Velvet Waltz

"Was a great mistake But how could you have known The temperature, the distance of the sun"

These lines mean so much to me.

I have listened to A LOT of music in my life. I've devoted myself to listening to music, and I must say that the 90's is one of my favorite eras for music. That said, it BAFFLES me that this band is not recognized more for the perfect sonic balance that they were able to achieve in so much of their music. This song, among many others by Built to Spill, is one of the best songs of the 90's and it's infuriating that more people don't understand this, not because they don't like it, but because they haven't even heard it before. I love the "and you better not be angry" verse. It says so much of how harsh the world and relationships are. You can't ask for any sympathy, because it's already understood that life's hard. If you don't get that then you're the only one to blame. Basically, take whatever pity you can get, because you won't get much.

I've listened to this so many times. Maybe he is talking about the danger of lingering too long on wishful thinking, or getting stuck in the ideal of something at the cost of appreciating reality.

He's saying "you took all that moment" and "left it in the sun," meaning you obsessed over a memory until it wasn't the truth anymore. The "brave idea" (meaning naive idealism) was good but you gave it too much "sun," meaning attention and value.

You "didn't mean no harm," but you wallowed so much in hope and idealism that you ignored the reality of a situation. In the end, both the ideal and reality are ruined.

You thought of everything but one thing you forgot was you're wrong...

The "sun" of good intentions, nostalgia, idealism can blind a person and destroy lives. You can't accurately estimate the extent of potential failure ("the temperature and the distance of the sun") in the midst of idealism. But we keep hoping in spite of ourselves. We keep trying. The great human tragedy! Such a beautiful, sad song, musically and lyrically.

i don't know what they intended the song to mean, but to me it evokes that feeling you get when you go through a wonderful relationship with someone, but unexpectedly ran into a wall, and it all crumbled into a snowball of painful words no one meant to and awkward cold shoulders and painful distancing that magnified until every word they said turned every good memory into stone and dust..

kind of like when you have a bite of a rich cake but after a few bites the chocolate that first tasted sweet and creamy turned bitter, and after that all you can move on to remember is the clumpy bitter aftertaste...and whatever you try to do to remember those good moments, he just kicked every single one of those good moments in the sun, and now its burnt....gone.

that's word ^

this song ties in with kicked it in the sun

You thought of everything But some things can't be thought You thought of everything But one thing you forgot is you're wrong

Pure genius

"A bad idea gone funny" is actually a really moving lyric to me. It implies that you have someone who persistently does something over and over, not realizing it's a bad idea. Everyone else notices, but doesn't do anything to help that person.

To build on other comments....I think this song is about the futility of everything in life, and poking morbid fun at the futility of life. The good news is, we are so small that even big mistakes don't really matter in the scheme of things. The bad news is that we are so small that even big mistakes don't really matter in the scheme of things. The end of the song---the "grave mistake" is human life. We start with such high hopes, how could we have known how it would end so badly? But that's just the nature of being so small in the universe. We should know this---everyone has to suffer and has to die. And yet we are so outraged when these things happen to me. He's sort of saying, hey, this is what we are, get used to it. But it's also a lament because this fact sucks ass.