when i listen to 'in the aeroplane', i see the whole album as a cohesive work about the 'white light' (as jeff puts it in the inlay) that appears from all people including the most fragile of us, like anne frank or the ‘communist daughter’ or the girl falling from the burning building in new york or the goldaline twins (starving in a siberian forest) etc. to me there seems to be one more character though, a brother.
he's mentioned most namely in two-headed boy pt 2 and holland 1945, previously i thought this to be anne franks brother having never read the book, but after a small amount of research i can see that this clearly isn't true.
after sifting through a series of b sides and live recordings i came across this song (little birds), here is a story of a young boy who was being overcome by beautiful birds and tried to explain this to his father - the father that had attacked his homosexual brother with a hammer.
as mentioned by 'mrwuggs' this song is an anomaly - it is the 'most straightforward' song lyrically jeff has ever produced and is also the only song to emerge from a post 'in the aeroplane over the sea' world. i also agree that it seems jeff has made this piece as an explanation for those, like me, trying to understand more of the album.
in it there seemed to be a very direct link with two-headed boy pt 2 (as previously mentioned by others) in particular, with themes of homosexuality, death and the separation of father and son.
it seems important to note that both of these songs are addressed to the father of both of these two boys, the mother is absent from the text - i believe that this is because they don't share the same mother and they are in fact step brothers, which is also supported by the absence of the word 'your' before the word father in 'king of the carrot flowers', despite 'your' having been used before the word mother. although reading the lyrics of both two-headed boy and king of the carrot flowers with the themes of incest, implied by this idea, seem a bit twisted, it seems to me, more of a case of them trying to discover themselves and in the mean time build an emotional connection through the chaos that surrounds them.
jeff added on the 'little birds' recording that the boy lived in a 'not so very nice situation', seemingly beyond that of his brother's death that had gone before because of the use of the present tense - possibly the violence mentioned in the king of the carrot flowers (?).
as 'whitepoett' has just explained jeff's father and his mother had a lot of problems and this may explain why, that out of all the characters mentioned, jeff only ever chooses the older brother of the two to narrate – jeff seems to relate to his situation in some way. i cannot say whether these characters are based on fact or fiction, although i presume the latter to be true. but i don't see any real significance in debating that - especially since it's only jeff that could ever tell us.
another detail that seemed to link the characters of 'little birds' with 'in the aeroplane..', is a quote about the 'brother' in holland '1945', being 'wrapped in white', which if the boy did drown in the water of his baptism (which is what i take from the ending of little birds), would be the case.
there are still more ways in which this idea fits with the album, that i'm struggling to put down in words, like i believe that the 'two-headed boy’ is jeff's imagining of a reincarnation of the two main characters of the work: anna and the older brother (the one that the bird's are entering).
i probably should have put quotes up here to speed up your referencing – but i didn’t want it to be too long :)
as with everyone else, this is only an opinion that i thought i'd include because it helps me to understand this amazing lyrical work - so don't shout at me if you disagree.
when i listen to 'in the aeroplane', i see the whole album as a cohesive work about the 'white light' (as jeff puts it in the inlay) that appears from all people including the most fragile of us, like anne frank or the ‘communist daughter’ or the girl falling from the burning building in new york or the goldaline twins (starving in a siberian forest) etc. to me there seems to be one more character though, a brother.
he's mentioned most namely in two-headed boy pt 2 and holland 1945, previously i thought this to be anne franks brother having never read the book, but after a small amount of research i can see that this clearly isn't true.
after sifting through a series of b sides and live recordings i came across this song (little birds), here is a story of a young boy who was being overcome by beautiful birds and tried to explain this to his father - the father that had attacked his homosexual brother with a hammer.
as mentioned by 'mrwuggs' this song is an anomaly - it is the 'most straightforward' song lyrically jeff has ever produced and is also the only song to emerge from a post 'in the aeroplane over the sea' world. i also agree that it seems jeff has made this piece as an explanation for those, like me, trying to understand more of the album.
in it there seemed to be a very direct link with two-headed boy pt 2 (as previously mentioned by others) in particular, with themes of homosexuality, death and the separation of father and son.
it seems important to note that both of these songs are addressed to the father of both of these two boys, the mother is absent from the text - i believe that this is because they don't share the same mother and they are in fact step brothers, which is also supported by the absence of the word 'your' before the word father in 'king of the carrot flowers', despite 'your' having been used before the word mother. although reading the lyrics of both two-headed boy and king of the carrot flowers with the themes of incest, implied by this idea, seem a bit twisted, it seems to me, more of a case of them trying to discover themselves and in the mean time build an emotional connection through the chaos that surrounds them.
jeff added on the 'little birds' recording that the boy lived in a 'not so very nice situation', seemingly beyond that of his brother's death that had gone before because of the use of the present tense - possibly the violence mentioned in the king of the carrot flowers (?). as 'whitepoett' has just explained jeff's father and his mother had a lot of problems and this may explain why, that out of all the characters mentioned, jeff only ever chooses the older brother of the two to narrate – jeff seems to relate to his situation in some way. i cannot say whether these characters are based on fact or fiction, although i presume the latter to be true. but i don't see any real significance in debating that - especially since it's only jeff that could ever tell us.
another detail that seemed to link the characters of 'little birds' with 'in the aeroplane..', is a quote about the 'brother' in holland '1945', being 'wrapped in white', which if the boy did drown in the water of his baptism (which is what i take from the ending of little birds), would be the case.
there are still more ways in which this idea fits with the album, that i'm struggling to put down in words, like i believe that the 'two-headed boy’ is jeff's imagining of a reincarnation of the two main characters of the work: anna and the older brother (the one that the bird's are entering).
i probably should have put quotes up here to speed up your referencing – but i didn’t want it to be too long :)
as with everyone else, this is only an opinion that i thought i'd include because it helps me to understand this amazing lyrical work - so don't shout at me if you disagree.