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
Showing posts with label deception. Show all posts
Showing posts with label deception. Show all posts
Monday, February 6, 2017
Tuesday, December 27, 2016
Carson's Blues
Carson McCullers was an American novelist. Vega has been a lifelong affinity for her (Carson was a woman) work and even wrote a play about her life.
This song is the first of an album, Lover, Beloved: An Evening with Carson McCullers. It is the soundtrack to Carson McCullers Talks About Love (with the same subtitle), Vega's one-woman show about the writer, whom Vega plays.
The song is only two verses long. The first lists a number of things that the speaker says she'd been compared to or called: "A wounded sparrow," "a fallen deer," "a childish liar," "a devilish bitch."
At first, she denies being cruel, while owning that she has two sides: "I'm an iron butterfly." McCullers may not have known, but Vega certainly does, that there is a classic rock band called Iron Butterfly; while they formed a year before McCullers' death, they were not widely known until a year after.
Then, the speaker cops to sometimes being surprisingly harsh: "I can be sweet I can be wise... I can be innocent and charming and suddenly switch" to the opposite.
Even so, she still has an excuse: "you've got to understand that I've never belonged." Well, which is the cause and which the effect? Is it possible that someone who comes across as nice and then lashes out venomously might have have a hard time keeping friends?
Despite looking in from the outside, or perhaps due to that state, she says she has everyone pegged: "I've got every one of you mirrored in my deep sad eyes/ I know where you've been to and who you're afraid to be." She even quotes the Roman playwright Terence: "Nothing that is human is alien to me."
And how, without having "belonged," does she do this research? "I talk to strangers."
This short song is a portrait of someone who has said to humanity at large, "You can't fire me, I quit." Having been rejected for so long, she has begun pre-rejecting potential new friends and poisoning potential relationships. Why go through the trouble of getting hurt when you could be the one inflicting the pain?
Next Song: New York is My Destination
This song is the first of an album, Lover, Beloved: An Evening with Carson McCullers. It is the soundtrack to Carson McCullers Talks About Love (with the same subtitle), Vega's one-woman show about the writer, whom Vega plays.
The song is only two verses long. The first lists a number of things that the speaker says she'd been compared to or called: "A wounded sparrow," "a fallen deer," "a childish liar," "a devilish bitch."
At first, she denies being cruel, while owning that she has two sides: "I'm an iron butterfly." McCullers may not have known, but Vega certainly does, that there is a classic rock band called Iron Butterfly; while they formed a year before McCullers' death, they were not widely known until a year after.
Then, the speaker cops to sometimes being surprisingly harsh: "I can be sweet I can be wise... I can be innocent and charming and suddenly switch" to the opposite.
Even so, she still has an excuse: "you've got to understand that I've never belonged." Well, which is the cause and which the effect? Is it possible that someone who comes across as nice and then lashes out venomously might have have a hard time keeping friends?
Despite looking in from the outside, or perhaps due to that state, she says she has everyone pegged: "I've got every one of you mirrored in my deep sad eyes/ I know where you've been to and who you're afraid to be." She even quotes the Roman playwright Terence: "Nothing that is human is alien to me."
And how, without having "belonged," does she do this research? "I talk to strangers."
This short song is a portrait of someone who has said to humanity at large, "You can't fire me, I quit." Having been rejected for so long, she has begun pre-rejecting potential new friends and poisoning potential relationships. Why go through the trouble of getting hurt when you could be the one inflicting the pain?
Next Song: New York is My Destination
Monday, April 18, 2016
(I'll Never Be) Your Maggie May
This type of song is known as a "response" song. In this case, it is response to a song sung by Rod Stewart called "Maggie May." At the time, this Maggie May person, as depicted in that song, would have been called, perhaps, a "Mrs. Robinson," while today she would be called a "MILF" or "cougar."
In that song, the speaker doesn't know what he wants, and is clearly ambivalent about his feelings for her, but in the end decides to leave.
