Somewhere mid-2002 , I remember clear as crystal having been dropped off at a distant relatives place in the middle of an unbeknown city, a cassette which I bought along which I packed for the 4-day trip, “custom burned” if that terminology applies to those cassettes at all, was the one thing that kept me sane and provided a sense of refuge in the stranger’s house in a strange land which spoke a strange language.
Those twelve, handpicked, 6 minute long symphonies were something my own refuge. In this particular event, the cassette’s role shined through. These cassettes were means to music. -well, the only means of getting in touch with music.
Anyone who has ever got to use these fiddly little things surely would have gone through the harrowing experience of seeing the reels come apart, meaning parting time with your favorite piece of tune. One is careful in lending them lest they are handled incorrectly and again signifying the parting with your favorite piece of music.
As one looks at the reels spinning while a piece goes on … an abrupt stop or a jam to the cassette means a ready but careful next step of taking a pause, deep breaths, a careful tender to unmake the knots that might have occurred, loosen the jam with any available tool lying ready at disposal (in my case it was usually a ball-point pen) and getting back to the song but only with a higher pulse rate now. But all’s well again and that sense of accomplishment.
Should we say Fast-Forward? Rewind? Sure. Good luck not jamming them again as the risk always existed given that both actions require a much higher spooling rate than the normal playing commands. So, at any given time, the best part of the song was the part of the song you were listening to -or had to be.
Now, this makes me wonder.
If one should be glad to have had this experience at all, at least once or all along. Perhaps if this was one singular aspect that teaches one to work for and fix things than to discard them at its very first sign of malfunction or simply a suspicion of it. If you don’t like a song? Skip it. Fast Forward it. Wrecked a screen? Buy a new phone! Lost a mix-tape with the other innumerable amount of trash one collects along the way? No problem! Spotify has it! Broke a chain on the commute? Who needs greasy hands anyway? Call an Uber! -A ready availability of the means where the means are simply means but to find no end.
1999, the cassette was the means to the end of owning a little 4-minute escape into a vast ocean of imagination and your own corner for rejuvenation. The means was the end. Today the means being in multitude and the very proliferated choices it provides negates the end.
I wonder if a kid born in say 2010 will be ever be given the marvelous opportunity of tending and mending to things that he/she might come to hold dear if he/she comes to hold dear something at all for a start. Can he or she get to plant an acorn and see ti grow into a magnificent oak that dictates tending all along? Can he or she get to go down on knees to ardently pull out the weeds around the oak if they get to consider it near and dear in the very first place? Near and dear are things of perceived value, where replacement is not a choice and are things worthy to put up a fight for, in some cases, as a journey for life. And given one is proliferated with choices that are not only a million in number but also milli-second or less away from availability. - and in some matters, a swipe away.
With the deepest well intent, I wish they get to rewind by hand, a cassette - at least once :)