The Needle That Sings In Your Heart

Originally posted on my old blog, Get Up Eight, which died when I didn't renew the domain. Reposting entries I enjoyed.

I’ve debated a bit about whether I should (and whether I could) write about what I did last night. There’s a part of me that knows that no matter what I say, I’m not going to be able to accurately reflect what it felt like but I want to try anyway.

So, what did you do last night? Me? Oh, not much. Just saw Jeff Mangum in concert.

I’m not going to go into the full history of Jeff or Neutral Milk Hotel, but I will say that seeing him perform was not something I thought would ever happen in my lifetime. I got into Neutral Milk Hotel late – in 2000, about a year after they disbanded and Jeff essentially disappeared from the public eye, I heard In The Aeroplane Over The Sea. A friend played a couple tracks over the phone to me and that was all it took. From that moment on Aeroplane, On Avery Island, and later Live From Jittery Joes (not to mention any b-side bootleg I could come by) became the soundtrack of my life.

Mangum’s voice sang me through falling in love and getting my heart broken. It was window down, warm summer day and the heart swelling feeling of singing along at the top of your lungs. It carried me through college, through moves, making and losing friends, life changing diagnosis’, the most amazing days of my young life and the worst.

In the 12 years since I’d first heard it, not a week has gone by where I haven’t listened to Neutral Milk Hotel in some capacity. Some weeks, not a day passed without it. And in all those years I knew that hearing this voice through my speakers was all I was going to get.

Until that wasn’t true anymore. Until Jeff played a few full sets that I wasn’t able to make it to and then…scheduled more. One of these newly scheduled shows was 20 minutes from my apartment and I was online the second tickets went on sale buying one.

I’ll be honest, even after I bought a ticket and the date approached, it didn’t seem quite real. Then, the date arrived and I was rushing home after work to get changed, grab my ticket confirmation and head to the venue.

The venue was a beautiful old theater built in the early 1900s that mostly focuses on plays with the occasional music act thrown in. I thought it was the perfect place for Mangum to play. Intimate, ornate and beautiful with an old timey feel that seems perfectly suited to the music we were about to hear.

The opening act, The Music Tapes, fronted by Julian Koster who played with Jeff in Neutral Milk Hotel, was fun and irreverent. A 7 foot metronome, a singing television and a little marching through the audience while playing music.  I enjoyed their performance, but if I’m being honest, I probably would have enjoyed anything. I mean, I was about to see Jeff Mangum, you know? I was already thrilled out of my mind.

They set up the stage for Jeff – a chair surrounded by 4 guitars, a few bottles of water and a sheet music stand with his set list on it. Finally, the lights went down and he walked out. Baggy pants, a plaid shirt and a newsboy cap with chin length brown hair – you’d never know that it wasn’t 1998 or that most of us had been waiting at least 10 years to see this. Everyone erupted in hollering and clapping while he quickly strode across the stage, took a seat, picked up a guitar and started playing Two-Headed Boy Part 2.

I couldn’t tone down the wild grin that had spread across my face while I leaned forward, hands clasped, and listened in dead silence with the rest of the crowd.

Before starting the next song, he quietly said, “You can sing along.” He played the opening notes to Holland 1945 and the whole crowd yelled out the countdown 2...1, 2, 3, 4 and we sang. After it was over, a girl near me exclaimed “I just sang with Jeff Mangum!” in a shocked tone and that was exactly how I felt.

The setlist for the show couldn’t have been more perfect. I teared up when he brought Julian out and they played Engine. Before playing Little Birds he told us that he didn’t play the song much, strummed one note and joked “So, did you like it?” There was so much laughter and joy from both the audience and Jeff.

People shouted out song requests – one guy called out for True Love Will Find You In The End, which Jeff had covered in the past and Jeff replied, “Hey thanks, friend! You too!” Someone asked his favorite color (it’s yellow), someone else yelled out praises that made him laugh. At one point he paused and asked us if we were happy. I yelled out “HELL YES” amongst a chorus of voices yelling out the same. A venue full of people who couldn’t be happier if they tried.

He played King of Carrot Flowers part 1, Naomi, Gardenhead/Leave Me Alone, A Baby For Pree, King of Carrot Flowers part 2 & 3, Oh Comely and Ghost. Each song was better than the last. His voice was perfectly on point the entire time. Everyone in the crowd threw back their heads and sang out I love you Jesus Christ; Jesus Christ I love you, yes I do with all their hearts.

Then he started Two-Headed Boy to close out the show. It was flawless and overwhelming. I spent a portion of the song with my eyes closed so I could listen better. At the end of the song, he stopped singing and told us to sing. 1600 people singing the ending de de de’s as Julian and the rest of The Magic Tapes came out and they went right into The Fool. To say people momentarily lost their shit was an understatement. The horns, the accordion, the percussion, the guitar – it was perfect, it was beautiful, and it was entirely unexpected.

