My Man: When Your Body Doesn't Want to Get Along with Your Brain

A disconnected and removed discussion about My Man by They Might Be Giants. Plus an emotional reflection on what it's like to lose control of your body.

May 22, 2026

Blankly, Chase stares at his mechanical keyboard as waves of color flow through the keys. He is sitting at his desk, reaching into the deepest corners of his mind to find the words he needs to type.

Nothing.

Is this his third attempt at a draft? The fourth?

He can’t recall.

An essay for the song My Man off They Might Be Giants’ album Mink Car is overdue. No matter how much he tries to get the words onto the screen. The information from his brain is not making it to his fingers. Or as John Linnell sings in this song:

I guess my man’s fallen out with my head.

In hindsight, he wonders if he’d have an easier time writing if he hadn’t fallen behind by three planned essays according to his editorial calendar. Perhaps, he could have been writing while in Philly seeing TMBG instead of testing the limits of human consumption of Malort. He pushes his regret to the side. There is an essay to write after all - even if his brain and body aren’t on speaking terms right now. If they were, he’d try to write about the things he loves in this song.

What He Would Say

Probably something about how My Man is packed full of wonderful electronic sounds programmed by Chris Maxwell and Phil Hernandez - The Elegant Too1. A duo that has staked their claim in TMBG collaboration history. If only he was able to physically express this through typing words with the keyboard in front of him.

The fact that the digital flare that has been prevalent in this album has returned after the brief hiatus of the last track, is certainly something Chase would mention if his brain and fingers were cooperating.

Chase’s eyes begin to close as his body further rejects the notion of being both productive or conscious after a week of events and travel. His mind wandering to thoughts of lying in bed. Sleeping until the end of time. Certainly, if he were able, he’d point out how My Man is about a person who’s body is no longer responding to his brain. An apparent severing of the spinal cord. Could this be related to or inspired by the person with the drinking problem in the last track?

Perhaps a future song on this album will cover the details of an automobile accident. One thing has become clear in Chase’s active mind but inactive body, the past two songs have covered deep depression and alcoholism. Now a third song to follow the dark themes. One about paralysis. Permanent helplessness. With two more bleak songs on the way, Chase is feeling the spiraling sadness of the second half of Mink Car in full force.

Our writer’s body lets out a deep sigh. Flashes of a time when his body truly wasn’t working. A time when his man was not only falling out with his head, but his head was falling out with itself. Just a few days after last Christmas, Chase suffered a ruptured aneurism. Completely caught off guard.

When The Cable Breaks

He looks out the window of his room, remembering how he spent four days in bed at home, feeling the most agonizing head pain in his life. Convinced it was merely the flu until he finally had enough clarity to ask his oldest kid to take to the urgent care. Having been discharged after a cocktail of medicine and a precautionary CT scan, Chase crawled back into his bed. His prison of the previous 4 days. When his phone erupted with calls and texts from the ER.

A doctor told him that his scan shows signs that his brain is bleeding and to rush back immediately.

At this moment, Chase is trying to type and tears begin forming, trying to escape from his face. He gets another flash of the moment he told the two of his kids who were home at the time, that the doctor saw something on his scan and he has to return. He underplayed it. That seemed like the right move.

Chase knew that bleeding brains often do not end well and he worried. No - he was terrified that he’d walk out of that apartment and never return. That his kids would lose him. Would they be okay? Should he have said more? Got that one last hug? It would be nearly 24 hours before any of them would be standing in his hospital ICU room.

The memories are not linear and they’re loaded with emotions as much they are images. It was the most that Chase ever felt disconnected and at odds with his body. A body that was actively trying to end him. After that day, it was also the most he had ever related to My Man.

Chase leans back from his desk. Maybe a disconnected and disjointed essay about the signal traveling along his body in order to attempt to write this post is actually good enough. He may be exhausted from an amazing trip and got burnt to a crisp by the east coast sun, but he’s still here.

He did not get answers to whether or not his kids would be okay. They'd be wrecked. And then they'd spend years learning how to get their own man back on speaking terms with their head.

Has there ever been a time where you felt betrayed or separated from your physical body somehow?