See the Constellation: A Guy Made of Dots and Lines
Zoom Out, Let Go, and Be Okay with Being Nothing at All
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When the City Lights Wash Out the Stars
Lately, I’ve been finding it very difficult to carve out time to write. For almost two years, I managed to set aside at least an hour a day and just start—thoughts on the page. It always ended up working out. But today—the last few weeks, in fact—every aspect of my life has been demanding my undivided attention and emotions. It feels like I’m in a big city, trying to look up at a beautiful star-filled sky, but the light pollution washes it all away.
This Song Made Me Feel Like a Rockstar
In high school, my best friend and I played this song in his bedroom—him on his accordion, me on my electric guitar. It was the first time I ever played a melodic guitar riff along with a real song. Up until then, I’d only ever played chords and rhythm parts—I felt SO cool.
This song stuck with me—not just because of this memory, but because of what it seemed to be trying to say.
This might be the song of the album right here. It has everything: countdowns sampled from The Ramones, guitar riffs paying homage to The Monkees, and a track where They Might Be Giants just go hard. The thirteenth track on Apollo 18 is See the Constellation, and it’s a force to be reckoned with.
The entire album seems full of recursive type songs. Time again, I find songs with music or themes that are themselves an ouroboros: I Palindrome I, Which Describes How You’re Feeling, etc. See the Constellation fits right into that looping tradition.
Mike, Mike, Jeff, Mike: Teenage Beliefs I Refused to Question
At 17, the thing I enjoyed most about TMBG’s music—and this song is no exception—was the cleverness of the lyrics. If it sounded good, it sounded good. But if the song also had very cleverly worded or pieced-together lyrics that made me feel “in on it,” then it was a song I loved.
I’ll explain in a minute how I always thought this song was about a guy ending his own life, but that isn’t the most prominent detail stuck in my mind about it.
I think it would be helpful to listen to this song before I go into it. Let’s hear See the Constellation.
Six seconds in and we hear what my friend and I were convinced was someone shouting the name “Mike.” That “Mike” sample is used consistently throughout the song as a sort of hand-clappy percussion. Then at the tail-end of the 2:06 mark it begins alternating between “Mike” and “Jeff.”
I vividly remember being in the camper trailer with my friend as his parents drove us all to a camp site across the state while the two of us played Texas Hold ‘Em and boisterously sang “Mike, Mike, Jeff, Mike!” Did it make sense? No. Did I stick to this belief up until last week? Of course.
What’s really going on?
It turns out these aren’t samples of someone shouting names. They’re samples of The Ramones counting down at the beginning of Commando and California Sun. Dee Dee Ramone’s enthusiastic, mumbling, punk-fueled shouting isn’t exactly “intelligible”—but it sure was a badass way to kick off a song. Also: extremely cool samples to use.
Shoutout to This Might Be a Wiki for teaching me this awesome factoid.
So, back to the guy who is ending his life.
On Railroads, City Dreams, and Fading into the Stars
The first verse goes like this:
I lay my head
On the railroad track
Stare at the sky
All painted up
Your train is gone, won't be coming back
There’s only one reason I could ever think of that a person would lay out on railroad tracks under the limited visibility of night and place their head directly on the track. This guy is having one last look at the night sky—painted in countless shiny stars—before the train comes. After that, he and the train are gone forever.
The next verse takes us back to a time before the incident.
Two years ago
Moved from my town
I was looking up
Past the city lights
But the city lights got in my way
Our narrator left home, probably a small quiet town where people either graduate high school, get married and stay forever, or move away in hopes of something better and bigger for their lives. He landed in a big city, trying to focus on dreams, have his main character moment. But the city lights got in his way. That is to say “life be lifin’" and he wasn’t achieving what he held as success in his life. This wore him down until he just couldn’t handle it anymore.
The Moment the Sky Starts Looking Back
Fast forward now to post-train track events. The narrator is realizing that he is no longer the observer. He has become the observed.
I found my mind
On the ground below
I was looking down
It was looking back
I was in the sky, all dressed in black
The man is looking down at his body looking back at itself. Now, he is up in the blackness of space, he is the constellation. The verse is another example of a self-devouring loop from this album. I take this song to be trying to be the main character in your life and realizing only after your life has ended and you’ve returned to the natural state of the universe—that there are no main characters. No heroes.
No Heroes, No Main Characters, Just Dots and Lines
The song repeatedly describes this image of the constellation as:
See the constellation ride across the sky
No cigar, no lady on his arm
Just a guy made of dots and lines
There’s nothing special about us. None of us are main characters. Just like this constellation isn’t some magical force or celestial entity. It’s just dots and lines. We’re all just dots and lines. What if everything that we think we are aiming for just loops back into anonymity or forgotten space dust? Given enough time, that is what will happen to us all.
TMBG keep returning to this almost playful but deeply haunting idea across Apollo 18 that you are the object and the subject. You are the describer and the described. You are the viewer and the viewed. In this song, trying to escape that loop only lands you back in the constellation of anonymous “dots and lines.”
This Might Be a Psychedelic Rock Song, Actually
This is the kind of thought pattern you’ll often experience while taking psychedelics. While I’m on this subject, See the Constellation is almost itself a sort of psychedelic rock number. We listen along as the subject loses himself and merges with the indifferent unity of the universe.. The guitar with its kill switch effect is slipping in and out of existence and by the end of the song, we hear the bending, fluid sounds of the sitar while the rest of the music decays and dissolves. This is very much a psychedelic rock song.
Conclusion
In the end, See the Constellation doesn’t mourn the loss of individuality—it accepts it. It’s a reminder that meaning isn’t always found in heroic arcs or grand victories. Sometimes it’s in recognizing that we’re all just dots and lines, here for a blink in cosmic time. And maybe the best thing we can do is to experience giving and receiving love, enjoy music, and leave a faint echo behind. Before we, too, dissolve into the stars.
Tell me about a time you realized you were just another dot in the constellation. Drop your story in the comments — let's make a new constellation together.
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