No. 067 - Built To Spill’s “Time Trap” changed my life

When Tom D'Agustino got high on friendship (and weed) at the baseball field behind his house

Nov 29, 2024

This Song Changed My Life is an independent music publication featuring essays from people all around the world about the songs that mean the most to them. Created by Grace Lilly, supported by readers.

• 5 min read •

I was a sophomore in high school. I’d shifted friend groups as can be expected at that age when you’re still trying to figure out where you fit into that adolescent architecture. Likes, dislikes, who’s cool, who’s not, who makes you feel the most “you” when you’re hanging out.

There was a baseball field a street behind my house where different grades would assemble in the dark and drink the liquor or beer they stole, traded for, or were impressive enough to buy themselves with a newly minted fake. I had been hanging with a group of junior boys who, while seemingly more mature than boys my age, held a childlike curiosity for things like trees, animals, and outer space.

I’d been hanging out with them at a mutual friend’s house for a couple of weeks (years in teenage time) smoking weed and getting to know each other in that casual way that revolved around jokes and what music you listened to. I felt I could hold my own in these arenas but still felt a bit on the outside, the kid tagging along. And I didn’t know much about outer space.

But this night at the baseball field, I’d poured some of my mom’s liquor into an old glass bottle I found at a local flea market — one of those pirate-y bottles with a cork and bumpy text emblazoned on the glass. I’d been swigging on the walk over to calm those Friday-night nerves when you don’t know what or who will happen to you.

They were in a loose circle under the field lights, the boys, plucking grass and smoking cigarettes. Someone’s early iPhone was blaring guitar music.

“What’s that?” I called as I sauntered up the little hill they sat atop.

“What, the music?” Sam said. Sam liked salvia, Grandaddy, and stumbleupon.com. “It’s Built To Spill.”

I sat down a bit clumsily, plopping into an open patch of grass, the name not registering.

“You don’t know Built To Spill?” Another boy, Thomas, asked urgently. Not in a condescending or how-do-you-not-know-this-band way. In a way that said: Your life is going to change tonight. I took a swig of the bottle and passed it around the circle. “Nope,” I said.

Sam and Thomas stood up almost in unison, one of them producing a joint. “Follow me,” Sam said.

We walked out of the halo of the field light into a darker plateau of grass behind the dugouts when the boys suddenly stopped and sat down again, spreading out on their backs, facing up at the purple-black sky.

One of them lit the joint, puffed, and passed it to me. “Hit that and then I’ll play you some,” Thomas said. So, I did.

Built To Spill’s “Time Trap” slowly crawled out of the cracked glass and plastic of his iPhone. That plucky, minuscule mouse guitar tone overladen with a surging, delicate feedback. A gradual lift-off of sorts. While the pirate liquor soothed my belly nerves, the weed started tickling the ones in my head. Something’s about to happen here.

Then that bassline (I think it’s a bassline on high notes) started bouncing, again delicately, but more assured, more in charge. Our heads bobbed up and down against the grass, the moon swinging in and out of my periphery when the kick-snare part stomped its way into the song. Fuck yes.

It’s all a build, I realized. There was a marching, growing intensity that eventually opened up into a ripping guitar solo. I started swinging my head in the grass.

“Not yet!” Thomas laugh-shouted over the swell. I took another hit of the joint as the snare started rolling. “Here!” Sam yelled, or maybe Thomas, or maybe God — they all felt like the same guy at that point.

The song somehow got even bigger than before, like the gnarly solo just a moment prior was also a build (gotcha!) mind-fucking me instantly. And this new solo was like a chainsaw from Jupiter, like it was spat out of the cosmic background radiation we could just now hear for the first time. And I’m just in it. Everything clicking, glowing, exploding.

This is just the fucking intro, mind you, and I’m gone. Somewhere deep within Doug Martsch’s fretboard, his temporal lobe, his revelation. It’s just three slide-y notes, this solo, that alternate in jagged, unexpected moments. The faux-randomness of it, the sweet spot of all sweet spots.

“Look up, find a star,” Sam said, and it’s like my ears said it too. So, I did. I found a little silver freckle up there in the black, my whole body burning. There’s another guitar line slicing through the jugular of the alternating one, but they work together perfectly, and I believe with my whole heart that it’s all coming from that star. And I know everything about outer space.

“You could never know that, in a time trap,” Martsch sang then, almost ribbing me. I couldn’t say where we were in the song, we just rode it in impossible directions. It was like listening to shapes carved from comets, each falling away on its own trajectory.

Eventually, the song whispered to an end, embers becoming smoke. I stared at that star, flickering like it was ending too. I slowly turned my head toward the others, drunk with discovery and vodka. High on new friends.

“That was incredible,” I said.

“Right?” Sam grinned deviously. ◆

About Tom

Tom D'Agustino is a musician, actor, and writer. He records and performs music under the name Homeschool and has been a die-hard Built To Spill fan since he was 15 years old.

Instagram @homeschool.music

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