2005-01-19 - 12:58 a.m.

Is Guided by Voices real? I can't think of any other band that has been so willing to provide me with me valid reasons to maintain my slow growing obsession. And they just keep surprising me with how they do it.

Actually, now that I think of it, I recently realized something sad about one of the songs on Speak Kindly of your Volunteer Fire Department. It just hit me. If you know the album, you'll know the song, otherwise tune this out. It's an attempt by me to explicate a Robert Pollard song, which is never a very good idea (which is why I never try):

I crept into a box
Of mesmerizing trinkets
And I probably shouldn't think it
And I don't, so now I do

A panoramic expo
Hey gimme a ballpark estimate
I don't drive a good car,
Or a bargain, and I don't, so now I do

Here's what I have done for you:
A life on the run,
A foxhole and a gun,
A roof that blocks out the view
I never had one
And I didn't want one
And I don't (so now I do)

He's taking about his marriage.

(Yes, we all figured that out a long time ago, but I�m going to explain exactly what the song is about. If you find yourself saying �duh� the whole time, please explain to me more of those things that you know about the next time you see me, just like this. I will be your friend for life. You can be condescending, but only if you deliver the goods:)

The person singing the song (Pollard) is remembering a time when he was innocently, randomly, and husbandly snooping around his wife's �mesmerizing box of trinkets� from their wedding while he was alone in the house, and he probably shouldn�t be thinking critically about their marriage, and he didn�t want to, but then all of a sudden he does.

Then he sees a photograph of their wedding--a panoramic expo, and he remembers the wedding planning and having to haggle with the photographer and with the limo driver, still wondering to himself why they needed one when he's never owned a good car in his life. He�s never been in a good car, and he�s never driven a hard bargain (get it? Look at the lyrics), and he hadn�t, but then he had to.

And then he really allows himself to see the marriage outside of his role in it, and he realizes what he has done for the woman he married:

He�s being honest with himself--the marriage has been as much of an exacting pain in the ass for him as the planning for it.

And he�s realizing that he�s hid from her. He hasn�t given any part of himself to her except for his freedom, and he�s been so angry about it that he�s been kidding himself into staying into their marriage just to get back at her (�a foxhole and a gun�). He consented to a marriage that, for him, is a �roof that blocks out the view.�

He had never been married, he didn't want to get married, (and remember, he's wondering this out loud as he's snooping through her box of mesmerizing trinkets and examining the panoramic photo of the wedding party, remembering having inane conversations about wedding photos), and HERE�S the time the narrator of the song is residing in--the person remembering all this later, which is Pollard, which means the song is Pollard thinking about when he made the unwanted realization that at the moment he married her, he didn't want to, and so... "I do."

All of the verses end in �I don�t want to, so now I do.� The final one of course being his grudging remembrance of his grudgingly saying �I do� at the altar. But the song is kind of circular, so if you listen to the song a second time, you realize the first �and I don�t, so now I do� is actually the key to undoing the last �and I don�t, so now I do.�

That's a pretty fucking sad song. Sad but honest. The song is an apology, and an explanation to someone he honestly felt deserved one.

I don't oft crack the Pollard code (although I have him pinned on this album and especially on the more straightforward Isolation Drills), but I think I got his number on this one.


Listening to: Pollard
Reading: Moody
Background:
Random

The body on the railing - 2005-06-26
I'll put a pebble in my shoe - 2005-04-20
I wanna be a geographist! - 2005-04-13
Shop - 2005-04-05
I can't dance but I will - 2005-03-22
The WeatherPixie