The Diary of Jeff Mangum & Neutral Milk Hotel

I had heard of the band Neutral Milk Hotel before, but never owned an album or had an opportunity to listen the music. Recently, as if driven by some force, I traveled to Papa Jazz records in Five Points and sought out a Neutral Milk Hotel album. I purchased On Avery Island. It would be the beginning to a change in my life.

The music, with its clanky aurora, made me take a different approach from the glossy tones of current radio playlists. The poetic, macabre imagery made me tilt my head like a dog trying to understand human language. It was strange, but beautiful.

I checked some info on the web about the band and discovered the wave of praise for In the Aeroplane Over the Sea album, so I traveled back to Papa Jazz to buy it. As I listened to the album and its themes of suffering, I found myself mesmerized. The tragic stories of Jeff Mangum's intense but ultimately unattainable love for a girl, Anne Frank, who had died decades before his time, a two-headed boy in a jar of formaldehyde making a radio for the one he loves, and Siamese sisters freezing to death as they await an animal to eat them so they can be warm in its belly were a delicate intertwining of tragedy and hope. It is the most beautiful anthology of music I have ever heard. Each story feeds into the theme of ultimate, true love that lasts even after desolation and death.

In Kim Cooper's book 331/3: In the Aeroplane Over the Sea and on internet websites, people talk of Jeff Mangum's openly soulful praise for Jesus in "The King of Carrot Flowers Part 2 &3," but, when I listen to the song, I hear something much different. Rather than using Jesus Christ as a proper noun and stating his love for his religion, I believe Mangum uses "Jesus Christ" as an interjection to state his mournful epiphany of true love toward the one he is anamoured with: "I love you, Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ, I love you, yes I do." It is more than a simple claim of loving someone, but a heart-wrenching cry of complete devotion. Each character on the album is willing to give their complete selves to the one they adore, even if it means that love will never be allowed to bloom.

Anne Frank's diary marks a tragic time in history, but does so through a little girl's personal, private paradigm of the world that was never meant for anyone else to see or read. I feel guilty as I read it because the diary's unfiltered pain, love, and despair were meant as a therapeutic way for a young girl to deal with the collapse of the world around her. In the Aeroplane Over the Sea is Jeff Mangum's personal diary of dreams and raw emotions. I feel just as guilty as I listen to the words of his intense longing and dismal hopefulness, especially after I realized that the album's sad, tragic characters are really a metaphor for Jeff and the way he feels. Mangum is the two-headed boy trapped in the jar of time trying to make music; Anne Frank's and his souls are the Siamese sisters who can only live as one once they are digested in the bowels of history. Jeff Mangum's love is real, but yet it can only be attained in a celestial place (time machine) where time and death cease to exist and only love thrives with all its power:

"...and in my dreams you're alive
And you're crying
Move your mouth into mine,
Soft and sweet;
Rings of flowers 'round your eyes
And I love you, nineteen-forty and five as we leave.

Brother, see we are one in the same
And you left with your head filled with flames,
And you watched as your brains fell out through your teeth.
Push the pieces in place,
Make your smile sweet to see;
Don't you take this away.
I'm still wanting my tongue on your cheek.

And when we break, we wait for a miracle.
God is a place where some holy spectacle lies.
When we break, we'll wait for our miracle.
God is a place where we will wait for the rest of our lives..."

from "Two-Headed Boy Part 2" Jeff Mangum Live @ Jittery Joe's (video below)

It is no surprise that after In the Aeroplane Over the Sea that Jeff Mangum disappeared from the music industry, except as a ghost that shows up here and there. He has exposed himself completely with his last Neutral Milk Hotel album, and how can he ever begin to craft another album once he has laid-bare his soul? It would be like Anne Frank, who always wanted to be a published writer, releasing a novel after the world has read the secrets of her personal diary. Jeff Mangum now lives in a bubble of suspended time as In the Aeroplane Over the sea, an allusion to the vessel carrying their ashes, continues to silently, softly spread like a dandelion clock being blown to the wind.