The "last supper" everyone means when they use that term is, of course, Jesus' last supper the night before his crucifixion.
This song is about, and in the voice of, Carson McCullers, a (female) American author who did, to be fair, die younger than average-- at 50, of a stroke, and she was not healthy leading up to that.
The song is about a metaphorical supper, however, one at which all the world is welcome: "Each one belongs at this feast."
This includes both the "rich... whole... humble... grand" and the "poor... broken... twisted... proud." Both "the sinner and the sinned-against."
What will they drink to at this feast? Again, both the "pleasures... gains... bliss" on the one hand and the "pains... losses... sorrows" on the other.
She welcomes them all: "Come and be at this table." She urges them to take what is hers, and to share what is theirs in turn. When this happens, "All come together, feeding the soul."
She is saying that her work has attempted to encompass the entire human condition, because only this way can art be satisfied, can the reader be satisfied, can the writer be satisfied.
And when all elements of humanity are represented, the artist and audience will "be as one solid body together."
She is completely dedicated to this ideal. "This is my stand... one strong, true purpose... no hope of rest."
"The love of my life," she says, "is humanity." And yes, she means as far as representing all of humanity in her stories, but to the end of connecting fully with her readers. They have to be able to see themselves in her stories, and to identify with all her characters.
Even if you are not a Southern cafe owner who has been betrayed... you have been betrayed, at some point in your life, so can see yourself in the cafe owner.
The song is the last in a one-person show that Vega wrote about McCullers, and she plays the author onstage. So it's fair to say that this is what Vega hopes she has been able to do in her own work-- to represent, and thereby connect with, all of humanity.
Yes, you might say, but aren't most of Vega's songs about herself?
Maybe, but what better way to connect with humanity than to be... a human?
Next Song: [none so far]
Monday, February 20, 2017
Monday, February 13, 2017
The Ballad of Miss Amelia
This song is from Suzanne Vega's one-person show about the author Carson McCullers. It's a retelling of the plot from her story "The Ballad of the Sad Cafe."
The basic plot is about a woman, Amelia, who marries the wrong man. He almost ruins her life, but she chases him off (with violence). For a while, she is happy with a new man. But then the first one comes back to finish the job (with violence). What made it worse was that the new man helps him.
Framing this story, Vega expresses that his is a very Southern story: "On any Southern afternoon... a face appears inside a house." The face is described as being "terrible... sexless... white... and dim."
It's the face of Amelia, "waiting by the window... sitting by the shutter/ Remembering the laughing/ In he cafe down below."
It makes sense that her face would bear a "terrible" look, if she is remembering the brief good times with the second man. After all, was it all a lie, if he could turn on her with so little provocation, and to aid the man who wanted to hurt her at that?
Why exactly this story is so Southern, I am not sure. It does smack of Tennessee Williams.
Maybe the humidity makes everything sultry and torrid.
Next Song: Carson's Last Supper
The basic plot is about a woman, Amelia, who marries the wrong man. He almost ruins her life, but she chases him off (with violence). For a while, she is happy with a new man. But then the first one comes back to finish the job (with violence). What made it worse was that the new man helps him.
Framing this story, Vega expresses that his is a very Southern story: "On any Southern afternoon... a face appears inside a house." The face is described as being "terrible... sexless... white... and dim."
It's the face of Amelia, "waiting by the window... sitting by the shutter/ Remembering the laughing/ In he cafe down below."
It makes sense that her face would bear a "terrible" look, if she is remembering the brief good times with the second man. After all, was it all a lie, if he could turn on her with so little provocation, and to aid the man who wanted to hurt her at that?
Why exactly this story is so Southern, I am not sure. It does smack of Tennessee Williams.
Maybe the humidity makes everything sultry and torrid.
Next Song: Carson's Last Supper
Monday, February 6, 2017
Lover, Beloved
This sounds like a love song. And... it's about love, but is it a "love song"?
It starts by positing "lover" and "beloved" as opposites. In fact, when the lover "pursues," the beloved does not stand and wait to be caught, let alone turn and run toward the lover. No-- here, the beloved "flees." They are "from countries apart," but they stay apart, "Each one alone in the land of the heart."
They do have some things in common. Both are "forever stripped bare" of pretense. One desires, the other is desired, passively. They are both "there... in the night," we presume, in bed.
