Much Ado About Something ... Again

It recently occurred to me that most people appear to get more and more crazy as they get older, but with the exceptions of senility and dementia I think most people stay the same and society just moves away from them over the years.

Also, I wonder if for those people who really DO go a little crazy, do they know it? Do they recognize it happening? I can so easily see myself becoming more and more obsessive and getting to a point of insanity somewhere in the not too far off future. I have shockingly little control. I mean, I have many times more control than the average person (arrogance), but I also have exponentially more to control. In other words, if they have X amount of control to exert over Y amount of whatever, I have 5X control, and Y^10 amount of stuff to control. Does that make sense? I'll do more with what I have than most people who stretch themselves to their absolute maximum. I'll do that, but I'll leave quite a bit undone, and I'll always wonder why I didn't save the world. Or maybe I'll wonder, "When will the world know that I've saved it?"

I'm looking forward to that calm that I so desperately hope comes with certainty of purpose. I mean, I'm certain that I HAVE purpose, but I don't really have any specifics. Great American Novel? Musical Revolution? Medical Breakthrough? Something much, MUCH smaller? I don't know.

I try to comfort myself with the idea that so many great people didn't become great until very late in their lives, and even then only after doing many horrible things or failing tremendously dozens of times before. I haven't really failed YET, but I see the obstacles already piling up and waiting for me. I feel at once that I have both to choose correctly the path to fortify myself (medical school? peace corps? work at a gas station?) and also to let everything just happen. I mean, I am trying my best to convince myself that this really is a matter of destiny and that I will accrue the necessary tools naturally and in that way will find the exact thing that I am to do.

I sometimes run in to other people who speak like this. People who feel such a tremendous tug towards greatness that they've stopped denying it, and stopped hiding it from everyone. Unfortunately, it's clear that most of these people will probably never achieve what they hope for. I hope that is never me. I can't really imagine much else worse.

I need to find myself living somewhere else.

Neutral Milk Hotel's Legacy

The Salinger of Indie Rock: What happened to Jeff Mangum?
By Taylor Clark
Posted Tuesday, Feb. 26, 2008, at 1:45 PM ET
Jeff MangumJeff Mangum

Ten years ago this month, a songwriter from nowhere and his ramshackle band brought out one of the few truly great albums of this generation, a musical curio so gloriously odd that it almost defies explanation. The group called itself Neutral Milk Hotel, and the record, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, is a concept album about Anne Frank in which vocals about lost Siamese twins and semen-stained mountaintops mingle with the sounds of musical saws, fuzzy tape loops, and an amateur psychedelic brass band. It seems like a formula that would blister your eardrums, yet Aeroplane is a gorgeous, much adored work of art. In 2003, the alternative music magazine Magnet dubbed it the best album of the past decade—better than Nirvana, better than Radiohead.

While the record sells better today than ever, you won't see Neutral Milk Hotel onstage anytime soon because, for all intents and purposes, they've vanished into thin air. At the end of Aeroplane's final song, you can hear Jeff Mangum—the band's singer, songwriter, and all-around mastermind—set down his guitar and walk off, and, minus a few months of under-the-radar touring, that's exactly what Mangum did in real life. When the major labels and the glossy magazines and the half-crazed fans came calling, Mangum never responded. There was no breakup announcement, no reason given for the radio silence—he just faded out. After a decade of speculation, sightings, and hoaxes, his story remains a mystery: Why did he decide to disappear? And where has Mangum gone?

