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Hello, I'm Peter.



Uh.. I'm 20, I live in Southern California, and I'm an English major. I mostly blog about music and the occasional ridiculousness of my life. I'm in love with the hook upon which everyone hangs.

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

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dnlfn: I’m sorry for this post. Perhaps it’s tired. But I’ve been listening to a lot more Neutral Milk Hotel than I should lately and Mangum’s rubbed off on me in predictable ways. This girl, Annelies, along with so many like her, was thrown into a mass grave—flung into a pile and covered unceremoniously. She was fifteen. Remember when you were fifteen? Remember how easy fifteen was? How thoughtless fifteen was? How fifteen got taken for granted? How scared of death you were at fifteen? I would have been fine about all of this. I can stay the “appropriate” distance away from tragedy for someone my age and place. I don’t fall for overplayed things. In fact, I almost missed Mangum’s point all together (if I can presume to pull a point from him). But, the third verse of “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea” got me: what a curious life we have found here tonight / there is music that sounds from the street / there are lights in the clouds / Anna’s ghost all around / hear her voice as it’s rolling and ringing through me “Anna’s ghost all around” is a line that I have to describe a certain way and ask you to fight past the easily gotten wordplay. It’s haunting. It’s chilling. I get chills. Do you not? It’s all because of the setup: music in the streets, lights in the clouds, idyllic. And then suddenly your mind is filled with thoughts of a fifteen year old girl you never knew and the horrors and dullnesses she lived, and then she’s here with you, running in the streets as the band plays on and the sun goes down, her fifteen year old voice sounding as real to you as your own. And there’s nothing you can do for her now except for to listen and to allow her to be in this moment with you, as bittersweet as it is. Nothing you can do for her now. I think what Mangum might have meant—what I get from all this, anyway—is that there are some things, some moments, some darknesses that taint everything, forever. We can’t ignore them, or we shouldn’t, even if we happen to find our own bliss. We have to let their shadows into even our happiest moments. We have to let ourselves be haunted, if only so the memory of a long dead girl of fifteen can spend an evening away from the unmarked ground above her, laughing, singing, having as much happiness as we have been lucky enough to find, as much time as we can give her. 

dnlfn:

I’m sorry for this post. Perhaps it’s tired. But I’ve been listening to a lot more Neutral Milk Hotel than I should lately and Mangum’s rubbed off on me in predictable ways.

This girl, Annelies, along with so many like her, was thrown into a mass grave—flung into a pile and covered unceremoniously. She was fifteen. Remember when you were fifteen? Remember how easy fifteen was? How thoughtless fifteen was? How fifteen got taken for granted? How scared of death you were at fifteen?

I would have been fine about all of this. I can stay the “appropriate” distance away from tragedy for someone my age and place. I don’t fall for overplayed things. In fact, I almost missed Mangum’s point all together (if I can presume to pull a point from him). But, the third verse of “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea” got me:

what a curious life we have found here tonight / there is music that sounds from the street / there are lights in the clouds / Anna’s ghost all around / hear her voice as it’s rolling and ringing through me

“Anna’s ghost all around” is a line that I have to describe a certain way and ask you to fight past the easily gotten wordplay. It’s haunting. It’s chilling. I get chills. Do you not? It’s all because of the setup: music in the streets, lights in the clouds, idyllic. And then suddenly your mind is filled with thoughts of a fifteen year old girl you never knew and the horrors and dullnesses she lived, and then she’s here with you, running in the streets as the band plays on and the sun goes down, her fifteen year old voice sounding as real to you as your own. And there’s nothing you can do for her now except for to listen and to allow her to be in this moment with you, as bittersweet as it is. Nothing you can do for her now.

I think what Mangum might have meant—what I get from all this, anyway—is that there are some things, some moments, some darknesses that taint everything, forever. We can’t ignore them, or we shouldn’t, even if we happen to find our own bliss. We have to let their shadows into even our happiest moments. We have to let ourselves be haunted, if only so the memory of a long dead girl of fifteen can spend an evening away from the unmarked ground above her, laughing, singing, having as much happiness as we have been lucky enough to find, as much time as we can give her.