The lover, however, is also somehow a "liar," a dealer in false pretense. He is also a "hero" and a "thief"-- he saves the beloved from isolation, yet steals her solitude, for instance. Thus, his efforts and intentions cancel each other out, and ultimately, he "brings no relief." Frustrating! This is true whether she considers him a "brother" or "husband."
While a lover is a "brave cavalier," nevertheless his love "rais[es] hatred and fear" in the beloved. This is for the above reasons, but also while each "crav[es] the touch" of the other, this desire is for something lacking, and a lack is a weakness, a vulnerability.
Finally, "each bears the burden of loving too much." The lover is distraught that his love is unrequited; the beloved is being smothered by all this affection and attention.
But what about a lover who has died, who has crossed the River "Styx"? He "will send/ Flowers from beyond the end." Even though he is gone, she still relishes his memory. He is "her lover for eternity" since he is no longer in control of his leaving her thoughts, once he has left her side. It seems the only good boyfriend is a dead one.
In the play Torch Song Trilogy. Harvey Fierstein opines: "It's easy to love the dead. They make so few mistakes." Also, they ask so little of you.
This song is pretty, like a love song. But it presents love as a battle between predator and prey, with one party forever hungry for more closeness, and the other desperate for less.
Next Song: The Ballad of Miss Amelia
It starts by positing "lover" and "beloved" as opposites. In fact, when the lover "pursues," the beloved does not stand and wait to be caught, let alone turn and run toward the lover. No-- here, the beloved "flees." They are "from countries apart," but they stay apart, "Each one alone in the land of the heart."
They do have some things in common. Both are "forever stripped bare" of pretense. One desires, the other is desired, passively. They are both "there... in the night," we presume, in bed.
The lover, however, is also somehow a "liar," a dealer in false pretense. He is also a "hero" and a "thief"-- he saves the beloved from isolation, yet steals her solitude, for instance. Thus, his efforts and intentions cancel each other out, and ultimately, he "brings no relief." Frustrating! This is true whether she considers him a "brother" or "husband."
While a lover is a "brave cavalier," nevertheless his love "rais[es] hatred and fear" in the beloved. This is for the above reasons, but also while each "crav[es] the touch" of the other, this desire is for something lacking, and a lack is a weakness, a vulnerability.
Finally, "each bears the burden of loving too much." The lover is distraught that his love is unrequited; the beloved is being smothered by all this affection and attention.
But what about a lover who has died, who has crossed the River "Styx"? He "will send/ Flowers from beyond the end." Even though he is gone, she still relishes his memory. He is "her lover for eternity" since he is no longer in control of his leaving her thoughts, once he has left her side. It seems the only good boyfriend is a dead one.
In the play Torch Song Trilogy. Harvey Fierstein opines: "It's easy to love the dead. They make so few mistakes." Also, they ask so little of you.
This song is pretty, like a love song. But it presents love as a battle between predator and prey, with one party forever hungry for more closeness, and the other desperate for less.
Next Song: The Ballad of Miss Amelia
Monday, January 30, 2017
Harper Lee
In this song, Carson McCullers (a female American novelist) name-drops and compares herself-- favorably-- to her literary contemporaries. She is discussing them with her husband, Reeves.
She dismisses many outright as inferior. Virginia Woolf, she says, has "genius" but "leaves [her] cold" since she isn't as "bold" as McCullers herself. She also finds herself superior to Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, and F. Scott Fitzgerald (her Ballad of the Sad Cafe she rates better than his The Great Gatsby).
She claims Truman Capote "plagiarized [her] cadences." Oh, and he knows that she knows this.
She does admire Marcel Proust, saying he "comforts" her, and that his "words" have a "timeless quality." But... his Remembrance of Things Past just goes "on and on and on and on/ For seven volumes." Its "length is very long." Indeed.
As for playwright Tennessee Williams, she can't fathom why his play A Streetcar Named Desire did better financially than her own novel-turned-play A Member of the Wedding. McCullers' only use for Graham Greene is that he "loves [her] poetic sensibility."
And she feels that Catherine Anne Porter is "the best one now." But only for now: "In about a year, I'm gonna show her how" it's done.
But she's most upset that Harper Lee, to whom she is compared, is "poaching on [McCullers'] literary preserves" and stealing her thunder. McCullers feels Lee gets more attention than she (Harper Lee is also a woman) deserves. After all, McCullers had written three novels and more, while Lee only had the one, To Kill a Mockingbird.
