THRILLED to start doing these song explanations for y’all again. Glad you liked them before, prepare for, uh, 10 more! They force me to self-examine the past, in order to interpret the future a little bit better. NOTE: If you received a lyric book with the album (a limited thing!), then these will seem familiar to you. This is for everyone else!
“Bath” is the first song on our 2nd full-length, I Made You Something, and it’s the 2nd OLDEST song on it. It’s a curious song that, when written sounded like nothing else I’d written before (in my opinion). It’s a song about cleansing, about being in love in a grand way, and about feeling forgiven in a world that seemed to have forsaken you. Here we go!
Baptismal fount You flaunt your bounty ounce for ounce I want her body ouch for ouch Baptismal fount The beads of water are my friends' heads Kissing my neck and chest and making my leg-hair thick with wet And doubly cleansed
On the receiving end of your diary when you touch me On the conceiving end of my diary, and it loves me On the careening bends of legality, but it's nothing
Oh good, the Catholic stuff starts immediately. I am a baptized person, I used to hate showering, and those two things are only related because of my childhood. I used to pretend I showered by wetting my hair in the sink. Not sure why. However, as I grew up, I appreciated showers far more, and grew to find that the most romantic thing to me was showering with a person you loved. To me, it's the ultimate stripping of pretense, a true cleanse, akin to baptism.
The lines about diaries only refer to understanding. If you are naked in front of another person, it's like telling them your whole life without words. The line about legality stems from when I wrote these lyrics; I was dating someone who was older than me, and I had JUST turned 17.
I signed my soul to some dipshit trolls But I'm bathing and behaving I was handed a diploma after emerging from this cold scholastic coma Excised like squamous cell carcinoma High school was a deeply confusing time for me, just like everybody else. To be cleansed of that is one of my biggest wishes. Also, squamous cell carcinoma is a skin condition I learned about during this period; I was working for the dermatologist I sang/rapped about in “Work,” from Bear Hair. “Cold scholastic coma” is right.
I've got lidocaine throat, I've got 2-ton teeth Pretty much a Green Beret tongue-wreath You can see a jet of running water Circumnavigating the edge of my lifestyle Rinsing the bile off my file
I could buy a water-proof coffee table and live out of my shower So that we could settle down here forever
Alright, let's slow this down. Lidocaine is a numbing agent used in medicine (dermatologist knowledge), and those first two lines expressed feeling stifled in school. Yet in school, I read one of my favorite books, The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien, and in it, O'Brien writes about finding the hideout of the Green Berets during Vietnam. One of them had a wreath around their neck, entirely made of tongues. The image frightened me, and represented memories of trauma. However, a jet of running water can cleanse all of that. (Also, I dealt with files all the time at the dermatologist and decided to use one to represent myself.)
I hear that you reap vast rewards when you vouch for manifold various lords Double-digit virgins or just simple harp-chords But they couldn't apply to my provocative prerogative I wade in my bathtub; it's a poly-God mashup
Even though I was raised a Catholic person and my lyrics often connote to that, I do not assign myself to that group, and I do not call myself a Christian. I, like a million other people my age, find spirituality in everyday life, often what Christians call “Heaven on Earth.” I was also weirdly obsessed with mash-ups because that big Girl Talk record had come out. Told y'all this was a while ago. All religions boiled down into one great shower.
I embrace my latest in health-fucks With a Little Caeser's pizza in Nick Bertelson's pick-up truck And I, I will live with my good metabolism for 1 more year When I was 17, I went to visit my ex at her college, and at one point, I was left alone with one of her friends. He and his other friend seemed obligated to take me around the campus and the town, so I drove in a pick-up truck with them for a while. At this point in my life, my self-esteem was at an all-time CRAZY low, and I did odd things for attention. I asked them to stop because I saw a Little Caeser's, and I was hungry. They seemed grossed out (they were very much actually-cooler than I was). I took offense to that, like I identified with filth or something. I proceeded to eat the whole pizza in front of them in 15 minutes or so, and none of us talked during that time. Also, as I'm typing this, I just posted this story on Facebook.
REBLOG SO PEOPLE CAN HEAR THE SONG!
