Fly Around My Pretty Little Miss: A Melody for the Stars

Built to Spill: Fly Around My Pretty Little Miss

The first time I heard Fly Around My Pretty Little Miss, I didn’t just listen—I felt it. It was the kind of song that made me want to pull over on the side of the road, throw my arms in the air, and run through an open field like I could lift off if I moved fast enough. At seventeen, that feeling meant everything.

Built to Spill had already settled into my bloodstream long before I got my hands on Ancient Melodies of the Future. My brother had made sure of that, slipping albums into my world, soundtracking my coming-of-age years with Doug’s voice, those tangled guitars, that raw and perfect imperfection. But this album—this song—hit me so much differently.

There was something untamed about it. The way the guitar slurred and lurched, the way the drums felt like they could fall apart at any moment but never did. It was soulful, wild, and free. And I was at an age where I wanted to be all of those things.

So I played it on repeat. I let it move through me, let it push me forward, let it become the sound of a summer where I wasn’t quite a kid but wasn’t yet an adult. I wasn’t sure what came next, but I knew how this song made me feel—like I was already flying.

But that summer faded, and by the time fall settled in, I kind of felt more like I was free-falling.

I was standing at the edge of adulthood, unsure of what I was supposed to do next. The certainty I had felt in music, in movement, in the wild rush of summer had started to slip away. I didn’t have the answers, and I didn’t have much in the way of guidance either. Just the people I had chosen as my family—friends who kept me grounded when I felt like I was spinning out.

That’s how I found myself one evening in a house that wasn’t mine, surrounded by people who felt like home. It was Carl’s kid’s house—his ex-wife Melissa’s, to be exact. I was there with Jessie and Becky, two of Carl’s daughters, along with their niece, Emily and her mother Brandy.

Emily was still a baby then, maybe ten months old. I didn’t have much experience with babies—just enough to know they were fragile, breakable things. I was still nervous around them, afraid I’d do something wrong, that I wasn’t careful enough or gentle enough. But that day, Brandy let me hold her.

And I remember feeling overwhelmed by that.

Like it was an honor. Like she trusted me with something precious.

I held her carefully at first, adjusting to her small weight in my arms. And then I started swaying. Rocking back and forth, finding an easy rhythm. Without thinking, I started to hum. And then I was singing, soft at first, just for her—

“Fly around my pretty little miss, why don’t you fly around my pretty little miss?”

I don’t know why that song came out of me in that moment. Maybe because it had been there all along, nestled somewhere deep in my bones. Maybe because I had spent months feeling like I was spinning out, and now, holding her, I felt suddenly and completely still.

There, in that living room, in the middle of all my uncertainty, something inside me settled. I looked at Emily—Carl’s granddaughter, Billy’s baby—and for the first time in what felt like forever, I understood something.

This.

This was what life was about.

Love. Family. Connection.

The generations that come and go. The lives we shape. The legacies we leave behind.

I kept singing. Kept swaying. Kept holding on.

But life, like music, keeps moving.

Time doesn’t wait. Babies grow, songs fade into the background—until you find yourself singing them again, arms wrapped around a new little life.

Emily is no longer a baby. She’s a young woman now, one of those rare, bright lights that the world is lucky to have. And me? I have three children of my own. Two beautiful daughters that I have held in my arms at the same age, singing to them softly, the same way I did to Emily all those years ago.

And each time, I have felt that same grounding presence. That same overwhelming gratitude. That same knowing—this is what life is about.

The song never faded.

Even now, twenty years later, it pulses through me the same way it did when I was seventeen. It still makes me want to pull over, run through a field, throw my arms in the air, and sing at the top of my lungs.

And maybe that’s the point.

“Open up your window just in case

You’re a radar built to scan the deeps of outer space.”

Maybe we’re all searching for something—some sign in the stars, some connection, some proof that we’re exactly where we’re meant to be.

“And if you recognize subtle patterns in the sky,

Don’t take it as a sign unless it eases your mind.”

But music does ease my mind.

And I do take it as a sign.

A sign that I was here. That I am here. 

A sign to keep moving, to keep singing, to keep my arms open to the wind.