Even before his public vanishing act, Mangum was something of an elusive character. Raised in the arts vortex of Ruston, La., he bristled at his hometown's jocks-and-booze ethic and hoped from an early age to unchain his creative spirit. In the early '90s, Mangum and a few friends formed a now-legendary collective called Elephant Six, which grew to encompass dozens of strangely named bands creating eclectic music mostly for their own enjoyment. Yet Mangum himself seldom stayed in one place for long; he constantly hopped from city to city, acoustic guitar in hand. At home in the collective's base of Athens, Ga., or out on his peregrinations, Mangum cut a strange figure: a long-locked, intense-looking man with a gale-strength singing voice who liked to wear garish thrift-store sweaters and embellish the cuffs of his pants with cartoon sketchings.
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Because he suffered from night terrors, Mangum often stayed up until dawn working on his songs, sometimes addressing them to the ghosts in a haunted closet. At first, this method produced modest results: His first album, On Avery Island (1996), showed flashes of promise but had its sludgy and spotty patches. One day, Mangum wandered into a bookstore and happened upon a copy of Anne Frank's The Diary of a Young Girl. The book consumed him. After finishing it, he spent a few days crying over Frank's story. As he told a Puncture magazine interviewer before Aeroplane's release, "I would go to bed every night and have dreams about having a time machine and somehow I'd have the ability to move through time and space freely, and save Anne Frank. Do you think that's embarrassing?" The songs and lyrics he started writing about Frank could be so nightmarish in vision that Mangum grew afraid of what was issuing from his brain: verses about "pianos filled with flames" and eating "tomatoes and radio wires." At times, he seems possessed, singing on Aeroplane's title track, "Anna's ghost all around/ Hear her voice as it's rolling and ringing through me."

In the Aeroplane Over the Sea is so expansive in its weirdness that one of its 11 songs is a rollicking bagpipe jam—yet it would be wrong to call it a "cult" record, since that would imply it's some sort of flawed art-school project. Sure, Aeroplane occasionally sounds like a mariachi circus fed through a broken amplifier, but it all weaves together as Mangum guides the proceedings with percussive guitar strumming, singalong melodies, and his booming, emotive voice. The album plays like a document from a parallel-universe version of the 1940s, inlaid with Mangum's haunting lyrics: "And here's where your mother sleeps/ And here is the room where your brothers were born/ Indentions in the sheets/ Where their bodies once moved but don't move anymore." Aeroplane isn't about airtight instrumentation or tricky songwriting—most of the songs have just three or four chords—but about a remarkable range of feeling put into melody. (Mangum recorded his part of the song "Oh Comely" in one scratch take, at the end of which you can hear a stunned band member yell "Holy shit!" in the background.)

When Aeroplane first debuted, sales took a while to warm up. Those who found the record would appear at shows and (to the annoyance of many audience members) collectively drown out Mangum's singing with their own rendition, but this was still indie music's dark, pre-blog era. By the time magazines started paying attention, toward the end of 1998, Mangum already had one foot out the door. Worn down by months of touring, he grew fed up with discussing himself and explaining his lyrics, eventually declining to accept any calls—yet friends say he still fixated on every word written about him. As his bandmates pressed him to capitalize on Neutral Milk Hotel's success, he withdrew more and more. When R.E.M. offered a chance to open for them, he said no. And for the last decade, that's nearly all he's said.

As Aeroplane's legend began to build, Mangum kept himself busy by having a total nervous breakdown. Laura Carter, his then-girlfriend, told the Atlanta alt-weekly Creative Loafing that he spent entire days sitting in his house in a state of near panic, wearing a pair of old slippers and doing absolutely nothing. He became paranoid, hoarding rice for the inevitable post-Y2K apocalypse. Since 1998, Mangum has rejected every interview request save one 2002 conversation with Pitchfork in which he explained his meltdown. "I went through a period, after Aeroplane, when a lot of the basic assumptions I held about reality started crumbling," he said. One of those assumptions was that music would somehow erase his problems. "I guess I had this idea that if we all created our dream we could live happily ever after," he continued. "So when so many of our dreams had come true and yet I still saw that so many of my friends were in a lot of pain … I saw their pain from a different perspective and realized that I can't just sing my way out of all this suffering."