McCullers also mentions that she never reads her reviews because they might give her a "big head," an inflated ego. I think she is fine in that department already... she has already predicted that she will win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Do tell.
I purposely avoided mentioning the works of most of those other authors, because many of them are still household names in 2017. Their works still taught in high schools and colleges, and have been made into movies... and they themselves have been depicted in films by actors like Meryl Streep (Woolf), Tom Hiddleson (Fitzgerald) and Philip Seymour Hoffman (Capote).
Carson McCullers, meanwhile coined the phrase "the heart is a lonely hunter." So, there's that.
Next Song: Lover, Beloved
She dismisses many outright as inferior. Virginia Woolf, she says, has "genius" but "leaves [her] cold" since she isn't as "bold" as McCullers herself. She also finds herself superior to Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, and F. Scott Fitzgerald (her Ballad of the Sad Cafe she rates better than his The Great Gatsby).
She claims Truman Capote "plagiarized [her] cadences." Oh, and he knows that she knows this.
She does admire Marcel Proust, saying he "comforts" her, and that his "words" have a "timeless quality." But... his Remembrance of Things Past just goes "on and on and on and on/ For seven volumes." Its "length is very long." Indeed.
As for playwright Tennessee Williams, she can't fathom why his play A Streetcar Named Desire did better financially than her own novel-turned-play A Member of the Wedding. McCullers' only use for Graham Greene is that he "loves [her] poetic sensibility."
And she feels that Catherine Anne Porter is "the best one now." But only for now: "In about a year, I'm gonna show her how" it's done.
But she's most upset that Harper Lee, to whom she is compared, is "poaching on [McCullers'] literary preserves" and stealing her thunder. McCullers feels Lee gets more attention than she (Harper Lee is also a woman) deserves. After all, McCullers had written three novels and more, while Lee only had the one, To Kill a Mockingbird.
McCullers also mentions that she never reads her reviews because they might give her a "big head," an inflated ego. I think she is fine in that department already... she has already predicted that she will win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Do tell.
I purposely avoided mentioning the works of most of those other authors, because many of them are still household names in 2017. Their works still taught in high schools and colleges, and have been made into movies... and they themselves have been depicted in films by actors like Meryl Streep (Woolf), Tom Hiddleson (Fitzgerald) and Philip Seymour Hoffman (Capote).
Carson McCullers, meanwhile coined the phrase "the heart is a lonely hunter." So, there's that.
Next Song: Lover, Beloved
Monday, January 23, 2017
12 Mortal Men
This song is a reference to a Carson McCuller's story, or rather, its epilogue. The men in the title are in a chain gang. This is a group of prisoners usually made to do road work as part of their sentences. To prevent their escape on the road, they are chained together at the ankle. Like men working on railroad or any other menial, repetitive, rhythmic task, they often sing; the Sam Cooke song "Chain Gang" referred to such a system as late as 1960, and there are chain gangs in the 1967 movie Cool Hand Luke and 1969's Take the Money and Run.
We don't start with the chain gang, but with the town they work near. "Where I'm from," the speaker begins, "there's poverty/ All kinds of inequality. Nobody comes here, nobody leaves." So, not your typical tourism hot spot.
In fact, the local prison seems to be the main, um, industry. The "whipping report," which one assumes is an official record of their punishments, is on display "in the library," perhaps one of the few public buildings in town aside from city hall and the schoolhouse.
Now, we meet the chain gang. First, you "hear one voice start singing," accompanied by their instruments, "twelve picks... ringing... in the dirt." One voice, but twelve picks? Oh, they all join in: "Twelve mortal men in a song of liberty."
Why is it important to note that they are mortal? Of course they are; all men are. Perhaps this is to contrast them with an immortal being-- Jesus had 12 apostles, all mortal men. Or perhaps this is to highlight the amazement that they sing-- they are chained, imprisoned, and doomed... yet they sing!
And of "liberty," yet! And both "ecstasy and fear." Fear is understandable, and even hope for liberty, but how are men in such straits to be in ecstasy? Perhaps it is the music, the joy of being outside, the camaraderie of their fellow inmates, even the adrenaline rush that comes from physical labor.
The song closes with a vision, a dream, a wish: "In my heart, I see a crowd/ A thousand souls marching proud." It does not say what their purpose is, what they march for, but "everyone [is] gathered," and "each one is loved."
