SOFT AIRPLANE

Chad VanGaalen - TMNT Mask
+download via zshare

1) I like VanGaalen's music enough that I even once considered being part of his label's street team. But then I remembered how I hate working and that idea ended there. But the point that I want to make is that one day, likely while I was obsessing over one of the songs on Skelliconnection, I almost considered living in this grey area between a slave and a groupie. I would have been paid in stickers and limited edition treats and I would have been happier than I am now. At least, that's how I imagine it.

***

2) I had two nightmares last night. In the first one I was balding. In the second one I was hit in the back of the neck by a giant spider dangling from a open ceiling panel in my basement. I only mention this because VanGaalen's Soft Airplane topically seems to be about a search for peace, and even beauty, in things that are . . . creepy, for lack of a better term. Personally, I can accept the whole death thing. It's the aging and slow deterioration of the body that is so much worse. (I am going to look so bad when I'm bald.) VanGaalen seems to understand this, because so many of his songs are obsessed with the physical transition of the body as it moves from birth to death, and reconciling your present self with what you were in the past and what you will be in the future.

3) One last thing: the Chad VanGaalen take on death is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, you get release from the physical confines of your body. On the other hand, you'll probably end up as a ghost and then you're sort of trapped all over again.

www.myspace.com/chadvangaalen