digitizing CDs and cassettes.

Last month I discovered several shoeboxes of mixtapes from my young adulthood.

The music I blasted in my first apartment, Ill-matic, or while on the subway going to work, remain in light.

Songs that were gifted by a romantic partner fade into you. And DJ Friends, Toe's Last Century Modern.

Who knows why I've carried these boxes across the continent several times over, but I'm happy I held

on to these relics. The pleasures they give are affecting, even if I'm weighed down by nostalgia.

To the concern of my family, my efforts to preserve ancient media looks like obsession, whose

Latin root, obsidium, fittingly means siege, blockade.

I'm late to the dinner table.

I put off meeting up with friends for ice cream, my favorite. I ignore a midday doorbell which turns out to be a scheduled plumber.

When I emerge out of my cave, I look bedraggled.

Normally, they respect and admire my hobbies and favorite pastimes.

But sometimes, my isolation is concerning and gets to the point of complaint.

Hello, we're here. Did you forget us?

I get it. The focus I put into preserving the sounds that have informed my

palim set of feelings is the kind of attention they want from me.

While the inching of time demolishes our belief that all will remain the same,

my love for them is constant and unerring,

but sometimes preoccupations are, well, all-consuming, and get in the way of that

fact.

Today's poem gives voice to the intimidating feeling of competing with a partner's

...