After The Fool, they all walked off stage and the crowd immediately leapt to their feet, cheering and clapping until Jeff and Julian came back out to play In The Aeroplane Over The Sea. Julian played the singing saw while Jeff played guitar and sang it out. It sounded exactly like every emotion I’d ever felt while listening to that song through all the moments of the last 12 years of my life. Every time I felt overwhelmed in love, every time I laughed until I cried, every beautiful second was sounding back at me for those final 4 minutes.

Then, as quickly as it began, it was over. The lights came up and we all poured out of the building and stumbled to our cars. For a minute after I got in my car, I just sat in silence – a smile playing across my face and my eyes welled up with fresh tears. Had it really happened? Was I really there? I keep describing it as overwhelming and it was. It was perfectly, joyously, heart-wrenchingly overwhelming but it had happened. I saw Jeff Mangum. I watched his smile light up a room and I heard my life pour out of his mouth while I sang along.

And a small part of me – the tiniest part that only I can see – feels like a different girl because of it.

A Blog About Blogging

Originally posted on my old blog, Get Up Eight, which died when I didn't renew the domain. Reposting entries I enjoyed.

So, let’s be frank here shall we? Blogging…I’m not good at it. Don’t get me wrong, I have all the best intentions. I have moments practically every day where I think “That would be such a funny blog” or “I should really write about this” but then…well, I don’t. Maybe I sit down to do it but then my apartment is too cold to stay at the computer or I’m hungry or I need to pee or what is my cat doing or is there a rerun of America’s Next Top Model that I’ve seen 73 times on television? You see where I’m going.

 If only I had a laptop, I lament, I would be such an awesome blogger. No, I wouldn’t.

At some point while pondering New Years Resolutions, I thought that I might want to really start updating my blog and writing more. I would talk about everything! I would make goals! I would DIY! I would network! I would be funny! I would be touching! I would share art! I would talk about my day to day life! It would be awesome! Look at your calendar. As I’m writing this, mine says January 12^th, which is a full 11 days after the rest of the world had settled into working on their resolutions. Mine haven’t even been written and if I’m being honest, they never will be.

Okay, I did write some resolutions. But I was drunk and can’t read them. Story of my unhelpful life.

If you’ll allow me a moment to get a little introspective, I believe my problem with blogging is this: any blog that I create is based on the notion that people will have to like me, as a person, for whatever reason, in order to read it. This cuts my readership down to about 5 if I’m being generous. Why? Because here’s the deal – I’m not going to teach you how to cook anything. At best, I may share a photo of something I cooked – at worst, I’ve started eating it before the thought occurs to me. I can’t be expected to take progress pictures, who do you think I am? Replace “cook” with “craft”, “draw”, “DIY” and any other common blog topic that involves the process. Obviously, I’m not eating all of that after completion, but you get what I’m saying.

 Did you know I painted this desk? I did. It tasted really great, too.

I’m also not going to give you helpful tips on how to live your life to its full potential or get out of debt or open a 401k like other common blog genres. Why? Because when I’m looking at my electric bill at the same time I’m looking at concert tickets for a concert that’s not even in my state, I’m buying the tickets and worrying about it later. That blog would be called “How To Get In Debt & Stay There.” I also don’t care how you quit your job and are now blogging from beaches in Fiji. Know why? Because in order to have that life you have to write really boring blogs about how other Joe Schmoes can do the same thing and I’m nodding off just thinking about it.

 Full disclosure, I have a 401k. Do you know how it works? I don’t.

I don’t care about SEO. I consider networking just a way to get free drinks. I don’t want to utilize social media to my advantage. I find all that horribly boring and would probably be stomping my way to the computer like Paul Rudd having to clean up his plate in Wet Hot American Summer if I had to read about it without getting paid for it, forget about blogging about it.

Unless utilizing social media to my advantage means getting my favorite celeb to retweet me and fall in love

So, without a niche, shall we say, anything I blog is about me or things I think are funny/interesting, and relies on you liking me enough to read it. I don’t even like me enough for that. I’m kind of smarmy and have a bad habit of getting fixated on things. Obviously, I think my fixations are funny but twitter has shown me that other people may not always agree. That’s right, I was persecuted and unfollowed for professing my love of Tim Riggins and Hanson.

 Professing it 1440 times doesn’t seem like that much to me.

I suppose what I’m getting at here is this: my intentions are to update my blog more. It didn’t work out for me last time because I was trying to have A BLOG where I posted about IMPORTANT GOALS and WORTHY TOPICS and that just doesn’t work for me. I want to be vaguely anonymous in terms of never connecting my social media/blog to my job, and write about that time I dropped my pizza in a puddle and cried about it or that time I gutted a teddy bear to sneak a video camera into a concert.

Welcome to that.