My mistake is shaped like a Magic Gate. It’s a Sony Net MD Walkman, the MZ-N707. It’s gorgeous—a brushed-metal sliver that fits in the palm of my hand. It’s not an iPod. The iPod is for people who gave up. The iPod is a hard drive with earphones. This? This is a machine . It has gears. It has a spinning disc inside a caddie. It has a tiny laser that reads a tiny, beautiful disc. I am not a sheep. I am a connoisseur.
It is the most beautiful thing I have ever heard.
I do this again. And again. And again. I learn the incantations. Never use AAC, always WAV. Never transfer more than three songs at once. Never touch the mouse during the “Write TOC” phase. Always eject from Windows, never from the Finder. sonicstage mac
I lean back in my chair. I put on the earbuds—the cheap, gray ones with the little rubber nubs. I close my eyes. The music is mine. I have bled for it. I have wrestled with the ghost of Uwe and the arrogance of Sony. I have converted, crashed, cursed, and converted again.
Thirty seconds. A minute. The emulator crashes. A grey window appears: “SonicStage has encountered an error and needs to close.” My mistake is shaped like a Magic Gate
By midnight, it is done.
I click OK.
I hold the MZ-N707 in my hand. It is warm from the transfer. I pop the disc out. I pop it back in. I press play. The little LCD screen lights up. “00:00” blinks. The disc spins. A tiny, mechanical whir. Then—a guitar. A voice. It sounds like nothing. It sounds like AM radio wrapped in cotton. It is compressed, thin, and slightly warbly.
While it churns, I stare at the MiniDisc. It is a blue, translucent rectangle. I open the little shutter and breathe on the disc inside. It is perfect. So small. So physical. I imagine the laser burning pits into the polycarbonate. I imagine the music becoming mine . It’s not an iPod
I sit in the glow of my iMac G4, the one with the floating arm. On my screen is a window. Inside that window is Windows 98. Inside that Windows 98 is SonicStage 1.5. It looks like a CD jewel case from a dentist’s waiting room—all gradients and tiny, threatening icons.
Then, I drag that file into the Windows window. The emulator shudders. The fans on my iMac spin up. The cursor becomes a spinning hourglass that is somehow even more anxious than the Mac’s beach ball. SonicStage detects the file. It does not like it. SonicStage wants WAV. SonicStage wants ATRAC. It wants blood.