Cassette tapes are such a painfully beautiful display of human life, both in form and in metaphor. To make matters worse, they seem to have a tendancy to outlive their owners.

One of the first tapes I ever owned was a collection of love songs from 50’s films. It was delicate, clearly well used, and old. I adored it. It was only when the tape snapped after very light use that it dawned on me.

That tape belonged to someone, and they heard it, it had significance, it had meaning. Maybe they’d danced to it with a lover, maybe they played it at picnics like I did. Or maybe they sat by themself in their room playing it, and yearning for something they couldn’t have.

That was a prerecorded tape of songs and it meant so much, but self recorded cassettes? They’re a whole different thing. The very sound waves we communicate with, captured in a physical object. A surviving piece of a soul, one might say.

You could argue that any form of recording is the same, but there’s something about the cassette tape that CD and audio files don’t have. Something otherworldly, easier to hold, to quantify, to relate to.

Hearing your own voice on tape is strange. However uncomfortable hearing your voice recorded digitally makes you feel, I’m certain you’d feel different with if it was played on tape . And to hear the voice of someone else? A friend, a stranger, anyone trying to communicate? It’s oddly haunting.

Many of these personal tapes put me in mind of The Cave Of Hands; it’s us reaching out, saying ‘I was here’, leaving a physical reminder, but one so dependant on tape players existing on into the future. It’s a foolish, sentimental, self centered act, and it’s so filled with humanity, honest desperation.

Nobody wants to become another mystery.