Jeff is alive, he’s sane and he’s well. He sometimes plays on his friends’ records, but he isn’t making Neutral Milk Hotel music, at least not for public consumption. It’s his life, and he’s living it.

The music that he made with his friends glows with a special light. The songs are beautiful and fascinating, the playing unpredictable and soulful, the production sympathetic and effective…but that’s not why so many people care about Neutral Milk Hotel and hold In the Aeroplane Over the Sea close to their hearts.

The band and their music are manifestations of the rarest kind of love, a love that rescued a bunch of smart, emotional misfit kids stuck in redneck towns and hard-nosed cities, plunked them down in a series of warm and welcoming homes, trusted them to be themselves without fear of being mocked, let them all blossom. Aeroplane was Jeff’s flower, watered and sheltered and fed by his dear friends.