Built to Spill on That Monogamous Feeling

by Lifeguard of Love

 

I don't think I understand Built to Spill. I don't know if I'd even say I like them.

They are from Idaho, which is the Northwest, and they were putting out records in the 90s, but in the histories, they are never associated with grunge.

I'm not very familiar with their catalogue. I am only familiar with "There's Nothing Wrong with Love"* because I used to drive around getting stoned to it. I guess it is music for stoners. When we saw them play in Bellingham in 2008 or 2009, it was sold out (we got tickets when they were yelling "7 tickets left!"), and I was surprised how many hippies were there. Young girl hippies, younger than us, were singing all the words to all the songs.

I'm tempted to say that Built to Spill (I've always associated their name with a child's sippy cup) are at their best in their love songs, although they tend towards sentimentality and preciousness. If you listen closely, you realize that they probably never even knew the girls in their songs. Like, they thought they loved them, but the girl never really revealed herself to the narrator, and he didn't even notice, just went on loving his idea of her.

This is DUDE music, through and through. Girls listen to it to dream or learn about how men feel about them. I never, ever could have listened to it as a teenage riot grrrl who was also into Jimi Hendrix. I could not have gotten through the whiny man vocals to find the delicious psychedelic center.

But there are moments of PERFECTION here - never through an entire song, but enough compiled to make this album worth listening to several times a year.

1. The lyric "You arrive and I'm on fire" (PERFECT)

2. The storyline intro to "Car" (PERFECT)

3. The very beginning of "The Source" (PERFECT)

And: "Stay with me until I die/There's nothing else I wanna try."

When Kaden asked me to marry him, three months after the first night we shared a bed, which we did without fucking for the first 18 nights, I was not expecting it, but I accepted after only a moment's thought. Yes, I could commit to staying with him forever. Before we got together, I broke up with a girl who was going to move in with me, because I didn't want to "get married". Then I promptly fell in love with my roommate, whom I was already living with. We got married 7 years later, though if our politics were then what they are now, we would not have allowed the state to name our union. His asking and my accepting were the only vows we needed.

There's nothing else I wanna try.

I have sexy fantasies about other kinds of people all the time. I dreamed about drinking gin with a dirty queer punk boy and I knew that if we drank gin together we'd do it, and I felt so awesome. I get off by thinking the words "[first and last name of my favorite homosexual male musician] eating my pussy, [first and last name of my favorite homosexual male musician] eating my pussy." I imagine fucking a fat girl, with a strap-on or "my cock"; depends. I jerk off the air with the hand I don't use to hold my vibrator. I write stories in my head about a young man caring for another young man who is ill, using herbal remedies, in a college dorm. I visualize myself in petticoats and skirts, surprised by a backwoodsman who holds me down. It's all about the sensation of my bare ass on cool moss, and lichen and sticks in my hair. I go to Portland primarily to check out gentlemen's footwear.

These ideas are full and beautiful and secret in my mind, but they are FANTASY. I don’t wish to bring them into my lived life. They’re nothing I wish to actually try, or even role play. In my lived life, I have and want only one beloved, and it is Kaden. We are cut from the same whatever. He's the lover I always wanted and still the one I want.  

Stay with me until I die/There's nothing else I wanna try.

I'm certainly not saying monogamy, or LTRs, or marriage is right for everyone, or even that it will always be right for Kaden and me, but we've had a bitchin' 9.5 years of living together and loving exclusively. Thanks, Built to Spill, for putting that monogamous feeling into words.

*I think "Hazy" from their 1993 album "Ultimate Alternative Wavers" is actually the best song ever recorded.