This is the memory palace. I'm Nate de Mayo. A few words about the Walkman

personal audio cassette player recently retired by the Sony Corporation of

Minotaur, Tokyo, Japan. They were suddenly everywhere. You could try to say how it

was like all of a sudden in 2005 you couldn't walk a city block without seeing

someone with the white iPod earphones. Except it wasn't like that at all.

Because in the summer of 1981, when you suddenly couldn't walk a city block

without seeing someone in those flimsy Walkman headphones, no one had done that

before. The soundtrack to your life, your life, walking to the drug store,

getting on the bus, washing your car in the driveway. Wasn't your own. It was

chosen by the guy listening to his car stereo with the windows down, playing

his boombox at the park, listening to the white socks game at the lake. But the

Walkman was yours. It was you. And it was brand new. That feeling we all know now

of shutting out the world, of having just the right song come on at just the

right moment, of sitting in a crowded public place all by yourself in a

subway car waiting in line at a Starbucks at an airport, walking by the river,

walking nowhere on an elliptical machine with a gem, and having a song move you

somewhere else, or at a some other time like a Madeline. To that one time you

realize what that one lyric actually means. To that time it came on the radio when

you were driving with that guy you haven't even thought of in years. To the last

time you heard it on the subway, or in line at the airport, and it moved you.