"Text Me If You Need Anything"
Finding comfort in strange times
The Dismemberment Plan is a great band. I saw them open for Modest Mouse in 1997, at the Knitting Factory— in New York City. I could barely recognize myself today if I saw myself then.
I was 19 years old and spending the summer after my first year of college working in New York City at Sony Music Studios as an intern. Modest Mouse had just released the Lonesome Crowded West, which is still a great record. There's an excellent documentary about Pitchfork if you want to spend time with it. I think it's worth the indulgence:
What themes resonated with a younger me? Then, it was loneliness. It was about the strip mall makeover of America. I recorded a version which I’ve never played for anyone, except for all of you right now, of the song called “Bankrupt on Selling":
Little did we know how much more post-apocalyptic late-stage capitalism would get before the drones came…
I’m not saying the world is ending. I’m not saying it’s aliens. I don’t know what I watched in the sky two nights ago, right outside my window.
I do know that looking skyward towards inexplicable things, I take stock of what I’ve been doing with my life. I have 8-year-old twins. My daughter’s theory is as good as any, so I will share it:
“Maybe they are just like annoying daddy, and they are boring and here to annoy us. And maybe they are here to spread the Christmas spirit, and that is why some lights are red and green?”
I feel smaller, alone in the universe for just a moment, and when I turn my head, I am very happy to be with my wonderful Family. My wife, Carlene MacMillan, and I were a bit unsettled. Our son said, “Text me if you need anything,” meaning on his iPad, and he went to bed on time. He wasn’t going to let Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon interrupt his early bedtime — nor leave his parents feeling like they didn’t have a backup in the form of their very good boy. He's there for us.
My friends, it turns out, are funny and decent people—some unattributed moments…
And this…after my colleague read my first article on the topic.
I have no answers, and maybe it’s nothing. And perhaps it’s not.
The Dismemberment Plan—who I saw open for Modest Mouse on a fateful night in 1997—wrote a brilliant album called Emergency & I that holds up to this day. One of the songs, at the end of that record, is 8 1/2 minutes. You can listen to it here:
It’s about how we might choose to handle ourselves in the 8 1/2 minutes between the sun dying and the last of its light reaching planet Earth. Here are the lyrics to that song:
Oh, launched all the world's nukes this morning
Hoping it would kick-start something
Some of them went off course and hit the moon instead
It was kinda pretty
Well, there hasn't been a whole lot of looting
On the other hand, oh, it's fucking freezing
Someone on TV said something about going underground
I guess we better start digging
What were you doing for those eight and a half minutes?
Was it mean, was it petty, or did you realize you were sorry
And that you love them?
What were you doing for those eight and a half minutes?
Was it mean, was it cruel, or did you realize you were sorry
And that you love them?
Well, I saw an astronomer break down on CNN
He said, "I'm a scientist, not your fucking clergyman!"
And no one's going nowhere 'cause their cars are all frozen
They give the power plants ten days
The sky is like a dome of black metal flake
And stars bleed together in phosphorescent lakes
And a dead black disk slides silently overhead
It's fucking beautiful is what it is
What were you doing for those eight and a half minutes?
Was it mean, was it petty, or did you realize you were sorry
And that you love them?
What were you doing for those eight and a half minutes?
Was it mean, was it selfish, or did you realize you were sorry
And that you love them?
Or did you realize you were sorry
And that you love them?
What were you doing for those eight and a half minutes?
Was it mean, was it selfish, or did you realize you were sorry
And that you love them?
When I die, I'm going to heaven!
Leave it all to the cockroaches and the 7-Elevens
But it'd be nice to think we could get it right down here just once
It would be nice to think we could get it right down here just once, wouldn’t it? It’s a season in which breathtaking cold and kindness are slammed, conceptually, into each other. Let’s choose warmth and kindness because each moment might be the last we get. Wouldn’t you rather it have been kindness you chose, in that case? How about if you got lucky enough to have one more moment and one more choice? And if we are fortunate, we will be kind one moment longer than any of us imagined possible.
Happy Solstice, one day late.
—Owen
A quick reminder—you can get my book on Amazon’s Kindle store! It’s on sale!
And tickets to January 12th’s event at JP Morgan Health’s (“JPM”) Opening night bash, called Rapid Acting Mental Health Treatment SF 2025, are on sale now!
My tunes are also available on Spotify if you want to add them to a hotel lobby playlist, such as the following.
What ARE those lights, anyway?