A Small, Plastic Box

(My entry in the 2020 Princeton Writes staff essay contest)

Some people’s lives are changed by dramatic world events. Mine was changed with a small, plastic box about the size of a deck of cards, with a thin, magnetized, plastic ribbon inside. A cassette tape. 

It was eighth grade, in the late 1980s. In homeroom, my friend Ted slipped me this cassette tape of a mix of Rush songs he made for me, with the titles of the songs written in black ballpoint pen on a sheet of notebook paper. I had never heard of this band before. When I got on the school bus to go home, I put the mixtape in my Walkman and pressed the “PLAY” button. There was life before this moment, and then there was Everything Else. That small, plastic box was the key to Everything Else. 

I could hardly believe the anthems that I was hearing in these ninety minutes of unspooling cassette tape. It was rock music and rock musicianship unlike anything I had ever known. Rush’s lyrics, written by virtuoso drummer Neil Peart, were intelligent and literary but with themes that spoke directly to me, a teenager finding his way in this world. These lyrics represented something that I had not experienced before. Rock and roll lyrics did not have to be just about love songs. They could say more, and these weird songs did. Neil Peart’s lyrics explained the world to me, that it was okay not to be content with how things are, but hopeful that they could be better. Who knew that the human condition could be so encodable onto a magnetic ribbon? 

Fast forward to 1991, on my way to my first Rush concert, the first of eight spectacular times in my life. Ted was in the car with me too. I didn’t know it then, but it was the last time I would see him. We went on our separate ways after that, to different high schools and colleges, to our own respective Everything Else. But he and that mixtape still loom large in my memory. An act of kindness in a small, plastic box. 

Fast forward to 2020, a Friday afternoon in January. I start getting condolences from friends and family about Neil Peart passing away. Passing away? What? He had died of brain cancer, a cruel irony for someone nicknamed “The Professor” thanks to his brainy lyrics and doctoral degree-level drumming. I got in my car after work, started the engine, turned on the local rock station playing Rush songs in memoriam, started to sing along, and cried. I’ve never cried about someone dying whom I’ve never met, but he had been an instrumental figure in my life for more than thirty years.

Who knew that the human condition could be so encodable onto a magnetic ribbon? 

In comparison, I have only known my wife for a little more than half of that time. Rewind to 2002. She and I met at a mutual friend’s wedding and I was quickly smitten. Alas, she lived in Idaho, 2,500 miles away from New Jersey. Courtship would have to take place over email. Early on in a fit of bravery, I wrote that I really loved this band Rush and Neil Peart’s lyrics. The band had a reputation, more of a joke, that women Rush fans were few and far between. It was statistically likely that offering this piece of myself would fall on uninterested ears. But then she wrote back: “Oh I know Rush! I love them too!” 

Suddenly the stakes were raised much higher. She loves Rush? Rush? Rewind back to 1989, when life was more analog, that day when I first listened to that mixtape, wondering what Everything Else would be. Fast forward to 2002, as life was more digital, reading that email response from her – I knew she was The One. She was Everything Else. Fast forward to late 2003: I used one of Neil Peart’s drum solos as the background music as I proposed to her. A year later, we were married. 

All this because my pal Ted wanted to share with me how his own life changed with this music, and especially these lyrics. 

Fast forward to today. I’m not even sure if I even still have the mixtape anymore. As life and cassette tapes unspool and Everything Else happens, we all lose track of some material things. But Ted’s act of kindness remains bright in my memory, from that day when he gave me a small, plastic box about the size of a deck of cards, with a thin, magnetized plastic ribbon inside.