The song has only three verses. The first is about a hopeless, silent town of free people. The second is about a hopeful, singing gang of chained people. The third imagines a group that is not only free, but "chained" by a common purpose, and loved. The best of both worlds.
Next Song: Harper Lee
We don't start with the chain gang, but with the town they work near. "Where I'm from," the speaker begins, "there's poverty/ All kinds of inequality. Nobody comes here, nobody leaves." So, not your typical tourism hot spot.
In fact, the local prison seems to be the main, um, industry. The "whipping report," which one assumes is an official record of their punishments, is on display "in the library," perhaps one of the few public buildings in town aside from city hall and the schoolhouse.
Now, we meet the chain gang. First, you "hear one voice start singing," accompanied by their instruments, "twelve picks... ringing... in the dirt." One voice, but twelve picks? Oh, they all join in: "Twelve mortal men in a song of liberty."
Why is it important to note that they are mortal? Of course they are; all men are. Perhaps this is to contrast them with an immortal being-- Jesus had 12 apostles, all mortal men. Or perhaps this is to highlight the amazement that they sing-- they are chained, imprisoned, and doomed... yet they sing!
And of "liberty," yet! And both "ecstasy and fear." Fear is understandable, and even hope for liberty, but how are men in such straits to be in ecstasy? Perhaps it is the music, the joy of being outside, the camaraderie of their fellow inmates, even the adrenaline rush that comes from physical labor.
The song closes with a vision, a dream, a wish: "In my heart, I see a crowd/ A thousand souls marching proud." It does not say what their purpose is, what they march for, but "everyone [is] gathered," and "each one is loved."
The song has only three verses. The first is about a hopeless, silent town of free people. The second is about a hopeful, singing gang of chained people. The third imagines a group that is not only free, but "chained" by a common purpose, and loved. The best of both worlds.
Next Song: Harper Lee
Monday, January 16, 2017
Annemarie
This song is heart-wrenching, compelling, hyperliterate, intricate... a mini-novel. It shows that Vega is an artist still at the height of her powers.
Since the subject of the album the song is on is Carson McCullers (a female 20th Century American writer), the subject of this song is likely to be fellow author Annemarie Schwarzenbach, McCullers' lesbian crush, who typically dressed in men's clothes and with who she claimed to have shared a kiss. Of her, McCullers wrote: "She had a face I knew would haunt me the rest of my life." While they never achieved couplehood, McCullers dedicated her novel Reflections in a Golden Eye to Annemarie.
The song starts by referring to the quote about Annemarie: "I saw your face; I knew you'd haunt me for all of my life."
The next three words define how McCullers saw Annemarie-- as completely unattainable: "Rising above me." The rest of the song is a painful list of all the ways Annemarie is superior to her.
"Everyone sees you, everyone knows you," she says. Everyone also "loves... wants... needs... worships" Annemarie. So, even though McCullers would say, "If you would want me I'd be no man's wife," what's the point? After all, "Who could possibly hold one so fair?"
"How can I possibly compare?" she asks, "How can I possibly compete?" Annemarie, is "brilliant"; she "moves through the world with money and family... [and] perfect beauty."
Let's talk about that beauty for a minute. We already know her face is "haunting." But people "worship" Annemarie! At least our speaker does: "If I could see God, His face would be sacred like yours." Just... wow. "But God's face is hidden, and your face is suddenly all I can see."
This is beyond smitten-- this is obsessed.
Nevertheless, Annemarie has issues too, and it seems, a lot of them: "Who could contain you, with all of your pain?" She is "stormy," as well.
But even this the speaker finds attractive: "She glitters with trouble... How can I possibly complain?"
So the speaker, McCullers, feels that Annemarie is perfect, even in her imperfections. Are the perfections a way... in? No. Even pained, Annemarie is the impossible dream, the unreachable star: "Who could possibly make you complete?" Even if someone could, in theory, do so, it would not be the speaker: "Could I gather up all that you remain?"
The object of affection is summed up in three words: "Terror, pity, love-- Annemarie." The speaker is terrified of her... and how she feels about her, which makes her vulnerable. She pities the poor little rich girl, whose status makes her beyond the (what McCullers is sure would be) the healing power of her affection.
And "love" is what she considers all of these emotions to be, in sum.
Does she love her? She admires her, to the point of "worship." She is jealous of her status and stature, yet pities Annemarie for the isolation she has on her mountaintop. But does that amount to love?