It took Mangum years to rebuild himself after this spiritual crisis—and since part of that crisis was his recognition that music would never save him from his demons, he couldn't very well embark on another record. So he wandered the globe to find spiritual balance, even spending time in a monastery. (Aeroplane's steady sales helped finance the quest; the album still moves a reported 25,000 copies a year.) Occasionally, Mangum flitted ever so briefly into the public eye. He released a disc of field recordings of Bulgarian folk music, then disappeared. Calling himself "Jefferson," he hosted a late-night radio show on New Jersey's WFMU a few times until he was discovered, then vanished once again. Sometimes he'll appear onstage at friends' rock shows for a song, sending the crowd into paroxysms—but when those friends suggest he record his own music, they say he becomes evasive.

Mangum's continued silence has angered some fans, who accuse him of being selfish or "indifferent to his talent," as if musical ability comes with some sort of obligation to society. At least once a year, someone writes a hoax message from Mangum and posts it online—generally throwing in some fanciful verbal junk to bilk fans into believing it's the genius himself wielding the keyboard. Some have announced forthcoming records or tours, while others have revealed the long-hidden sources of Mangum's misanthropy; they've all been debunked. All we really know for sure is this: According to his record label, Mangum now lives in New York City. He recently married filmmaker Astra Taylor. Friends say he still creates art and that he seems "very happy." If he has plans to record more music, he hasn't told anyone.

And if Aeroplane really is Jeff Mangum's final statement to the universe, maybe we should be happy with that—not because of some tired line about going out at your peak (which he likely didn't reach), but because his story is a kind of modern fable. Many fans see his disappearance only in selfish terms: They've been deprived of more great music for no good reason. They can't understand why Mangum would shun success just to shuffle through his days, and, indeed, when musicians abandon this much promise, the culprit is usually drugs or debilitating accidents or people named Yoko. So he must have gone nuts, right? Well, no. After all, what if Mangum is just being honest? What if he poured his life into achieving musical success only to discover that it wasn't going to make him happy, so he elected to make a clean break and move on? We should all be so crazy.

As always, though, hope for Mangum's return still glimmers. Last month brought news that he may play a guy in a lobster suit in a soon-to-be-released conceptual film. But who knows? You can't see inside the suit.

Top Five Songs

***For the sake of symmetry, I've added six songs here, as there are six albums on my previous list.***

So to continue my top five listing, here is the list of the top five songs in my life. These songs are on the list for various reasons, including their immediacy to my circumstance, sincerity of lyrics, or just plain beautiful arrangement.

This list is in no particular order, and I got all the lyrics from www.sing365.com, so they might not be 100% accurate.

1) DO IT AGAIN - NADA SURF
This is the second song on the CD "The Weight is a Gift," which is on my Top Five Albums list. This song is a perfection of alternative rock, and seems to have been written FOR me. The sentiment of waiting and wanting is common in alternative rock, though I think it is most masterfully explained in this song. The feeling that one is spending one's life just existing, hoping for something great, but not really knowing how to achieve it is a feeling that I secretly hold. This song also contains the key lyric that is also the name of the album, "Maybe this weight was a gift." This line is intensely important to me, as it seems to apply to all aspects of my life. On a literal level, as I constantly battle my own weight, I have to wonder how much better I will be when I come to defeat it, or at least learn to love it. On a more wide reaching level, I wonder if the burden of my own martyrdom will in fact pay off later in some way that I cannot appreciate yet fully.

"well i'd snap to attention
if i thought that you knew the way
i'd open my mouth
if i had something smart to say

i bought a stack of books
i didn't read a thing
it's like i'm sitting here
waiting for birds to sing

let's do it again
(come on) come on let's do it again
(please) please let's do it again
(come on) come on let's do it again

the hum of the clock
is a far-away place
the azalea air holding your face
you're lying down
and the moon is sideways
(from the hot to the cold
it never gets old)

it's like i'm sitting here
waiting for birds to sing

i spend all my energy
staying upright
and i like the masking noise quiet
of your breathing nearby

let's do it again
(come on) come on let's do it again
(please) please let's do it again
(come on) come on let's do it again

i want you lazy science
i want some peace
are you the future?
show me the keys

i spend all my energy
walking upright
and i like the masking noise quiet
of your breathing nearby

when i accelerate
i remember why it's good to be alive
like a twenty-five cent game

maybe this weight was a gift
like i had to see what i could lift

i spend all my energy
walking upright

maybe this weight was a gift
like i had to see what i could lift

i spend all my energy
walking upright

maybe this weight was a gift"

