On a serious note, please click here to donate to help the Japan relief effort. Our positive thoughts and prayers go to our friends, currently in Japan, who are safe but continue to deal with difficult days. Stay strong and healthy.

Tape gave us freedom.  No longer were we limited to music on record players in badly-paneled living rooms, plaid decorated bed rooms, or from the all-too-moist carpeted rec rooms that once were called basements.

Tape liberated us from just listening to the radio.  Now, we could pick music on the go. We brought our collective groove to the streets…
…Eight track tape put professionally recorded music into cars, and cassette tape let us mash together all of the stuff, including our own voices and music, for everyone to hear.

With tape, junior high boys who would never have the guts to write love notes could put together that perfect mix of songs – just enough lovey-dovey with just enough coolness – to entice that special someone to pay attention to them.  With tape, high school parties could happen anywhere, all you needed was a boombox, batteries, and beer.  With tape, would-be comedians could capture entertaining crank calls and launch a Jerky Boy empire.

Video tape moved it all up another notch. Instead of waiting a whole year for  “The Wizard of Oz” on ABC Disney family movie night, we had the power of tape. Empowered to watch munchkins while stoned and listening to “Dark Side of the Moon.”

Sure, tape was fragile and stretchy and heat sensitive. But it was also portable, shareable, giftable, tangible. We hung together with music, with movies, with tape. Scotch tape held all of it together when things got sliced or cracked, or when someone punched out that little plastic recording tab. 

In that fast forward way life moves, there are now tweets, status updates, the ability to share what is on your mind in an immediate, calculated way.  Packaged electronic social life that is allowing us to live with our friends without having to shower. To spend time with people without really paying attention. To filter out the stuff we deem lame. We edit our thoughts before we share them, and call people our friends, even if we haven’t seen them since junior high.

Our music, pictures, videos, and words are all carefully selected and manipulated to perpetuate our collective coolness.  No longer are we in the streets, instead we are in our headphones. Even when we actually do get together, we’re not really in the moment.  We’re anxious to connect with others, frantically checking our metal berries and ego phones for messages from someone more important than the someone’s we’re with. We’re using our thumbs to pull us away, more concerned with what is next than what is now. Our music is sharable only by permission or by wifi. Our gatherings now missing the raw innocence and fragility of the past.  It is all instant, now, immediate, distracting.  No tape required.

Is progress important? Certainly. Is progress regressive? Probably. In the struggle to move forward, we have to make sure we’re not leaving too much behind.

~pp

<Were you napping and missed TSF2: Well, At Least We Arent Napping?  Listen now at the link, above, or look for it on iTunes, Monsieur or Madam Laziness.>