Encephalon 45 Will Possess Your Heart

Today! At PodBlack Blog: Encephalon #45 - Life Is Good, Brains Are Better. The Neurocritic's musings on Death Cab for Cutie and stalking were included, along with a related post on Domestic Violence and Executive Dysfunction from Brain Blogger. Among the many other excellent submissions: a student post on Stress and Addiction at Neuroanthropology and Ghrelin and the Omnipresence of Food at Neuroscientifically Challenged.

Encephalon #46 will be hosted right here in two weeks, on May 26. Please send your submissions to

encephalon.host --at-- gmail --dot-- com

by May 25. Thanks!

The Meaning of Life

by Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie

. . .

The single on our record is a work of fiction that was inspired by things that happened to some people close to me. It’s called “I Will Possess Your Heart,” and it’s eight-and-a-half minutes long. It’s five minutes of build and then a three-minute song. The song is basically about a stalker. It’s about this nice guy who wants this girl he can’t have, and he believes they’ll be together once she realizes how great he is—he just has to wait it out. That’s the part that makes the song really creepy, the delusion of thinking that they were meant to be together. It’s a really dark song. A lot of the material is about the inevitable disappointment people feel as they move through life, and things don’t feel the way they expect. No experience will ever match up to the idealized version in your mind.