In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

by Kim Cooper

Jeff is alive, he's sane and he's well. He sometimes plays on his friends' records, but he isn't making Neutral Milk Hotel music, at least not for public consumption. It's his life, and he's living it. The music that he made with his friends glows with a special light. The songs are beautiful and fascinating, the playing unpredictable and soulful, the production sympathetic and effective... but that's not why so many people care about Neutral Milk Hotel and hold In the Aeroplane Over the Sea close to their hearts. The band and their music are manifestations of the rarest kind of love, a love that rescued a bunch of smart, emotional misfit kids stuck in redneck towns and hard-nosed cities, plunked them down in a series of warm and welcoming homes, trusted them to be themselves without fear of being mocked, let them all blossom. Aeroplane was Jeff's flower, watered and sheltered and fed by his dear friends.

Julian Koster, whose life was immeasurably enriched by the souls he found in Ruston, has a message for young musicians and artists who are trying to find their way It seems like he's talking to his teenage self when he says, emphatically and sweetly, "I think what Elephant 6 meant for us is very simple: there's something pure and infinite in you, that wants to come out of you, and can come out of no other person on the planet. That's what you've got to share, and that's as real and important as the fact that you're alive. We were able, at a really young age, to somehow protect each other so we could feel that. The world at large, careerism, money, magazines, your parents, the people at the rock club in your town, other kids, nothing is going to give you that message, necessarily. In fact, most things are going to lead you away from it, sadly, because humanity is really confused at the moment. But you wouldn't exist if the universe didn't need you. And any time I encounter something beautiful that came out of a human somewhere, that's them, that's their own soul. That's just pure, whatever its physicality is, if the person can play piano, if they can't play piano, if they're tone deaf, whatever it is, if it's pure, it hits you like a sledgehammer. It fills up your own soul, it makes you want to cry, it makes you glad you're alive, it lets you come out of you. And that's what we need: we desperately need you."