Song of the Week: 7/7-7/13/2025
Neutral Milk Hotel: "The King of Carrot Flowers Parts 1, 2 and 3"
There is a mythology that surrounds Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea that is the stuff of legends. Influenced by The Diary of a Young Girl (Anne Frank), the lyrics to the album are fragmented and cryptic and are a modern response to the devastation of WWII. It is an indie rock version of The Waste Land. It is serious and playful; it mourns and it celebrates. It is monumental. It is the kind of album that gets inside of you—into that secret place where no one dares to go. If someone mentions it to you with a twinkle in their eye, you know that they know—that they have gone down the rabbit hole of the myth and it has become part of their own story.
I remember driving to Key West once in the early 2000s for a Hemingway conference with some friends and listening to the album throughout the trip. It became like a beacon that guided us. The thing about the album is that you should really listen to it from start to finish. I probably have never written about it here because the songs should not be extracted from the album as a whole—they are not singles but parts of a whole. Thus, parts 1-3 of “The King of Carrot Flowers” are included here as a type of dispensation.
I remember playing it in the TA office at New Paltz and one of my fellow TAs was singing every song word for word as he worked at his desk. It was like the album was part of his DNA and he could not stop himself from quietly singing along even if he wanted to.
I used to play the album for my freshmen writing classes. I can’t tell you why, really, but I wanted them to hear it.
I am not here to try to interpret the lyrics or to glean any meaning from what Jeff Magnum was trying to communicate through the album or the songs . . . plenty of ink has been spilled pursuing such ends. I’m here to share the way the album and these songs have always struck a chord with me and how I always find myself lost in the imagination of Magnum and thinking of Anne Frank and wondering how those two became linked forever by her diary and his album. [Have you ever read J.D. Salinger’s "A Girl I Knew"?] I’m left with a profound understanding somewhere within the connection between these two souls—of why we make art & why I love art—that I cannot articulate . . . but that I hold closely like a prayer.
“The King of Carrot Flowers Pts. 1, 2, 3”
[Part 1]
When you were young, you were
the king of carrot flowers
And how you built a tower
tumbling through the trees
In holy rattlesnakes
that fell all around your feet
And your mom would stick a fork
right into daddy's shoulder
And dad would throw the garbage
all across the floor
As we would lay and learn
what each other's bodies were for
And this is the room one afternoon,
I knew I could love you
And from above you how
I sank into your soul
Into that secret place
where no one dares to go
And your mom would drink until
she was no longer speaking
And dad would dream of all
the different ways to die
Each one a little more
than he could dare to try...
[Part 2]
I love you Jesus Christ
Jesus Christ, I love you, yes I do
I love you Jesus Christ
Jesus Christ, I love you, yes I do
And on the lazy days
The dogs dissolve and drain away
The world it goes and always waits
The day we are awaiting
[Part 3]
Up and over, we go through the wave and undertow
I will float until I learn how to swim
Inside my mother in a garbage bin
Until I find myself again, again
Up and over we go with mouths open wide and spitting still
I will spit until I learn how to speak
Up through the doorway as the sideboards creak
With them ever proclaiming me, me
Up and over we go, the weight it sits on down and I don't know
I will shout until they know what I mean
I mean the marriage of a dead dog sing
And a synthetic flying machine, machine