I Can’t Remember My Password But I Can Identify Peter Gabriel Cassettes By Smell
Had a bit of an aimless music afternoon and then had a weak moment and opened up Marketplace, saw a bunch of cassettes, and realized I can identify them by spine even if the writing is too small to see. There’s some where I instantly know what they are. Like immediately.
And it brings up two questions.
One is why? Why, if I haven’t thought about this stuff in 100 million years, do I instantly know something is a Peter Gabriel tape? I don’t even want to get into whether that’s useful or not, but memory is just such a mystery.
I can’t remember who I had lunch with this week or the names of properties I’m working on or who I’m trying to email or what I did with the thing that is currently in my hand, but I sure can remember what some of these cassettes look like. I can remember what they smell like. It’s bizarre.
So number two is: what happens to that knowledge when I die?
I have no doubt we’re all part of someone else’s computer somehow. I’m not a godless person. I feel purposeful in that way, but I also feel like a cog in a wheel, and I mean that in about as positive a way as you can take something like that. I certainly feel like that.
But it feels important somehow. These cassettes and all this stuff.
I recently hooked up a stereo with some Bose speakers I bought off Marketplace, of course. The cassettes sound glorious actually. Better than the turntable, honestly, but I don’t want to get into that here because that culture is real.
I just reread the part of the Beastie Boys Book where Ad Rock lays the cassette thing out better than anybody ever. If you need to understand what all this felt like, just read what he’s talking about. It’s a love-hate relationship.
And I still don’t know why any young person would be buying cassettes or Walkmans. I see it happen constantly. Cassettes maybe that’s a different deal, but Walkmans? I just don’t know about that.
Anyway. Saturday meandering thoughts.
Hope you guys have a great weekend.