The Death of the Cassette Tape

So much has passed, fallen by the wayside in my days. I watched you live and breathe and vanish before my eyes, when once you were a stunning part of my existence. So many things, all of you, in some graveyard, to live only in memories, ghosts of our pasts. The cassette tape, the technology, the loves, the absolute everything. We move so fast, leaving behind all that goodness, and oh, what for? I never really know the answer.

I am addicted to music. The vinyl which was my first real experience with music, and then the cassette tape. I loved the way you had to turn them over. An album was two halves. It had some meaning, it was tangible, it was edible, you could taste it, you could really consume that music. Now, that is gone, until I can get my hands on a record player, a turntable and vinyls, which thankfully and rightfully are still being made. It was replaced by the CD and now updated with digital music. I have purchased (downloading illegally means less to me, and I have never done it, even as a man who never has more than a little money) music in 4 different decades. I have even bought it on all those formats and yes, something about the modern methods alienates me. It isn't as exciting as it once was. It has lost the spark, the truly exciting feeling attached to music and the whole experience attached to diving into its pool. The essence of the hunt for music, or the simple purchase of it over a counter still exists, almost vanishing as it has though, and it doesn't feel the same anymore either. The remaining stores are part of a large chain, normally, and they are so geared to making every penny possible from those who pass through the door that you can sense the 'sell-out' of these companies.

Maybe what I want is a time machine, and I don't like change, and I want to keep things as they are, and return to a happier time (at least, of my life). I am a man who has lived in 4 different countries, I can speak more than two languages, I have no place I can call 'home' and I constantly challenge myself and my own personal evolution. So, I really don't think that the start of this paragraph could ever be the reason. I feel the great value of music, how it is packaged and delivered to me. Yes, the cassette tape is dead, she died a while ago. She lives on still, of course, the memory has not passed the stage of remembering how beautiful you were. You weren't so simple? That is almost certainly why I loved you and will continue to love you so, whether you are here or not.

It's strange to think that I remembered you by seeing some odd painted blocks with two nails through them, that lined the footpath by the river Wisła. Those two nails, right in the centre at a length apart that just reminded me so precisely of the holes in a cassette tape, and the way when the ribbon got jammed I would stick a pencil through one hole and turn it to try to return the tape to a playable status. Those were the days, the flawed brilliance and beauty. God, I love her face. She isn't perfect, and it makes her about as good as she can be.