DISCS AND TAPES

Whereas long-playing records correspond,

In the outer darkness of their stylus naturalism,

To a centrist political equivalent,

Video tapes correspond, in the outer light

Of their filmic subnaturalism,

To a left-wing political equivalent,

Whilst audio tapes correspond, in the inner darkness

Of their intellectual antinaturalism,

To a right-wing political equivalent.

Hence 'liberal' albums,

'Social democratic' video tapes,

And 'conservative' audio tapes.

But as alternatives to these democratic media

Of sound reproduction are the bureaucratic media

Of outer-darkness singles,

Inner-darkness tape recorders,

And inner-light compact discs,

With left-wing, centrist, and right-wing implications

Corresponding to socialist, ecologist,

And feminist positions that contrast (disc with tape

and tape with disc) to the democratic positions above,

As though in a particle/wavicle antagonism

Between hard and soft options,

Singles naturalistically hard

Whereas video tapes are subnaturalistically soft,

Tape recorders anti-naturalistically soft

Whereas LPs are naturalistically hard,

Compact discs supernaturalistically hard

Whereas audio tapes are anti-naturalistically soft.