2) GO OR GO AHEAD - RUFUS WAINWRIGHT
This song is number 6 on Rufus McGarrigle Wainwright's amazing album "Want One," which is on my top 5 albums list. This song made my list initially on its musical merits. It is an extremely powerful superballad with massive harmonies and intricate arrangements. The song speaks about love and abandonment and isolation. There is a feeling of wanting; screaming in the wilderness at uncaring trees. It is being in the middle of a crowd of wives and feeling completely alone and unloved. The song begins and ends with lyrics that are very important to me. It begins this way:

"Thank you for this bitter knowledge
Guardian angels who left me stranded
It was worth it, feeling abandoned
Makes one hardened but what has happened to love"

and ends this way:

"This unholy notion of the mythic power of love
Look in her eyes, look in her eyes
Forget about the ones that are crying
Look in her eyes, look in her eyes
Forget about the ones that are crying"

The song sums up all of my fears about God and love, and makes me want to give up, which is a powerful thing to feel. I appreciate also though that the song does not deny love, just the definition that we all want to give it. The song calls to task the idea of love as a painful thing, and perhaps is speaking more about the hypocrisy of modern understandings of love.

"Thank you for this bitter knowledge
Guardian angels who left me stranded
It was worth it, feeling abandoned
Makes one hardened but what has happened to love
You got me writing lyrics on postcards
Then in the evening looking at the stars
But the brightest of the planets is Mars
Then what has happened to love
So I will opt for the big white limo
Vanity fairgrounds and rebel angels
You can't be trusted with feathers so hollow
Your heaven's inventions, steel eyed vampires of love
You see over me, I'll never know
What you have shown to other eyes
Go or go ahead and surprise me
Say you've lead the way to a mirage
Go or go ahead and just try me
Nowhere's now here smelling of junipers
Fell of the hay bales, I'm over the rainbows
But of Medusa kiss me and crucify
This unholy notion of the mythic power of love
Look in her eyes, look in her eyes
Forget about the ones that are crying
Look in her eyes, look in her eyes
Forget about the ones that are crying"

3) PARANOID ANDROID - RADIOHEAD
One of the few songs in which I can find no fault. It is about alienation within modern culture, and isolation in an increasingly branded world. It may be getting clear that I relate well to ideas of isolation and alienation, and this song explains it on a societal level. Additionally, the music in the song is inspired evolutionary rock. It combines simplified cerebral rhythms with ambience and dynamism. It's quite simply brain music, for me. It puts my brain in a state of agitated excitement, but in a good way.

"Please could you stop the noise, I'm trying get some rest
From all the unborn chicken voices in my head
What's that...? (I may be paranoid, but not an android)
What's that...? (I may be paranoid, but not an android)

When I am king, you will be first against the wall
with your opinion which is of no consequence at all
What's that...? (I may be paranoid, but no android)
What's that...? (I may be paranoid, but no android)

Ambition makes you look pretty ugly
Kicking, screaming gucci little piggy
You don't remember
You don't remember
Why don't you remember my name?
Off with his head, man
Off with his head, man
Why don't you remember my name? I guess he does...

Rain down, rain down
Come on rain down on me
From a great height
From a great height... height...
Rain down, rain down
Come on rain down on me
From a great height
From a great height... height...
Rain down, rain down
Come on rain down on me

That's it sir
You're leaving
The crackle of pigskin
The dust and the screaming
The yuppies networking
The panic, the vomit
The panic, the vomit
God loves his children, God loves his children, yeah!"