Vega sees this type of relationship from the woman's viewpoint. "I'll never be your Maggie May/ the one you loved and left behind." (How does she know this so certainly? Spoiler Alert: she leaves him).
[One quibble: "That isn't me in bed you'll find" is an unfortunately forced rhyme. That poor phrase is doing some major contortions.]
She compares herself to a geisha in the next verse, interestingly. Although how accurate to the geisha lifestyle she is, I have no idea. I suppose there are many reasons to adopt such a lifestyle, and many ways to enact it.
Then, this small bridge: "And so you go/ No girl could say no/ To you." Wait... wasn't she the one who was going to "go" and leave him? Maybe in his mind, he will do the leaving.
As far as the next line, there is no issue. You might ask, again, "How can it be that no girl can refuse him... didn't she just do that?" Ah, but she is no "girl," is she? Isn't that the point? She's a full-grown woman.
One reason she knows it cannot last is that he has no guile, and so no suspicion. In fact, "we may... change" how we "appear," but she knows he will never "see within," or "ha[ve] that sight."
To make up for the lyrical mis-step above, Vega offers this clever bait and switch. We expect she is going to say that people "change from day to day," but the line is that people change "from day to night," adding a sexual element to such alterations.
Now comes the "spoiler" promised above. She will never be his Maggie May, because "I'll love you first and let you go." It's the old "You can't quit-- you're fired!" gambit.
Why? "Because it must be so." She is wise enough to know that, since it can't last, the quicker she pulls off the Band-Aid, the better.
What about his feelings? "You'll forgive or you will not." Cold, but also realistic. She can't be responsible for his reaction.
"And so a world turns on its end," with the breakup. This sounds like a catastrophe... but doesn't the world spin on its magnetic pole already? This may be taken two ways-- it's the end of the world, or it's business as usual-- because the breakup also can have differing interpretations.
Still, she will miss him, or at least remember him: "I'll see your face in dreams."
The song ends with an admission. She left him-- among other reasons-- because he couldn't keep up with how people change from "day to night." But... she can't either. In these dreams, she says, "nothing's as it seems."
How bad is her intuition? In these dreams, he "still appear[s] some kind of friend."
And so perhaps she dislikes that aspect of his personality because she shares it.
Yeah, that's not going to work...
Next Song: It Makes Me Wonder
In that song, the speaker doesn't know what he wants, and is clearly ambivalent about his feelings for her, but in the end decides to leave.
Vega sees this type of relationship from the woman's viewpoint. "I'll never be your Maggie May/ the one you loved and left behind." (How does she know this so certainly? Spoiler Alert: she leaves him).
[One quibble: "That isn't me in bed you'll find" is an unfortunately forced rhyme. That poor phrase is doing some major contortions.]
She compares herself to a geisha in the next verse, interestingly. Although how accurate to the geisha lifestyle she is, I have no idea. I suppose there are many reasons to adopt such a lifestyle, and many ways to enact it.
Then, this small bridge: "And so you go/ No girl could say no/ To you." Wait... wasn't she the one who was going to "go" and leave him? Maybe in his mind, he will do the leaving.
As far as the next line, there is no issue. You might ask, again, "How can it be that no girl can refuse him... didn't she just do that?" Ah, but she is no "girl," is she? Isn't that the point? She's a full-grown woman.
One reason she knows it cannot last is that he has no guile, and so no suspicion. In fact, "we may... change" how we "appear," but she knows he will never "see within," or "ha[ve] that sight."
To make up for the lyrical mis-step above, Vega offers this clever bait and switch. We expect she is going to say that people "change from day to day," but the line is that people change "from day to night," adding a sexual element to such alterations.
Now comes the "spoiler" promised above. She will never be his Maggie May, because "I'll love you first and let you go." It's the old "You can't quit-- you're fired!" gambit.
