Love is a Mix Tape

by Rob Sheffield

I loved the Smiths. Renée hated the Smiths. The second song on the tape is “Cemetry Gates” by The Smiths.

Music brought us together. So now music was stuck with us.

As far as I’m concerned, the ’90s was the best era for music ever, even the stuff that I loathed at the time, even the stuff that gave me stomach cramps.

1991. The year punk broke.

It was all we got.

There are all kinds of mix tapes. There is always a reason to make one.

going through what is spinelessly referred to as

There are millions of songs in the world, and millions of ways to connect them into mixes. Making the connections is part of the fun of being a fan.

When you stick a song on a tape, you set it free.

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

Love makes me do foolish things. I was lucky to learn early.

I hear the noise in his voice, and I hear a boy trying to scare the darkness away. I wish I could hear what happened next, but nothing did.

I was looking for glimmers of light, but I only wanted to go looking for them in the hills where the dead spirits hung out.

I lose, you lose, we lose; I have lost, you have lost, we have lost. Words I said out loud, every day, many times a day, for years and years—suddenly they were dust in my mouth.

I always had thought of the widow’s veil as a degrading medieval tradition, but now I realized it had a practical purpose because when you cry all day, your eyes become sticky and dust gets in them constantly.

Like Shaft, I’m a complicated man and no one understands me but my woman, except she’s dead and she doesn’t understand that any better than I do.

But nobody ever noticed me. I never felt like going back home.

Yeah, right, you think it’s your last goodbye. He

“I grieve that grief can teach me nothing.” I was hoping that was a lie. But it wasn’t. Whatever I learn from this grief, none of it will take me any closer to what I want, which is Renée, who is gone forever. None of my tears will bring her closer to me.

What doesn’t kill you maims you, cripples you, leaves you weak, makes you whiny and full of yourself at the same time. The more pain, the more pompous you get. Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you incredibly annoying.

I decided to make the tape, then sit in the backyard and listen to it on my Walkman while drinking more cigarettes and smoking another bourbon.

Sometimes great tunes happen to bad times, and when the bad time is over, not all the tunes get to move on with you.

If I waited for the house to warm up before I tried to start something, I would never start anything.

When we die, we will turn into songs, and we will hear each other and remember each other.