Built To Spill — Perfect From Now On
2 × Vinyl, LP, Album, Limited Edition, 2007
When I’m sick, I have dreams of the impossible.
I’m in a factory and I’m tasked with building an enormous steam-powered machine with no directions. And no time. I’m lost. I’m scared. I’m exhausted before I begin.
The first time I read the lyrics to “Randy Describes Eternity,” it gave me a bit of a jolt. It was my fever-dream nightmare. It was an unbearable task, enough to give me shakes. It was, as labeled, a description of eternity.
Every thousand years
This metal sphere
Ten times the size of Jupiter
Floats just a few yards past the earthYou climb on your roof
And take a swipe at it
With a single feather
Hit it once every thousand years’til you’ve worn it down
To the size of a peaYeah I’d say that’s a long time
But it’s only half a blink
In the place you’re gonna be
I don’t know eternity might feel like. I feel like it might be worse than death; the concept of never moving forward, only existing, only serving one single purpose, never to shift toward the etherial, no longer feeling the necessary pain and sadness and change that make the high points so high.
In my dream, I never make an attempt to start fitting that machine together. I just give up. I always wake as if I’ve forgotten something. As if I’ve failed.
And I shake it off. And I shake. And eternity shows up again in my dreams, because I am still sick, because I haven’t gotten that fear out of my head. Because I still can’t explain eternity as well as Randy.
