What is a cassette tape, especially a 90-center, but a 100-yard stream of quarter-inch mylar, embedded some kind of plasticized rust?
You could never keep one from exploding without the cassette. What kept it from snarling in the cassette? Angels. My predicament is Janus-faced. Looking back, my treasure of tapes is rapidly disintegrating. At 48 years of age, I have outlived them. But looking forward, the new technologies, including recordable CDs, DAT tapes, and other digital formats, will surely outlive me. Whether looking forward or backward, you must admit this is at least somewhat poignant. You hate to lose what you have, but what’s much worse is that eventually you yourself will be lost, as your mylar comes off the capstan, and all your information scrozzles. And it’s not just music. I have recordings of my kids’ first conversations. Sometimes they are sandwiched at the end of music tapes. I’ll be listening to Steve Miller, and all of a sudden my daughter will be 2 years old again, and calling me “da-ey,” her version of daddy. And it’s not just recording tape. Degradation occurs to color photos, too. Pictures su
