like a cat in the dark

There’s nothing really new about downloading music. More than 30 years ago my sister and I were doing it in our bedrooms and then sharing “files.” The downloading process in those days was all about being poised for opportunity. It was low-tech. It was done with one of those old tabletop cassette recorders, the kind that lie flat, and we’d sit like birds of prey in front of the radio waiting for a song we liked to come on. When it did, click! Push play/record and you had the world’s crappiest download on a shitty cassette with plenty of fuzz, the DJ interrupting the end of the song, the dog barking and your mother calling you to dinner somewhere in the middle of Stevie Nicks’ “Rhiannon.” This operation was probably just as illegal as downloads nowadays. You are allowed, however, to download music directly into your brain via memorization. You can even write the words down, as long as you don't try to pass them off as your own. And you are welcome to sing them very loudly in front of the mirror in your room with your high-tech hairbrush microphone bristling with static, as long as the door is closed.