Why? "Because it must be so." She is wise enough to know that, since it can't last, the quicker she pulls off the Band-Aid, the better.
What about his feelings? "You'll forgive or you will not." Cold, but also realistic. She can't be responsible for his reaction.
"And so a world turns on its end," with the breakup. This sounds like a catastrophe... but doesn't the world spin on its magnetic pole already? This may be taken two ways-- it's the end of the world, or it's business as usual-- because the breakup also can have differing interpretations.
Still, she will miss him, or at least remember him: "I'll see your face in dreams."
The song ends with an admission. She left him-- among other reasons-- because he couldn't keep up with how people change from "day to night." But... she can't either. In these dreams, she says, "nothing's as it seems."
How bad is her intuition? In these dreams, he "still appear[s] some kind of friend."
And so perhaps she dislikes that aspect of his personality because she shares it.
Yeah, that's not going to work...
Next Song: It Makes Me Wonder
Monday, March 21, 2016
Book and a Cover
This song appears as a bonus track on Vega's "Best Of" compilation, an import (from the US perspective, anyway) titled Tried and True. One source says the song was released in 1987, but the compilation was not released until 1999. In any case, the song...
Yes, the title refers to the old saw "don't judge a book by its cover."
The rest of the song merely elaborates on that theme. The speaker even says, "Don't judge so quickly," in case it was unclear (which it wasn't).
"Pictures lie," she continues, a lesson driven home by the Photoshopped ads of models found everywhere today: "What's that they taught you?/ To revere a kind of beauty?" as if other kinds of beauty were not worth reverence... or that the physical kind even is.
We were taught not to judge by appearances... but then also taught "to paint on that pretty veneer/
Yes, the title refers to the old saw "don't judge a book by its cover."
The rest of the song merely elaborates on that theme. The speaker even says, "Don't judge so quickly," in case it was unclear (which it wasn't).
"Pictures lie," she continues, a lesson driven home by the Photoshopped ads of models found everywhere today: "What's that they taught you?/ To revere a kind of beauty?" as if other kinds of beauty were not worth reverence... or that the physical kind even is.
We were taught not to judge by appearances... but then also taught "to paint on that pretty veneer/
And try to hide whatever's dirty."
Because... what else lies? "Faces," and real ones not ones in photos, this time. "They'll tell you one thing and then another." But if beauty is skin deep, then it's important to "see what lies... Under the skin."
But there is some comfort, if the eye can be fooled, in what the ear can tell. "Come here and I will whisper true," the speaker beckons.
What will we hear? "The things I know of you/ And you will recognize them / As near to you as breath and bone." This last line is the best in the song, for its originality, a quality sadly lacking in the rest of the lyrics.
These "things I know," she says, are "So dear to me, and yours alone/ And I will love you for them." The power of knowing someone intimately and personally is far greater, and forms a more adhesive bond, than mere superficiality and surface-knowledge.
Overall, the song is rather thin. It's really unnecessary as a sermon; the axiom it's titled for already says the same thing... in only seven words.
It would have been stronger, perhaps, if the imagery of a "book" had more thoroughly explored. Books are written, read, shared, borrowed, lost, discovered, damaged, repaired, sidled side-by-side with others, marked and marked up... in how many ways is a book like a person? If we look past the "cover" of a face, open and read the "book" of a person's soul... etc. Both people and books have "spines"...
There is a rich mine, here, that went un-dug.
And the paradox of being taught that surfaces don't matter, but also being taught how to construct a pretty surface-- this theme, worthy of a whole song itself, is brought up, only to go unexplored.
The idea behind the cliche is that a cover can under-promise what a book holds. Well, it can over-promise, too. Like this song, unfortunately.
Next Song: Rosemary
Monday, January 25, 2016
No Cheap Thrill
The song is replete with gambling metaphors. The idea is that a relationship is like a poker game (this was decades before Lady Gaga's "Poker Face," but not necessarily the first song to use gambling as a stand-in for relationships.)