4) TWO-HEADED BOY - NEUTRAL MILK HOTEL
This is perhaps the most simple song on my list. The music is not technically impressive. The singing is not particularly impressive. The chord progressions are not particularly progressive or advanced. However, this song could not be more beautiful than it is, as it is. The lyrics are some of the most amazing that I've ever heard, even though I am still not sure how I take the song. It seems to me to be a statement about a delicate life. Something about separation and depression. In this song I hear freedom in art and music, but slavery in love and society. This song relates to my tendency to hide things away within myself - hide things that may be more of my true self than any of the other things that people see of me. I hear in this song that no one dies alone, or that God exists. I'm not sure if those are the same thing or not.

"Two-headed boy
All floating in glass
The sun it has passed
Now it's blacker than black
I can hear as you tap on your jar
I am listening to hear where you are
I am listening to hear where you are

Two-headed boy
Put on Sunday shoes
And dance round the room to accordion keys
With the needle that sings in your heart
Catching signals that sound in the dark
Catching signals that sound in the dark
We will take off our clothes
And they'll be placing fingers through the notches in your spine
And when all is breaking everything that you could keep inside
Now your eyes ain't moving now
They just lay there in their clouds

Two-headed boy
With pulleys and weights
Creating a radio played just for two
In the parlor with a moon across her face
And through the music he sweetly displays
Silver speakers that sparkle all day
Made for his lover who's floating and choking with her hands across her face
And in the dark we will take off our clothes
And they'll be placing fingers through the notches in your spine
And when all is breaking everything that you could keep inside
Now your eyes ain't moving now
They just lay there in their clouds

Two-headed boy
There is no reason to grieve
The world that you need is wrapped in gold silver sleeves
Left beneath Christmas trees in the snow
And I will take you and leave you alone
Watching spirals of white softly flow
Over your eyelids and all you did
Will wait until the point when you let go"

5) BACHELORETTE - BJORK
This is off of Bjork's albm Homogenic. The song is intense with beat and arrangement, and is beautiful like all things that Bjork does. I relate to its vision of a person constantly giving love and being abused. The image of a tree growing hearts. This is a song about abuse and neglect, and offering oneself for the salvation of others. Or maybe it's about being taken advantage of, I'm not entirely sure, to be frank. The lyrics were not written by Bjork, but that doesn't matter to me. This section is important to me:

"I'm a whisper in water
Secret for you to hear
You are the one who grows distant
When I beckon you near"

I have this odd thing happen to me every so often. I will be sitting or driving or otherwise alone and feel just that I would benefit from human connection. At this point I open my phone and start calling people. I usually call the same 6 or 7 people every time. For some reason, at these times when I so desperately just want to know that there is someone on the line, no one answers their phone. This happens at least once a week. No matter who I call, I get voicemail. It is maddening and depressive, and increases my feeling of alone-ness. This song seems to be about this feeling.

"I'm a fountain of blood
In the shape of a girl
You're the bird on the brim
Hypnotised by the Whirl

Drink me, make me feel real
Wet your beak in the stream
Game we're playing is life
Love is a two way dream

Leave me now, return tonight
Tide will show you the way
If you forget my name
You will go astray
Like a killer whale
Trapped in a bay

I'm a path of cinders
Burning under your feet
You're the one who walks me
I'm your one way street

I'm a whisper in water
Secret for you to hear
You are the one who grows distant
When I beckon you near

Leave me now, return tonight
The tide will show you the way
If you forget my name
You will go astray
Like a killer whale
Trapped in a bay

I'm a tree that grows hearts
One for each that you take
You're the intruders hand
I'm the branch that you break
Hum-yeah!
** Icelandic part **"


6) PICTURES OF SHORELINES - FURTHER SEEMS FOREVER
I don't have a whole lot to say about this song, I just really enjoy listening to it. The lyrics describe a love that I'd like to have, I guess, but really not more than other songs. The music isn't intensely amazing or anything, I just enjoy the song on a basic level.

