Jascha Hoffman

Not too long ago, I wrote a handful of obituaries for the New York Times, mostly of scientists. I liked obits because, rather than the usual journalistic pursuit of conflict and novelty, they required mostly curiosity about a human life, and usually some warmth.

 

At the time, I also wanted to lure characters into my songs, real people with all their flaws and prejudices. By chance I discovered that the obits had what I needed. 

 

Each morning, after pouring out the music, I would power up my phone and see whose spirits were in the air. When I sat down to write the words, I would try to channel the minds we had lost, seeking their energy and charm, and the history around them.

 

This album is certainly about death: there are songs about a euthanasia-boosting doctor, a reluctant nuclear scientist, a genocide survivor, a public servant who turned to public suicide. It also shows many varieties of buoyant life: a boy dreaming of flying a model airplanes across the ocean, a love-struck cowboy, a late-career ping-pong comeback.

 

But, to my surprise, the strongest character on this album has turned out to be the 20th century. From 1940s wartime hobbies, through the gender wars of the 1970s and tabloid kidnap and murder of the 80s—you could say the album is a sort of technicolor obituary for an American era, one that is rapidly fading.

 

“The Afterneath" is a name that came to me, with a strange sense of rightness, when my grandfather was dying. I hope these songs encourage you to take a long view of this strange pattern we call human life, to see how quickly we sweep from birth to death, and how much wonder and bullshit can fit in between. 

 

—Jascha Hoffman

(Adapted from How The Obits Became My Muse, Nautilus Magazine)