There was a good stretch of time, back around the turn of the century, when I would get mixtapes from a particular type of girl. These were girls with homemade haircuts and craft projects littering their apartments. This is one of the songs that, if it were on one of those mixtapes, would make me sure that they’d totally have sex with me.
Looking back, I realize that if someone spends several hours (or – ahem – days) sitting in front of a tape deck ordering, cueing, volume-matching and recording 90 minutes of music in real time, hand-lettering the tracklist in a perfectly tiny font, and creating a cover collage, that they’ll totally have sex with you, regardless of what songs they choose. It could be all death metal; if it’s wrapped with a ribbon, pack extra Trojans, buddy, it’s your lucky day.
“Aeroplane” is the sweetest song on the record with which it shares a title, which isn’t really saying much, considering the record is a howling, yowling bad-trip carnival ride, populated with mutilated mutants, dead girls and semen-stained mountaintops. The song itself contains instructions for reanimating a corpse like a hand puppet.
Starting as a coffee house folk-trip, a pack of singing saws and warped horns drift in and out like wind, whistling at the windows, while the fingertips of tree limbs tip-tap on the panes, casting shadows of ghost-hands into a third-floor bedroom, a mattress lying directly on the floor. Jeff Mangum’s singing is comparatively restrained, cracking against its upper-limits only a few times, as if tethered. It threatens to become unhinged, but never goes full crazy.
It’s one of the few human moments on the album, the break in the nightmare that reminds you that it’s all a dream, that the trip is worth taking, and how another person can be that break for you in the swirling whirl of shit and evil that we inhabit.
Sometimes the only way you can say something as intimate, or as intimidatingly corny, as “you’re my anchor” or “I would like to take ecstasy and have sex with you on my futon” is in coded messages. It pays to be tactful when you’re trying to be cool. Where Barbra Streisand’s “People” is a hammer of desperation and isolation that would send me running, this is a hint.
In retrospect, I should have seen those ladies’ issues coming from a mile away.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
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This is fucking bullshit! This song is in the 560,000's AT LEAST.
ReplyDeleteAlthough as a female person I am glad that you were able to break our mix tape code.
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ReplyDeletePersonally, I would have ranked this song much, much higher, but you've got to go with what the algorithm gives you. There's just no accounting for taste. Even with a computer.
ReplyDeleteAs a male person, I am happy to have broken the code, and look forward to further expanding upon it in entries to come. I should write a book.
Now that I've spelled "algorithm" correctly, I feel much better.
Damn these algorithms! Science can be such a cruel mistress.
ReplyDeleteProceed with caution on your book-writing; we have hidden Meaning in all sorts of male-female interactions. Here is a clue to aid you in your code-cracking: most women think guys think like women.
If we did, I'd have to spend three days wondering what was behind your capitalization of "Meaning." What's she really sating here? For research purposes, I may have to look into it.
ReplyDeleteI have said too much already.
ReplyDeleteMum's the words. It's between you, me, and the internet.
ReplyDeleteUpon reading the end of this blog, I have realized that perhaps I should cease and desist putting Neutral Milk Hotel songs on mixes for boys.
ReplyDelete