"If you insist on pictures of shorelines
then i insist on pages of your lines meant for me,
to be sent to me.

Remember watching the storms from the lifeguard stand.
Remember feeling the tingling in my fingertips
when I touched your lips.

And I recall how you sat on the same side of me,
it always seemed that you'd always be on my side.
You're my best side.

And it's early June, so the sand's still dry,
and you have got the boldest eyes,
and I can't help but think it's right,
that inside you it's me I'll find.
And I'm still waiting.

And it's early June, so the sand's still dry,
and the storm off shore is not far behind.
And I'm still waiting.

And sometimes you don't say a thing for a long while.
And the ships off shore hold stories that we'd make.
And sometimes we are held at bay by these miles.
But less of you is more than I can take.

And the moments that we've shared could last a lifetime.
And the faith I have in us will keep you near.
And several of these miles placed in between us
mean several of these words being sent by mail.
I hope this letter finds you well."

Top Five Albums

***It occurred to me that I made a tremendous mistake when I first wrote this post, and so I am now correcting this and adding a sixth top CD that should have been listed in the top five. Further Seems Forever should actually be number 6 (in the original post, I had it as #4), and so I am moving it down but allowing it to stay in the post. Radiohead's OK Computer replaces FSF.***

These are the top five CDs in my life thusfar, or at least the five most important/influential to me.

These are in no order, by the way.

1) Neutral Milk Hotel - In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
This CD is amazing. It is the type of CD that builds in importance and relevance as you listen to it more. The music and lyrics are more sincerely searching than those of nearly any other band, which is why this CD in on my list. Honesty is important, and this CD says nothing but total truth. This CD contains the song "Two-Headed Boy," which is also on my top five songs list.

2) Rufus Wainright - Want One
This CD is a work of mastery. Rufus is a unique voice in a crowd of screaming idiots, and he has complete control over his expression. The music is totally his, and could never be confused with someone else's. Again, he only says things that he intends to say. This CD contains the song "Go or Go Ahead," which is also on my top five songs list.

3) Nada Surf - The Weight is a Gift
A work of perfect alternative rock, with a taste for pop and harmony. The very title of the CD is an idea that I've long worked to believe, and think it is a beautiful statement. Basically every song on this CD has the potential for life change, and should be taken in that very serious way, even though it is just rock stuff. This CD contains the song "Do It Again," which is on my top five songs list, and seems to speak to me on a very personal level. I feel that this song is MY song, if ever there was one.

4) Ok Computer - Radiohead
Everything about this album is amazing and beautiful. The cover art is cryptic and aesthetically pleasing. The entire album speaks largely about floating homelessly through a cold world. It is about moving in a world too fast. I'm not sure if I am moving too fast, or if the world is, but one of us is moving at a different speed than the other, and it is the source of our problems. We are aliens searching for ships, hoping to find our home planets. It is sometimes better to die than to live the way that we do. Sometimes death is the only stop for our oddly propelled existence.

5) Rage Against the Machine - Rage Against the Machine
This CD was really my first foray into anger, and is the earliest cd (in my life) on this list. It was really my first experience with the idea of strife, or of institutionally based anger. I began listening to this cd around fifth grade, after my brother bought it. Though I can't say that I necessarily agree or disagree with all of the lyrics, it was really the first music that I'd listened to that was to the point and hard. It was about this time also that I began to rebel in general and to start considering the impact of my life as well as that of others. I still think that this CD is a masterpiece of hard rock. None of the songs on this CD are on my top five songs list.

***6)Further Seems Forever - The Moon is Down
This band was my first introduction to Chris Carrabba, who went on after this album to become Dashboard Confessional, which I also love, though he didn't quite make it into my top five. This CD is beautiful from beginning to end; it is a perfect emo hard rock mixture. Though it is largely about love and other very traditionally emo topics, I have no problem believing Carrabba's sincerity. This CD contains the song "Pictures of Shorelines," which is also on my top five songs list.


I will post my Top Five Songs List some other time.