I'm reading Food & Wine at In & Out, the kid this-close next to me is scribbling a post card, addressed to Australia. It’s the Hollywood kind, a big picture of the star-walk and the sign. The kind I might send, for the irony, if I were the kind to send post cards home.
If I could remember to send post cards.
I want to ask him if it’s all everything he hoped; I’d like him to tell me how it feels to have gotten here just now. I want to hear about packing, and planning, and saying goodbye. I glance at his backpack and I think … I want to hear about running. In return I can share about lunch hours, about the boots that might be the only thing I’d take, about a sad & sudden sense that all Destinations are somehow lonely. About how I’m certain I don’t believe that. About how I never used to.
He takes out his iPod and scrolls to the exact same song I’m on, like a nod: hey, tourist - you can’t fool me. You are running away. He mouths, post station? I shrug. I’m just visiting, too.
My Trusted MOGs
We all need more NMH. Jeff Mangum where are you?
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truly. the great finder of souls astray!
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Actually from what I've read it looks like he's in New York somewhere living among the masses.
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I did a post on NMH and the whole story is quite fascinating. There have always been rumors of them getting back together, I can remember a few years back a posting of their new cd that was supposed to come out. I am in the same boat as you two, and can only hope for a new record
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The Wikipedia page for Jeff Mangum is pretty enlightening.
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i absolutely adore that band... i was at a campfire a couple of weeks ago and someone played that song just out of the blue and it felt so good to sing along at the top of my lungs out in the woods. a little different than sharing iPods at a burger joint in LA, but still the same kinda.
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hey, over burgers in LA or the middle of the woods, here's to NMH bringing people together. a king of carrot flowers singalong & a campfire is officially all i want right now. :)
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i think neutral is one of those bands you have to catch at the right time in your life. at least for me. the first time i heard them, i liked but didnt immediately catch on. i dont even know what song it was. but just a few months ago, i heard them again (this time 'oh comely') and it literally felt my stomach twist with excitement. ive been hooked ever since. i look forward to falling in love!
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Speaking of running away, that's what Jeff did. I don't blame him, really. Better to have one phenomenal album (I know they had On Avery Island too, but Aeroplane is perfection), than none at all. I call it the Ralph Ellison/Invisible Man complex. Jeff Magnum = Invisible Man (?)...perhaps I'm looking for meaning where there is none...
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@ disarming - I love that moment - when something you've heard before (sometimes even many times before - suddenly makes sense. that happened to me with the mountain goats - i didn't get it, didn't get it, and then all at once, couldn't get enough.
@ contra - that mangum himself essentially fled always adds the perfect subtext to the neutral milk hotel soundtrack of my thoughts of sudden escape. i heard that at some point he was selling drawings through his website, $10 a piece. i want one, if anyone out there was paying attention back when that was happening. name your price :)
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i miss NMH. ):