I was ecstatic. I was hooked. At first I felt cheated and left out, but soon I was too busy to think about that. The communications became more personal, with longer letters, telephone calls, audio letters on cassette, even video letters a bit later. I began to see some of the mail art shows in person and started meeting other mail artists.
People come and go, drop in, drop out, and drop back in, but the network always remains.
I won first prize in an electronic music competition sponsored by KCRW in Santa Monica. I was interviewed on the radio and my tape was broadcast. That was the dramatic beginning of an obsessive involvement with cassette culture that continues today. Getting deeper into mail art, I discovered other artists were also working with sound, so we began trading cassettes. My name got on contact lists, and I discovered a whole cassette network similar to the mail art network.