"Ante up," the speaker beckons, meaning to say you want to play by putting some of what you have at stake. She then asks you-- whom she just asked to play!-- about some other guy, one with a "deadpan" (or expressionless) face and a "criminal grace."
He is "sitting so pretty," which means he is attractive simply by sitting there, but to "be sitting pretty" as an expression means to be at an advantage or already winning.
Next, she surveys the other potential players for her attention. One is an idiot nicknamed "Lamebrain." He "wants to spit in the sea." This is the name of a poker variant, but "spit in the ocean" also means "not very much, considering what else is around" (compare to "a drop in the bucket").
He's got a "cool hand," she says, which is to say his poker hand is better than average, and that in relationships he is skilled but not emotionally involved. But no, "it isn't for me." Also, there is the movie Cool Hand Luke, about a ne'er-do-well who seems laconic but underneath has a will of iron.
Also dismissible is "Butcher Boy," who sounds both young and violent-- is he a hitman? He thinks he'll be "splitting the pot," or sharing the winnings-- and spending at least some time with her-- but she has been down that road before: "I've seen what he's got, and it isn't a lot." This is a reference to his weak poker hand... but also the small size of his... um, anyway...
Then there is a parenthetical couplet. It is in the lyric sheet, but is not performed in the actual recording: "When deuces are wild, you can follow the queen/ I'd go too, except I know where she's been."
In cards, "deuces" are twos. So, when couples are "wild"-- perhaps a reference to swinging?-- they might "follow the queen." A queen, of course, is a face card in every deck, but in slang a "queen" is either a homosexual or possibly a "drag queen," a transvestite. So a "wild" couple might "follow" a third such partner. But in the speaker's case, she knows this queen is promiscuous to the point of possibly having an STD.
The speaker says she will "limit the straddles." In poker, a straddle is a side bet made on a hand. As these can be distracting, some dealers try to discourage them. As a sexual metaphor, "straddle" has another (I hope obvious) meaning, so she is saying that at this point in a relationship, she does not have much sex.
So! It seems, at least, she has settled on the subject of the song, after saying no to Mr. Deadpan, Lamebrain and Butcher Boy.
While she keeps physical contact to a minimum, the subject is understandably off guard-- "Wait, you're interested now?" Defensively, he "shuffles" and "deals." While these words have well-known meanings in card games-- to randomize and distribute the cards-- he is hemming, hawing, shuffling his feet, shifting in his chair... and negotiating to get closer to her.
Then she asks "When will the dealer reveal how he feels?" So... there is yet another character? Or is the subject also the dealer, since in the last line, she said he "deals"? I think that his lame attempt at trying to maintain his suavity is actually a pretty big tell, as far as tipping his emotional hand.
Alas, she does not seem to find his Hugh Grant-like schoolboy stammerings to be charming. "Is the lucky beginner just a five-card stud?" she wonders, ruefully? Five-card stud is yet another poker variant (there seems to be an infinite number of these) but her biggest peeve so far is that the other men put on a show, then can't pay off. And now it looks to her like this is yet another potential disappointment, date-wise: "Is this winning streak going to be nipped in the bud?"
That last expression is botanical, not poker-related (there are not that many rhymes for "stud") but it means the flower will not only never blossom, it will be cut from the stem before it even has the chance to find out if it would.
Maybe she is hoping the subject, if he is berated enough, will step up his game and rise to the challenge. Or maybe she is letting him down quick so he doesn't get his hopes up.
The chorus is also full of poker-related verbs. "I'll see you" or "call you" mean to bet as much as the last bettor, while "raise" is to bet more. But in relationships, to "see" means to date, to "call" simply means to telephone, and to "raise"... well, that's not generally a verb used in that context. It used to mean, in the context of telephoning, actually having reached and spoken to someone as opposed to simply having dialed the number ("I've phoned several times, but I haven't raised her yet.").
