96 Hours in Heaven, or: Music to Remember a Tryst By..... Aug 02 '05 (Updated Aug 10 '05)    Write an essay on this topic. Tweet Popular Products in Music Jersey Boys [Original Broadway Cast Recording] by Original Broadway Cast From $8 Mai by Eri Sugai From $4 The Bottom Line Sometimes, a mix can be thought of as a personal "movie soundtrack of the heart." This, my only mix, is patterned after the typical OST album.... Most of us, at one time or another, have had life-changing romances that will always be part of us until the day we die. Sometimes they follow the ideal love storyline -- two people find each other somewhere -- at school, work, a party, a concert, a library, or, in this digitally connected world, across a crowded chat room -- and either at first sight or gradually, they fall in love and live, as one of my previous employers was so fond of writing in her stories, "happily ever after." Ideally, that's what I once hoped for, too, and it almost happened when I met a single (and younger) nurse from the Midwest in one of those crowded chat rooms in the fall of 1999. We talked twice on the phone and for long hours on Yahoo! Messenger, and for a while it looked like we'd meet in person in the spring of 2000. Unfortunately, the relationship ended after only six weeks, and in spite of my best efforts to salvage it, so did the friendship. So this little "original soundtrack album" isn't about "Nurse Betty" (I have to call her something, right?), even though one track on it refers to that particular fiasco. Instead, it's about the relationship that followed. I wish I could report that my relationship with a woman I'll call Mindy fell into the category of the ideal storybook romance, but I can't. I did meet her in a crowded chat room, we did meet in person later, and I did fall in love with her, but everything else was a tragedy in the making. I'll not delve too much into the details of my ill-fated affair here; it's a very long story, and a painful one, at that. Suffice it to say that this mix is something I created for her to observe the two-year anniversary of our first chat in the fall of 1999 and to describe, in musical terms, the memories I had of our four-day-tryst in the early days of 2000. As a guy who likes movies, when I put this mix together (with the assistance of a tech-savvy neighbor who used CD Maker to create the album), I approached this project as though I were scoring a film version of my trip out West. I therefore relied heavily on music from film soundtracks (When Harry Met Sally, American Graffiti, Casablanca, and Empire of the Sun), a 2-CD set of John Williams' Greatest Hits, and Running Wild, which is a compilation of music made famous by Glenn Miller in the 1930s and '40s. It took almost a day to select and arrange the tracks in sequence -- it's not always easy to look upon one's memories as though they were film clips and decide what music should go with them. Fortunately, I had already some idea of what I wanted, so it was just a matter of pruning the mix from around 30 tracks to the present 20. So, here are the 20 songs and themes I selected. For best results, imagine this is the back cover of the Original Soundtrack Album to a romantic film titled 96 Hours in Heaven: A Love Story. 1. Opening Logos:" 20th Century Fox Fanfare (With CinemaScope Extension)," from Star Wars: A New Hope. 2. Main Titles/Prologue: "It Had To Be You (Trio)," from When Harry Met Sally 3. Remembering a Lost Love: "But Not For Me," from When Harry Met Sally 4. Arriving in Denver/Alex Sees Mindy For the First Time: "Cadillac of the Skies," from The Greatest Hits 1969-1999 . 5. Alex Serenades Mindy in the Car: "And So It Goes," from Storm Front by Billy Joel 6. Colorado Rhapsody: "Main Title from The Reivers," from The Greatest Hits 1969-1999 7. First Dance/The First Kiss: "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" (The Platters), from American Graffiti 8. Alex and Mindy's First Night Together/ "I Wish You Were My Wife...": "Moonlight Serenade," from Running Wild 9. After the First Time/Holding Mindy: "The Nearness of You," from Running Wild 10. "Good Morning, Sweetie...": "Only You," from American Graffiti 11. Waiting for Mindy (Alex Alone): "Toy Planes, Home, and Hearth," from Empire of the Sun 12. Carving a Heart in the Snow: "Heart and Soul," from American Graffiti 13. Mindy's Family Album: "Since I Don't Have You," from American Graffiti 14. "I Wish I Could Tell You How Much I Love You....": "I Could Write a Book," from When Harry Met Sally 15. Mindy and Alex's Last Night Together: "To Make You Feel My Love," from Billy Joel: Greatest Hits Volume III 16. Packing for Home: "Don't Get Around Much Anymore," from When Harry Met Sally 17. The Lovers Separate/The Long Flight Home: "Prologue from JFK," from The Greatest Hits 1969-1999 18. Twilight: Missing Mindy and The Long Sorrow: "Hymn to the Fallen from Saving Private Ryan," from The Greatest Hits 1969-1999 19. "This is Our Song....": "As Time Goes By," from Casablanca 20. End Credits: "It Had to Be You," from When Harry Met Sally

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