STATIC & SUNLIGHT
A 90s childhood,
recorded on seven cassettes.
My father owned a Sony SLV-779HF. It sat under the television and ate everything we taped onto it — birthdays, ballgames, the news at six, a thunderstorm out the back porch. This memoir is built the same way. Seven tapes. Each one a chapter. Scroll to rewind.
Seven tapes I never threw away.
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CH 01 / TR 01 1989 Born on a Tuesday
Newark · NJ · 4:11 AMMom said the snow stopped exactly when I was born. Dad missed it because he was on the turnpike with a flat tire, arguing with a tow-truck driver about union rates. He got there in time to hold me, then fell asleep in a vinyl chair. The tape begins with hospital fluorescents humming at 60 Hz.
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CH 02 / TR 02 1994 First Bicycle
Plainfield · NJ · 5th birthdayA red Huffy with white-walled tires and a banana seat. Dad ran behind me holding the back of the seat, then let go without telling me. I made it the length of three driveways before I noticed I was alone. I still remember the silence of his footsteps not being there. I did not fall.
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CH 03 / TR 03 1998 Camping in Maine
Acadia · ME · summer tripThree nights in a tent that smelled like every other tent we ever had. Dad burned the eggs every morning on principle. I learned the constellation Cassiopeia from a Boy Scout from Buffalo who only spoke in declarative sentences. The ocean was the loudest thing I had ever heard until then.
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CH 04 / TR 04 2001 Tower Falls
7th-grade homeroom · 9:03 AMMr. Cabrillo wheeled in the AV cart and we watched the second one hit live. Nobody talked. Marcus Velez started crying because his father worked downtown — he didn't, it turned out, but Marcus didn't know that yet. They sent us home at lunch. The buses were silent. So was the radio.
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CH 05 / TR 05 2005 First Mixtape
bedroom · TDK SA-90 · Jenna R.Side A opened with Modest Mouse and closed with Bright Eyes. Side B was all instrumental — Mogwai, Sigur Rós, one Boards of Canada track I burned twice. I made the J-card with Sharpie on graph paper and a stencil. I left it in her locker on a Wednesday. She never said anything. It was fine.
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CH 06 / TR 06 2010 Leaving Home
Newark · I-78 W · U-Haul 14ftMom held it together until the U-Haul cleared the driveway, then she went inside and didn't come out for a long time. Dad helped me load the last box of records. He gave me his screwdriver set. He said, "Don't call collect." I drove west for nine hours. The radio kept losing the station every state.
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CH 07 / TR 07 2015 Returning (Side A · End)
Plainfield · NJ · same drivewayThe house had new shutters and the driveway was repaved. Dad answered the door in the same cardigan from the bicycle tape. He did not say I had been gone too long. He said, "Coffee?" and walked into the kitchen. I followed him. The tape ends here. There is nothing on side B.
Thank you, in the order you appeared.
To my mother, Eleanor, who kept the box of tapes in the basement long after the VCR was gone, and who labeled every one of them in cursive even when she was tired.
To my father, Henry Sr., who taught me how to track a tape, how to splice with a razor and Scotch tape, and how to know when a story is finished by the sound of the leader running out.
To Marcus Velez, who let me copy his Modest Mouse cassette in 2003, and to Jenna R., who I hope still has Side B somewhere. To everyone in the photographs I do not have the rights to print here. You know who you are.
To the engineers at Sony who built the SLV-779HF. It outlived three televisions and one marriage. It is sitting under my desk as I write this.
- set inVT323 · Inter · JetBrains Mono
- printed byBlackwater Press, NJ · offset · 4-colour
- paperMohawk Superfine 80lb eggshell
- bindingSmyth-sewn case · cloth over board
- coverscreen-print of a worn TDK SA-90 J-card
- endpapersfull-bleed magenta CRT static
- edition500 numbered, 26 lettered, 1 author proof
- ISBN978-1-9988-0021-7
Henry P. Aldrich · written between Plainfield and Brooklyn · autumn 2025 — spring 2026