On cursed cassettes

These are strange days.

Before me sits a pile of fifteen cassettes, each one 30-35 years old.

(Or more.)

Yellowed labels, stuck on as early as the late 1980s, are being removed with mineral spirits and Q-tips.

They document the names of sermons with titles like "Baptism - now what?" Spiritual Response to Demonic & Occult," and "Joy."

I bought the tapes at auction, anticipating a project like this one would come along - braying old preachers taped over, muzzled for once. Inserts hand cut and number-stamped.

Only fifteen will ever be made.

We could have sent our wav file to a duplicator, paid the money, and waited for them to come in the mail, packaged and pristine.

But there was something important, procedurally, about using these tapes this way - a taping over of haunted old recordings with something else. Redirecting the energy somehow.

To something darker.

Something cursed.

Something strange.

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What I’m reading: The Magnificent Ambersons (Booth Tarkington)

What I'm listening to: Bluebob (David Lynch)

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