Spiraling Shape: Writing This From Inside the Fall

On falling in love, warning signs, and doing it anyway

I’m writing an essay about every They Might Be Giants song. If you like deep dives, nostalgia, or getting unreasonably emotional about music, subscribe below to read along for free. New posts arrive every week by email or in the Substack app.

Factory Showroom (1996), the album that taught me some warnings only make sense in hindsight.

A few weeks ago, I was lying in a hospital bed, miraculously recovering from a ruptured aneurysm. Tears were welling up in my eyes.

Not because of head pain, or fear of dying, but because I was listening to Spiraling Shape.

It’s the ninth track on Factory Showroom by They Might Be Giants, and that was the first night this song had ever made me cry.

What the Shape Is Supposed to Be

This song can mean a lot of things to a lot of people. It’s specific enough to know it’s about something desirable, something people willingly exchange parts of themselves for, even after hearing the warnings, knowing the risks, or having been down the road before.

For years, I thought I understood what that something was.

My earliest listens equated it with religion. Christianity, specifically. Later, cults. Fraudulent belief systems. Cultural fads that promise transcendence and deliver disappointment.

But lying in that hospital bed, something shifted. Much like my brain at the time, a deeper and more personal meaning began bleeding through to the surface.

In Spiraling Shape, They Might Be Giants warn the listener about an ominous yet seductive thing—the Spiraling Shape—that will entice and consume you, drive you insane, and eventually spit you back out. Leaving you jaded. Insistent that you never enjoyed it. Certain you’ll never fall for it again.

This Isn’t About Cults

That night, I realized I’d been hearing this song wrong.

This isn’t a song about cults or religion.

It’s a song about falling in love.

I need to be clear about something before I go any further

I’m not writing this from a place of clarity or hindsight. I’m not reporting on a spiral I’ve already escaped. I’m writing this while currently inside my spiral.

Mid-fall, mid-loop, still staring at the shape.

Falling in love isn’t unique to me, but every time I’ve done it, every time I’ve made myself vulnerable by sharing my feelings, it has eventually ended with my heart being crushed. Writing this means putting myself back in those moments. Feeling those feelings again. And this one is heavy.

Over the summer, my wife left me. What began as “living apart but staying married and committed” quickly collapsed into something colder and harder to name. I felt insane during that time, not metaphorically, but genuinely questioning my own perceptions. Wondering how I could have been so certain about something that seemed to evaporate so easily for the other person.

The grief hit harder than I expected. Stronger than anything I’d felt in a very long time. I kept asking myself the same question over and over: How did I get all of this so wrong?

At the beginning of that relationship, nearly a decade earlier, I had warned myself. I told myself that opening my heart was likely going to end in rejection and hurt. I had worked hard to be grounded and centered, to protect my sense of self, to find fulfillment independent of anyone else.

As the song puts it:

Down, down, down you go
No way to stop
As you fall, hear me call
No, no, no
Listen to this warning and consider these
Simple words of advice
Stop, stop, stop

Instead, I followed the feeling. The happiness. The possibility of being loved in return. I exchanged stability for the pursuit of love.

Never Again (A Lie I Needed)

In the weeks after she left, I found myself reporting to my therapist that the connection I thought we had was a fraud. A fake. That I never truly enjoyed it. That I always doubted it. That I would never allow myself to fall like that again.

Therapy helped me learn how to let more than one thing be true at the same time. What we had was beautiful and full of love, and there was also pain, confusion, and harm. Those things weren’t mutually exclusive.

Fine. I could accept that.

What I wouldn’t do was make the same mistake again.

Back in that ICU bed, Spiraling Shape pulled me back through all of it and then further. I realized I was right back where I’d started.

There was someone new. Someone I was talking to nearly every day. Someone I told myself very deliberately not to fall for. I had reasons. Practical ones. Emotional ones. I told myself this had to stay platonic.

Lying there, I knew the truth.

I was already cooked.

I already had the feelings. I was already falling in love. The spiraling shape was in clear view, and I wanted to see it so badly.

Weeks passed. Now I’m sitting at home, writing this, and in the middle of it I learned about someone else. Complicated feelings. Late-night visits. A kiss.

While I was trying to figure out how to express what I felt, she was sharing her feelings about someone else. I responded with sarcasm or support, minimizing myself in real time to maintain the connection.

That should have been my warning.

Consumed in the Shape

This essay was supposed to end differently. I wanted it to land on courage. On the idea that despite every warning and every past hurt, I would always choose to fall in love, because it’s who I am.

Right now, that ending feels dishonest.

I put out my hand and fell through the window. Clawing at nothing, I dropped through the void. My terrified screams are inaudible, drowned in the spiral ahead and consumed in the shape.

You’re reading one of my Factory Showroom essays. An album full of oddball beauty, quiet heartbreak, and some of the band’s most elegant songwriting.

• See all Factory Showroom posts - Start Here

• Dive deeper into TMBG lore at TMBW.net (fan-run and fantastic)