In the last chorus, it changes to "I'll play you," which means both "I'll play (against) you in poker" and "I'll play you for a fool."
Yes, she will do these things, "but it's no cheap thrill." She is a high-maintenance person, as they say, both in terms of having expensive tastes and being emotionally needy. "It'll cost you, cost you, cost you," she repeats, explaining that these needs of hers are not just initial but ongoing.
The speaker is savvy, worldly, sharp... hard to impress, and easy to bore. What she's trying to say is that she is way out of your league; she's already looking at other men as she's talking to you, and she's already been-there-done-that with half of the guys in the room. You're never going to satiate her, and you'll go broke trying.
Dude, you're not going to win this one. Get the heck away from her, before you're just another loser she's given a cruel nickname to.
Next Song: World Before Columbus
"Ante up," the speaker beckons, meaning to say you want to play by putting some of what you have at stake. She then asks you-- whom she just asked to play!-- about some other guy, one with a "deadpan" (or expressionless) face and a "criminal grace."
He is "sitting so pretty," which means he is attractive simply by sitting there, but to "be sitting pretty" as an expression means to be at an advantage or already winning.
Next, she surveys the other potential players for her attention. One is an idiot nicknamed "Lamebrain." He "wants to spit in the sea." This is the name of a poker variant, but "spit in the ocean" also means "not very much, considering what else is around" (compare to "a drop in the bucket").
He's got a "cool hand," she says, which is to say his poker hand is better than average, and that in relationships he is skilled but not emotionally involved. But no, "it isn't for me." Also, there is the movie Cool Hand Luke, about a ne'er-do-well who seems laconic but underneath has a will of iron.
Also dismissible is "Butcher Boy," who sounds both young and violent-- is he a hitman? He thinks he'll be "splitting the pot," or sharing the winnings-- and spending at least some time with her-- but she has been down that road before: "I've seen what he's got, and it isn't a lot." This is a reference to his weak poker hand... but also the small size of his... um, anyway...
Then there is a parenthetical couplet. It is in the lyric sheet, but is not performed in the actual recording: "When deuces are wild, you can follow the queen/ I'd go too, except I know where she's been."
In cards, "deuces" are twos. So, when couples are "wild"-- perhaps a reference to swinging?-- they might "follow the queen." A queen, of course, is a face card in every deck, but in slang a "queen" is either a homosexual or possibly a "drag queen," a transvestite. So a "wild" couple might "follow" a third such partner. But in the speaker's case, she knows this queen is promiscuous to the point of possibly having an STD.
The speaker says she will "limit the straddles." In poker, a straddle is a side bet made on a hand. As these can be distracting, some dealers try to discourage them. As a sexual metaphor, "straddle" has another (I hope obvious) meaning, so she is saying that at this point in a relationship, she does not have much sex.
So! It seems, at least, she has settled on the subject of the song, after saying no to Mr. Deadpan, Lamebrain and Butcher Boy.
While she keeps physical contact to a minimum, the subject is understandably off guard-- "Wait, you're interested now?" Defensively, he "shuffles" and "deals." While these words have well-known meanings in card games-- to randomize and distribute the cards-- he is hemming, hawing, shuffling his feet, shifting in his chair... and negotiating to get closer to her.
Then she asks "When will the dealer reveal how he feels?" So... there is yet another character? Or is the subject also the dealer, since in the last line, she said he "deals"? I think that his lame attempt at trying to maintain his suavity is actually a pretty big tell, as far as tipping his emotional hand.
Alas, she does not seem to find his Hugh Grant-like schoolboy stammerings to be charming. "Is the lucky beginner just a five-card stud?" she wonders, ruefully? Five-card stud is yet another poker variant (there seems to be an infinite number of these) but her biggest peeve so far is that the other men put on a show, then can't pay off. And now it looks to her like this is yet another potential disappointment, date-wise: "Is this winning streak going to be nipped in the bud?"
