Midday Inspiration

From the end of his 2002 story on the death of the cassette. Enjoy: A cassette tape lets you know when it's dying.

It starts to give off the sound of music that would be played by a very small band in a suitcase, and then it sounds like that suitcase is inside another suitcase. It sounds like the singer is wearing little socks on his teeth. Consonants go away. Dolby Noise Reduction technology gives up, and if you didn't know what "Sussudio" meant in the summer of 1985, then there's no hope of knowing now, not when you pop in the cassette version.

Everything unspools.

Tonight you are feeling faithful anyhow. There's a tape in you trying to get out, and you feel like doing it the old way. You will stay home, by yourself, have a drink, and turn your attention to the bulky components stacked like artifacts in homage to bachelorhood. With the teak-colored stereo speakers large enough to rest your beer upon.

All the important cords are jacked into the tape deck.

Obsessing into the small hours, pulling record sleeves from the shelves, the LED display pulsing into the red zone when you record. You can nudge the knobs toward more bass. High bias, normal bias, basically you're just biased. You are very careful, like a doctor on the verge on the sheer genius.

(Or: madness.)