Long awaited Divorare il cielo by Paolo Giordano book and an audio tape. For the recipients of this combo that Einaudi publisher sent to almost a hundred people, the surprise of this analog relic has been a dazzling Proustian madeleine. After all, the afternoons spent rewinding cassettes using a Bic pen, to save some battery energy, are still very vivid. But then, together with the intuition that this item had certainly something to do with the plot, the realization that if the tape contained indeed a playlist of songs, how to listen to it? Considering the vinyl comeback, the Will & Grace reboot: how come nobody had the idea of bringing back the Walkman? Twenty – and more – years of music whilst on the move and not even one model stoked in a drawer?

It’s highly probable that if the model TPS-L2 40th anniversary happened this year, instead of 2019, the commemorative Walkman we are hoping Sony will release to celebrate the event, would have been a great help to the Einaudi mailing list members. And not only for the Giordano tape, but also for the ones we collected in a cardboard box long forgotten in the basement. A treasure that the current window display at the Milanese Tiffany store, made with piles of cassettes and tapes that surrounds solitaire rings, are pushing us to dig out from the dust. Along with the saying: “Everything was so much better when thing were not so available all the time and everywhere”, it will be interesting to watch people react at someone walking the streets with a vintage Walkman. Experts keeps warning us that we are “smartphones obsessed”: then why not cut the music player function. We already did with the calling one. Who is nowadays the courageous person that calls someone up without previously having sent a message advising the intention to do so?