Rob Sheffield

Tonight, I feel like my whole body is made out of memories. I’m a mix tape, a cassette that’s been rewound so many times you can hear the fingerprints smudged on the tape.

worked, though—it got them back together. Heather kept playing it for all her friends, right in front of Charles; she was proud she could put him through that kind of misery, and I guess he was proud, too. Twenty years later, they’re living in Utah, married, with four kids who owe their lives to this tape. Scary.

There are lots more where these came from. The drug tape. The commute tape. The dishes tape. The shower tape. The collection of good songs from bad albums you don’t ever want to play again.

Every mix tape tells a story. Put them together, and they add up to the story of a life.

I was totally clueless about social interaction, and completely scared of girls. All I knew was that music was going to make girls fall in love with me

When you’re a little kid, you’re fascinated by the mystery of what the big kids do, and for me these mysteries were associated with music. The music I loved kept scaring the bejeezus out of me, with the nebulous concepts of “sex” and “drugs.”

I loved the cassock and surplice, ringing the bells, lighting the candles—it was like being a glam-rock roadie for God.

was wasted, not on drugs, but on something possibly worse.

my second response was, I need some new sounds to remember. I’ve been stuck in my little isolation chamber for so long I’m spinning through the same sounds I’ve been hearing in my head all my life.

. The only one who remembers any of my sounds is me. How do you turn down the volume on your personal-drama earphones and learn how to listen to other people?