You can love some you feel is out of your league. But the line, "How could I possibly compete?" makes me feel that the desire is more to achieve Annemarie, and to match her accomplishments, than to accompany her as a partner: "Oh, if I were Annemarie's girlfriend, life would be awesome. Everyone could see I was her equal."
But that will never be. So McCullers gets to play the martyr. No one else is good enough for her... except for the one person who is too good. So she gets to be the victim, and never has to actually have a relationship. She has trapped herself on Keats' Grecian Urn... on purpose.
Next Song: Twelve Mortal Men
Since the subject of the album the song is on is Carson McCullers (a female 20th Century American writer), the subject of this song is likely to be fellow author Annemarie Schwarzenbach, McCullers' lesbian crush, who typically dressed in men's clothes and with who she claimed to have shared a kiss. Of her, McCullers wrote: "She had a face I knew would haunt me the rest of my life." While they never achieved couplehood, McCullers dedicated her novel Reflections in a Golden Eye to Annemarie.
The song starts by referring to the quote about Annemarie: "I saw your face; I knew you'd haunt me for all of my life."
The next three words define how McCullers saw Annemarie-- as completely unattainable: "Rising above me." The rest of the song is a painful list of all the ways Annemarie is superior to her.
"Everyone sees you, everyone knows you," she says. Everyone also "loves... wants... needs... worships" Annemarie. So, even though McCullers would say, "If you would want me I'd be no man's wife," what's the point? After all, "Who could possibly hold one so fair?"
"How can I possibly compare?" she asks, "How can I possibly compete?" Annemarie, is "brilliant"; she "moves through the world with money and family... [and] perfect beauty."
Let's talk about that beauty for a minute. We already know her face is "haunting." But people "worship" Annemarie! At least our speaker does: "If I could see God, His face would be sacred like yours." Just... wow. "But God's face is hidden, and your face is suddenly all I can see."
This is beyond smitten-- this is obsessed.
Nevertheless, Annemarie has issues too, and it seems, a lot of them: "Who could contain you, with all of your pain?" She is "stormy," as well.
But even this the speaker finds attractive: "She glitters with trouble... How can I possibly complain?"
So the speaker, McCullers, feels that Annemarie is perfect, even in her imperfections. Are the perfections a way... in? No. Even pained, Annemarie is the impossible dream, the unreachable star: "Who could possibly make you complete?" Even if someone could, in theory, do so, it would not be the speaker: "Could I gather up all that you remain?"
The object of affection is summed up in three words: "Terror, pity, love-- Annemarie." The speaker is terrified of her... and how she feels about her, which makes her vulnerable. She pities the poor little rich girl, whose status makes her beyond the (what McCullers is sure would be) the healing power of her affection.
And "love" is what she considers all of these emotions to be, in sum.
Does she love her? She admires her, to the point of "worship." She is jealous of her status and stature, yet pities Annemarie for the isolation she has on her mountaintop. But does that amount to love?
You can love some you feel is out of your league. But the line, "How could I possibly compete?" makes me feel that the desire is more to achieve Annemarie, and to match her accomplishments, than to accompany her as a partner: "Oh, if I were Annemarie's girlfriend, life would be awesome. Everyone could see I was her equal."
But that will never be. So McCullers gets to play the martyr. No one else is good enough for her... except for the one person who is too good. So she gets to be the victim, and never has to actually have a relationship. She has trapped herself on Keats' Grecian Urn... on purpose.
Next Song: Twelve Mortal Men
Monday, January 9, 2017
We of Me
The song starts with the line: "My squeezed heart divides into two wide wings," which implies that something was pressuring her to choose between two sides, but somehow she was able to choose both. Perhaps the wings take her back and forth between the two sides.
"The world is a sudden place if you don't belong to anything," she says next. What is meant by "sudden" is not clear-- does the world appear suddenly, when there was nothing before? Is it constantly startling with no one there for support or structure? Perhaps the word is "sullen," which would make more sense; a world in which one did not feel connected would be sullen, indeed.
"This must be the irony of fate/ I and the world are always separate," she continues. "All other people have a 'we' to claim/ Except for me, in my own name." If she is feeling disconnected, that is sad, and perhaps it is her fate to be alone. But in what sense is that an "irony"? She just said she belongs not to no world, but to two! That's more belonging, not less.
Now, this is from Vega's album about Carson McClullers (a woman), who was married and divorced, and then lived with another man for a short while without marrying him. I don't see anything about her having children, and the two men never met as far as I can see.
