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When I was twelve, I watched this movie Seeking a Friend for the End of the World with my sister in the living room. It was summer break from middle school for me and from college for her.
At the end of the movie — Whatever. You’re not going to watch it probably. At the end of the movie they both die, just like the title heavily suggests. Steve Carrell makes his house all nice to die alone, and Keira makes it back to him just before the astroid hits, and they die. Just before the death scene, Steve had “made the ultimate sacrifice” (as tends to happen in these movies) to The Hollies’ “The Air That I Breathe.”
It was summer break and there was nothing else to do, so after they both died my sister and I retired to our rooms for a few hours, where I read a book and she played, pretty obnoxiously, “The Air That I Breathe,” like, one thousand times in a row. After a few hours, the smell of some sort of summer break miscellanea casserole being prepared downstairs was wafting through both of our door cracks, and the song was still playing.
I never forgot that my sister’s impulse upon finishing the movie was to listen to the fairly devastating scoring song sixteen times in a row. As I got older, the chasm between our ages shortened until I could see the age she had been that summer with acuity, and at some point it set in that she must have been thinking of her recent heartbreak — her first, I believe — and inlaying the completely separate tragedy of Keira and Steve on the rug.
You guessed it: I basically started seeing whether this ritual held any water. Whenever my own heart got broken and I found I had no psychiatrically advisable cope, I mimicked the one my sister invented that afternoon. Eventually, I just started doing the sixteen listens whenever I needed the electric jolt of lab rat repetition to shake me back to normal. It’s one hell of a sensation. When your sixteenth listen has finished, you’ll find that the world around you is happening in the key of the song. The trucks will grate along the street to the tune of that first strum; all of your lovers and your midnight breakups will be wrapped up in the wavering way he says the sometimes, and you will assign sentiment to little things you’re seeing happen on the street where sentiment is obviously absent, which is what mindful consumption is all about: forcing feeling. It’ll be like shutting your eyes after playing Tetris for too long.
At the end of the movie — Whatever. You’re not going to watch it probably. At the end of the movie they both die, just like the title heavily suggests. Steve Carrell makes his house all nice to die alone, and Keira makes it back to him just before the astroid hits, and they die. Just before the death scene, Steve had “made the ultimate sacrifice” (as tends to happen in these movies) to The Hollies’ “The Air That I Breathe.”
It was summer break and there was nothing else to do, so after they both died my sister and I retired to our rooms for a few hours, where I read a book and she played, pretty obnoxiously, “The Air That I Breathe,” like, one thousand times in a row. After a few hours, the smell of some sort of summer break miscellanea casserole being prepared downstairs was wafting through both of our door cracks, and the song was still playing.
I never forgot that my sister’s impulse upon finishing the movie was to listen to the fairly devastating scoring song sixteen times in a row. As I got older, the chasm between our ages shortened until I could see the age she had been that summer with acuity, and at some point it set in that she must have been thinking of her recent heartbreak — her first, I believe — and inlaying the completely separate tragedy of Keira and Steve on the rug.
You guessed it: I basically started seeing whether this ritual held any water. Whenever my own heart got broken and I found I had no psychiatrically advisable cope, I mimicked the one my sister invented that afternoon. Eventually, I just started doing the sixteen listens whenever I needed the electric jolt of lab rat repetition to shake me back to normal. It’s one hell of a sensation. When your sixteenth listen has finished, you’ll find that the world around you is happening in the key of the song. The trucks will grate along the street to the tune of that first strum; all of your lovers and your midnight breakups will be wrapped up in the wavering way he says the sometimes, and you will assign sentiment to little things you’re seeing happen on the street where sentiment is obviously absent, which is what mindful consumption is all about: forcing feeling. It’ll be like shutting your eyes after playing Tetris for too long.
Feb 25, 2026