That last expression is botanical, not poker-related (there are not that many rhymes for "stud") but it means the flower will not only never blossom, it will be cut from the stem before it even has the chance to find out if it would.
Maybe she is hoping the subject, if he is berated enough, will step up his game and rise to the challenge. Or maybe she is letting him down quick so he doesn't get his hopes up.
The chorus is also full of poker-related verbs. "I'll see you" or "call you" mean to bet as much as the last bettor, while "raise" is to bet more. But in relationships, to "see" means to date, to "call" simply means to telephone, and to "raise"... well, that's not generally a verb used in that context. It used to mean, in the context of telephoning, actually having reached and spoken to someone as opposed to simply having dialed the number ("I've phoned several times, but I haven't raised her yet.").
In the last chorus, it changes to "I'll play you," which means both "I'll play (against) you in poker" and "I'll play you for a fool."
Yes, she will do these things, "but it's no cheap thrill." She is a high-maintenance person, as they say, both in terms of having expensive tastes and being emotionally needy. "It'll cost you, cost you, cost you," she repeats, explaining that these needs of hers are not just initial but ongoing.
The speaker is savvy, worldly, sharp... hard to impress, and easy to bore. What she's trying to say is that she is way out of your league; she's already looking at other men as she's talking to you, and she's already been-there-done-that with half of the guys in the room. You're never going to satiate her, and you'll go broke trying.
Dude, you're not going to win this one. Get the heck away from her, before you're just another loser she's given a cruel nickname to.
Next Song: World Before Columbus
Monday, June 1, 2015
Calypso
Vega is not the only one to have been enchanted by this mythical nymph, whose name means "to hide or deceive."
Jacques Cousteau named his boat for her, and John Denver wrote a song with this same title about that scientist. There have been other US and UK military ships with the name as well. The piece of tech that is branded Calypso is, aptly, an underwater camera.
There is an entire genre of Latin dance with this name; Harry Belafonte recorded an album of its music. Calypso is also the name of a moon of Saturn, an asteroid, and what NASA called its "Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations (CALIPSO)" orbiter.
And "Calypso" is a town in North Carolina, a cave in Malta, a soap opera in Venezuela, an airplane in Belgium, and an orchid found almost everywhere.
But the most appropriate use of the name must be Calypso Deep, the lowest point in the Mediterranean...
Because Calypso, according to Homer, lived on the Mediterranean coast. And it was she who kept Odysseus in thrall for seven of the ten years between his leaving the Trojan War and his return to his beloved Penelope. Yes, of all of the monsters he faced in The Odyssey, the most victorious over him used no other weapon than song.
Vega tells the tale from the sea nymph's viewpoint. She has Calypso introduce herself and explain that she saved Odysseus from "drowning."
The time of this song? The day he leaves after seven years. "Now today, come morning light, he sails away/ After one last night, I let him go."
She is aware that the only reason he stayed is that she made him. She had hoped that he would eventually simply love her of his own. But, while she "could taste the salt on his skin," she knew it was both "salt of the waves and of tears and while he pulled away, I kept him here for years."
While she was beautiful-- "my garden overflows... My hair blows long as I sing into the wind"-- she knew that her willowy wiles were no match for Penelope's pull on him.
She is well aware that his departure is permanent. "It's a lonely time ahead," she acknowledges, but "I do not ask him to return."
Instead, "I will stand upon the shore with a clean heart and my song in the wind."
There is no proper chorus, but five times in this short song, Calypso repeats "I let him go." It seems she is of two minds about this decision.
One is that she proud of herself. It would have been easy to continue to imprison Odysseus eternally-- she could have made him immortal. But she knew that the relationship was forced, and so false. And she finally could not allow the situation to endure. So she did the grown-up thing and let him go. "Yes, the whole mess was my fault-- but I fixed things in the end and now I want credit for that," she seems to say.