This also doesn't seem to be about Vega herself. She is divorced from her first husband, with whom she had a child she is still close to. And she is remarried now. So this "squeezed heart" idea could stem from that, but then why say there is no "we" for her to be part of in her own name-- what about her own child? Well, the kid does have her father's last name...
I'm going to say this is about Vega herself, as McCullers' story lines up even less, even if Vega-as-McCullers features heavily in the video. McCullers seems too haughty, world-weary, and jaded to have come up with such a tender idea, anyway. True, the part about being "separate" from the world does seem to apply.
The song continues: "I belong to be with the two of you/ And we make three/ As a family/ That is why you're the 'we' of me." Is she trying to get her daughter to be part of her new family with her second husband? We do not know when she wrote the song, but she re-married in 2006 and released the son in 2016. If the kid and her step-father are not close after 10 years... Or maybe they were, but then something caused a rift and she is trying to sew it back up.
The Biblical story of Noah is invoked: "Noah may have got it wrong... Noah's ark admitted only two by two/ We know this isn't always true... because there's one more that could belong."
According to the Bible, the animals that boarded the ark in pairs were the "unclean" ones, and the "clean" ones came in in herds of seven. But most likely that detail is not what she means to refer to.
Rather, she rebuts the idea that families are made of pairs by saying there can be a family of three-- a pair of parents and a child.
So, what does the expression "the we of me" mean? It probably means "my 'we,' that is, the people I mean when I use the word 'we.'" Namely: herself, her current husband and her daughter. By extension, her current husband's 'we' includes himself, her, and the child.
On a psychological level, "You are the 'we' of me" means "You two are the group I most intensely feel myself a part of."
Wings can be for flight, away from danger. But wings can also be spread over a family for warmth, closeness, and protection.
Next Song: Annemarie
"The world is a sudden place if you don't belong to anything," she says next. What is meant by "sudden" is not clear-- does the world appear suddenly, when there was nothing before? Is it constantly startling with no one there for support or structure? Perhaps the word is "sullen," which would make more sense; a world in which one did not feel connected would be sullen, indeed.
"This must be the irony of fate/ I and the world are always separate," she continues. "All other people have a 'we' to claim/ Except for me, in my own name." If she is feeling disconnected, that is sad, and perhaps it is her fate to be alone. But in what sense is that an "irony"? She just said she belongs not to no world, but to two! That's more belonging, not less.
Now, this is from Vega's album about Carson McClullers (a woman), who was married and divorced, and then lived with another man for a short while without marrying him. I don't see anything about her having children, and the two men never met as far as I can see.
This also doesn't seem to be about Vega herself. She is divorced from her first husband, with whom she had a child she is still close to. And she is remarried now. So this "squeezed heart" idea could stem from that, but then why say there is no "we" for her to be part of in her own name-- what about her own child? Well, the kid does have her father's last name...
I'm going to say this is about Vega herself, as McCullers' story lines up even less, even if Vega-as-McCullers features heavily in the video. McCullers seems too haughty, world-weary, and jaded to have come up with such a tender idea, anyway. True, the part about being "separate" from the world does seem to apply.
The song continues: "I belong to be with the two of you/ And we make three/ As a family/ That is why you're the 'we' of me." Is she trying to get her daughter to be part of her new family with her second husband? We do not know when she wrote the song, but she re-married in 2006 and released the son in 2016. If the kid and her step-father are not close after 10 years... Or maybe they were, but then something caused a rift and she is trying to sew it back up.
The Biblical story of Noah is invoked: "Noah may have got it wrong... Noah's ark admitted only two by two/ We know this isn't always true... because there's one more that could belong."
According to the Bible, the animals that boarded the ark in pairs were the "unclean" ones, and the "clean" ones came in in herds of seven. But most likely that detail is not what she means to refer to.
Rather, she rebuts the idea that families are made of pairs by saying there can be a family of three-- a pair of parents and a child.
So, what does the expression "the we of me" mean? It probably means "my 'we,' that is, the people I mean when I use the word 'we.'" Namely: herself, her current husband and her daughter. By extension, her current husband's 'we' includes himself, her, and the child.
On a psychological level, "You are the 'we' of me" means "You two are the group I most intensely feel myself a part of."
Wings can be for flight, away from danger. But wings can also be spread over a family for warmth, closeness, and protection.
Next Song: Annemarie
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