Memories & Nostalgia in Cassette: The Best Gift I Ever Received by Olivia Ho

Memories & Nostalgia in Cassette: The Best Gift I Ever Received

Olivia Ho

The summer before I left for college, my older sister surprised me with a cassette tape and player. I, a product of my generation, couldn’t figure out how to remove the tape from its clear plastic case, much less play it in my boxy black Walkman. She and my parents (very unhelpfully) watched and laughed while I popped open the case, put the tape in the player, fumbled with the buttons on the side, and eventually heard the first scratchy notes begin to play.

The Walkman and tape—the songs picked by my sister and mixed by someone she found online—is perhaps the best gift I’ve ever received. Somehow, she managed to find exactly the right combination of songs that would remind me of everything I’d be leaving behind as I left for school: my parents, my childhood, the friends I made growing up. Falling asleep in the passenger seat of my mom’s car as the stereo softly murmured in the background.

Each of the songs she chose held specific and tangible memories, yet the story she managed to craft through this tape couldn’t be told without considering the order. The A side—which includes eclectic selections from Simon & Garfunkel and the Spirited Away soundtrack—is a lullaby. In the middle of the set is “Edelweiss,” from The Sound of Music. I’d almost forgotten about this song, but it seemed to have been living in the back of my mind for a long time. As I listened to the tape for the first time, I recalled faint memories of being woken up to my dad’s voice singing: “Edelweiss, Edelweiss / every morning you greet me / small and white, clean and bright / you look happy to meet me.”

Photo: Isaac Crown-Manesis

The B side is freer and more nostalgic, opening with the Cranberries and flowing through the Crash Test Dummies and Carole King. These songs are what my parents listened to when they were our age: young and more uncertain, figuring out how to be adults. The Indigo Girls’ “Closer To Fine,” the third song on the tracklist, particularly struck me. I can so clearly envision my mom singing along, newly graduated from college, having spent—as I am now spending—“four years prostrate to the higher mind.” Listening to this side changes the meaning of the tape. Where the A side made me reflect on what my life used to be like, the B side made me consider what my life could be.

The B side closes with “Enterlude”—a fifty-second track that introduces the Killer’s sophomore

album Sam’s Town. My sister’s choice to end with this song was both very on-the-nose and very cruel. She couldn’t have chosen something more bittersweet to end the tape, as the song draws to a close with: “It’s good to have you with us / even if it’s just for the day.”

Whenever I have a little time to sit and think (which is not often), I put on the tape. While I’m quite an experienced playlist-maker myself, having created far too many Spotify playlists for every conceivable mood and purpose over the course of several years, I realized that there’s something special about the making of a mixtape. There’s a limited number of songs you’re able to choose. You can also physically hold it—meaning that listening to it has to be far more intentional than streaming a playlist, which involves nothing more than the pressing of a (singular and easily identifiable) button.

Image: Billy Bratton

The purpose of a playlist is distinct from that of a mixtape. Most of my playlists are intended to capture a hyper-specific feeling—some notable playlists include “girls who don’t care?” and “thick pants songs” (don’t ask me to articulate what either of those things mean). I also use playlists to capture specific times in my life—which are especially fun to go back and listen to. A playlist, which can be as long or as short as you want, essentially allows you to elongate and articulate a unique feeling or moment. And, by virtue of shuffling, they allow you to experience this feeling in a different way each time. Yet, unlike a mixtape, the freedom allowed with a playlist can’t quite capture the power of a solid, unchanging story.

Neither method of cultivating what music you listen to is better than the other, necessarily (there have been far too many pretentious articles written about the degradation of music as a result of people using anything other than gramophones, or whatever). But these two mediums are different, and by virtue of their differing forms, they change the experience of listening to music. The fact that the ways we listen to music can give it new depth and meaning is, I find, quite beautiful.

Photo: Billy Bratton

My confession is that I have yet to get another cassette tape—perhaps a part of me is still reeling from the sheer nostalgic force of my sister’s tape. But now that it’s almost been a year since my sister gifted me her cassette, I’d like to continue exploring the stories that cassettes have to offer.

After all, who knows? Perhaps by the end of the summer I’ll have made enough nostalgic passenger-seat memories to mix my own tape.

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