Will This Earth Be Destroyed

Like my garage sale-ing mother before me, I am vulnerable to buying weird used stuff.

And then one Saturday my numbers came around, so to speak. A random driveway, an unsuspecting garage-turned-marketplace would rise to meet me. There, amidst grossly overtouched Rubik’s Cubes, partially damaged Star Wars spaceships/figurines, and boring Atari games everyone already had… lay a marvel, a jewel, an enigma.

I picked up a Magic Window.

Mom said she’d seen these before, but not up close. “They didn’t look ‘very fun,’ so I never thought you’d like one. But — sure, hun, get it if you want! I think they’re made by Wham-O, you know, the game company.”

And, whamo, a few wrinkled dollars later, it was mine. A bit scuffed, it was still in good condition. (No sand leakage, importantly.)

I remember laying on my bed much of that summer lost in thought, twisting it over and again, daydreaming. One shape would come, I’d like it, then I’d turn it over, or on it’s side, to watch what would arrive next. Nothing lasted inside the Magic Window. But it was all still… there.

I don’t know when I lost track of the plastic portal, but it is long gone. Did it break? Did a friend take it? Did my parents hide it? Is it… in my attic?

Decades later, I’m still looking for odd, used “treasure,” varietals of magic windows, I suppose.

What I’m trying to say is this: I… buy used audio cassettes off of eBay. Worse, I prefer micro-cassettes. Remember those? I have several players large and small ready to play all manner of audio tape.

I buy used audio cassettes off of eBay.

I go through phases where I will turn a tape on and let it play while I complete some home chore or rote task. If/when I find something li like, I digitize the findings in home studio software. It’s often… a lot of nothing. But then a… magic window, if you will, opens.

In the summer of 2020, at one of the heights (depths?) of the COVID-19 pandemic bizarro-world, an eBay transaction procured for me a large, creatively-potent box of used microcassettes. I had a hunch I was getting something promising, but didn’t actually know much of what I’d bought until it arrived. The listing was curious – something about a renowned businessman’s taped interactions from years before. The seller wasn’t the original person who had recorded these, I learned for myself. It was all a wee bit fishy, even salacious. Scammy? I was in. They were just tapes as far as I knew. They’d come from California. I didn’t then, and still have not 5-plus years later, tried to learn just what was going on.

I opened the box. Unorganized before me in a massive, tiny heap, were hundreds of microcassettes, all hand-labeled with dates in the late- 1990s. There must have been over 250. I popped one in. Right away, strong sound-quality, as if the tape was recorded directly to the recorder via the phone lines’ connection to the machine. Delightful. Strange. As I went through over the coming days/weeks, I learned that the businessman obsessively taped himself on calls. Sometimes I imagine that he did this to assure he understood details of an important conversation correctly. At other times, I can’t help but wonder if he wanted to hear himself speak. No kidding, one microcassette conversation was of he and his mom talking back and forth about her medical condition, which was deteriorating; he did the vast majority of the consultation.

Months before, not a microcassette, but a regular cassette mass-made in the late 1980s earlier I’d found on eBay, was of a preaching series from a Texas country church. “Will This Earth Be Destroyed?” sermon series from the late 80s/early 90s I had been intrigued by online. It was like 5 bucks for four tapes (+ shipping), and so it then found its way to me. The pastor, I looked up, had long since moved on from the church, and the church itself had moved and seemed to no longer exist as it once did. I liked the high pitched voice of the preacher. I liked the message - not for its meaning, but for its conclusiveness, it’s subtle nastiness cloaked in justice. I digitized it, wanting it for art.

I like how it turned out. I had it professionally mixed by a trusted dude here in Nashville. What do you think?

As waves of political unrest surge around the nation and the world — to seemingly higher and higher levels, I have found this song to be a release valve of a kind. Perhaps it might also be for you. I offer it to you if it is any solace. Feeling our feelings is the way forward. Naming them. Sharing them. Processing and moving on from them when they do not serve us or others.

(Feb 8, 2026) Anti-Olympics protest in Milan turns violent

as Italy investigates suspected railway sabotage

(source: https://www.cnn.com/2026/02/07/europe/italy-protests-rail-damage-latam-intl)

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