♥ if music be the food of love, play on.

{my favorite horse.}

{summer 2001}

{summer 2002}

just last year, the members of one of our most favorite bands,

neutral milk hotel, played an instrumental role {pun intended}

in saving the paragon carousel in hull where we were engaged.

along with the help of lead singer, jeff mangum, julian koster composed

a gorgeous letter requesting that all of their fans vote daily for a

$100,000 historic preservation grant to save the carousel,

and amazingly enough, they won!

here is a copy of the letter {from pitchfork},

which sounds just as lyrical and poetic as their music:

The Paragon Carousel is a beautiful machine that has been my dear neighbor for many moons.

Now 81 years old, it is in need of a little love and attention in order for it to survive.

It is my sincere wish for the Paragon Carousel to be a part of the magic of long seaside

summer afternoons for many years to come. But it might not get to.

Unfortunately, we live in a world where the great whirling contraptions of mechanical music

and light are not as profitable to operate as other things, and carousels are worth much more

taken apart and sold in pieces to museums, where one must pay to look at them behind glass,

rather than having them simply existing in the world that we now all share.

for those of you whose ears have not yet been blessed with the timeless

and majestic music from neutral milk hotels' masterpiece,

in the aeroplane over the sea,

get ready to fall ever so deeply in love.

just like the words in the letter of appeal to save the carousel,

neutral milk hotel's cover album quietly reflects "the taste of mangum,

[who] was always into that old–timey magic, semi–circus, turn of the century,

penny arcade kind of imagery." (wikipedia)

luckily for us, his taste has never waivered.