So much for her mind. Her heart is very upset with the new reality, however. "I let him go!" it weeps. "How could I have done such a thing! He's gone forever, and I'm alone again, and he could have just stayed here, and I could have been at least falsely happy instead of truly miserable. This is just awful. Yes, the situation had to end, but I'm still so, so sad that it did."
The first thing Calypso told us about herself was not that she was immortal or magical or even musical, but that she has "lived alone." Now that Odysseus is gone, she foresees "a lonely time ahead." Her solitary status is how she defines herself.
If she could only find someone to love her for her many gifts, to love her for her "sweetness," her beauty, and her talent. And not someone who was already taken, someone she had to force to stay. Surely in all the sea there is a lonely sailor with no one waiting at home, who would willingly stay and hear her sing eternally while combing and combing her long hair.
Maybe he won't be Odysseus. But Jason's a hunk, too.
Next Song: Language
Jacques Cousteau named his boat for her, and John Denver wrote a song with this same title about that scientist. There have been other US and UK military ships with the name as well. The piece of tech that is branded Calypso is, aptly, an underwater camera.
There is an entire genre of Latin dance with this name; Harry Belafonte recorded an album of its music. Calypso is also the name of a moon of Saturn, an asteroid, and what NASA called its "Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations (CALIPSO)" orbiter.
And "Calypso" is a town in North Carolina, a cave in Malta, a soap opera in Venezuela, an airplane in Belgium, and an orchid found almost everywhere.
But the most appropriate use of the name must be Calypso Deep, the lowest point in the Mediterranean...
Because Calypso, according to Homer, lived on the Mediterranean coast. And it was she who kept Odysseus in thrall for seven of the ten years between his leaving the Trojan War and his return to his beloved Penelope. Yes, of all of the monsters he faced in The Odyssey, the most victorious over him used no other weapon than song.
Vega tells the tale from the sea nymph's viewpoint. She has Calypso introduce herself and explain that she saved Odysseus from "drowning."
The time of this song? The day he leaves after seven years. "Now today, come morning light, he sails away/ After one last night, I let him go."
She is aware that the only reason he stayed is that she made him. She had hoped that he would eventually simply love her of his own. But, while she "could taste the salt on his skin," she knew it was both "salt of the waves and of tears and while he pulled away, I kept him here for years."
While she was beautiful-- "my garden overflows... My hair blows long as I sing into the wind"-- she knew that her willowy wiles were no match for Penelope's pull on him.
She is well aware that his departure is permanent. "It's a lonely time ahead," she acknowledges, but "I do not ask him to return."
Instead, "I will stand upon the shore with a clean heart and my song in the wind."
There is no proper chorus, but five times in this short song, Calypso repeats "I let him go." It seems she is of two minds about this decision.
One is that she proud of herself. It would have been easy to continue to imprison Odysseus eternally-- she could have made him immortal. But she knew that the relationship was forced, and so false. And she finally could not allow the situation to endure. So she did the grown-up thing and let him go. "Yes, the whole mess was my fault-- but I fixed things in the end and now I want credit for that," she seems to say.
So much for her mind. Her heart is very upset with the new reality, however. "I let him go!" it weeps. "How could I have done such a thing! He's gone forever, and I'm alone again, and he could have just stayed here, and I could have been at least falsely happy instead of truly miserable. This is just awful. Yes, the situation had to end, but I'm still so, so sad that it did."
The first thing Calypso told us about herself was not that she was immortal or magical or even musical, but that she has "lived alone." Now that Odysseus is gone, she foresees "a lonely time ahead." Her solitary status is how she defines herself.
If she could only find someone to love her for her many gifts, to love her for her "sweetness," her beauty, and her talent. And not someone who was already taken, someone she had to force to stay. Surely in all the sea there is a lonely sailor with no one waiting at home, who would willingly stay and hear her sing eternally while combing and combing her long hair.
Maybe he won't be Odysseus. But Jason's a hunk, too.
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