Unlocking Hidden Stories: How CRAFT Transforms Erasure into a Sonic Journey
If song lyrics are poems, composing a mixtape is like editing your own anthology. But writing an erasure essay is like editing your anthology down to the most poignant lines — the lines for which you’d picked those songs in the first place — to emphasize the particular points you want to make sure don’t get missed.
***
As a teenager in the late ‘90s, I made many mixtapes — mixtapes with ridiculously obvious themes I thought were obfuscated, loaded with ridiculously obvious songs I also thought were, somehow, “subtle hints” to my boyfriend. The mixtapes did not achieve their anticipated outcomes, even when I sang into his ear those lyrics I’d selected, making my intentions as ridiculously obvious as I could. My boyfriend broke up with me after I made one too many lyrical lunges at him — via email, on the phone, through a mixtape or in-person; it did not matter which mode it was in particular that pushed him over the edge because it was likely the accumulation of them all.
