The Search is Over

How can I convince you, what you see is real

Who am I to blame you, for doubting what you feel

I was always reaching, you were just a girl I knew

I took for granted the friend I have in you

I was living for a dream, loving for the moment

Taking on the world, that was just my style

Now I look in to your eyes

I can see forever, the search is over

You were with me all the while

There's a lady at work who has been sporting a cassette walkman the past few days.  At first, I thought it was some sort of joke.  A cassette walkman?  Seriously?  But, no, there it is, tucked into her waistband.

I jokingly told her about how I used to have one and how I still have bins of "mixed tapes" I made in the 80s, by holding my cassette recorder up to the radio.

I was telling someone else about it today, about how frustrated I would get because the DJ would always want to talk over the beginning of a song.  I remember trying forever to get all of "What Kind of Fool Am I?" by Rick Springfield because the song has no musical intro.  He just starts singing.  So, I had a bunch of failed attempts.

And because you couldn't really gauge how much time you had left on the cassette, you'd end up cutting off some song in the middle.  Nothing would be more heartbreaking that that ominous click of the cassette player shutting off because it was out of tape before the song was over.

Last night, I pulled out some of the cassettes and tonight, I popped a couple into my stereo (which does have a dual cassette player AND CD player).  The first song that started playing was Survivor's THE SEARCH IS OVER.  1985.  A good year.  I can even remember who I had a crush on that inspired me to record that song.  Funny that 26 years later, I still hope for that "search is over" moment.  This theme is popular in many songs. 

The quality of the tape is awful.  But, it's kind of nice having a time capsule of my life during a period when things were neon hued, lace encased and wrapped up in leg warmers. 

I hope I can keep them so that maybe someday, I can show people who have no memory of cassettes what we did before MP3s made it easy to make a "mixed tape".  I love my memories.  I wonder what angst today's kids will share with their kids when they are my age?

"Yeah, we used to be able to burn music to these shiny discs, but then some dude named Steve Jobs invented this device that could hold hundreds of songs....  Man, I remember how much money and time I spent downloading music to my computer and then burning it to CDs....  but then, all I had to do was plug in this little device and all of the music went right there...."