St. Clare

Clare was an Italian saint, a prioress of the Franciscan Order. She dedicated her life to prayer and poverty. In fact, her following was known as the Order of the Poor Ladies, or just the Poor Clares. They were also monastic and preferred silence and hard work; they traveled little.

Ironically, she is the patron saint of goldsmiths and gilders, of embroiderers and needle-workers... and television. (Also: good weather, eye disease, and laundry. Obviously, it was eye disease first, then TV; one wonders if this wasn't a wry commentary on TV itself.)

Evidently, the song is about a woman who has left where she is to visit her home. To "keep her safe/ until she returns", a candle is lit and "that saint"-- which we only learn is Clare from the title-- is called upon for sacred protection.

We see "plaster and paint/ holding the fire." Perhaps this is a candlestick cast to resemble Clare, whose hands are positioned to hold the candle itself. She is described as "a poor woman's saint."

Yet, she "holds all man's desire." Well, she is holding a candle. Perhaps it symbolizes what people want-- light, warmth, tranquility. "Desire" doesn't have to mean sexual desire, does it?

Then why say she is a "woman's" saint, and then discuss a "man's" wants? Why not say "all our desire," meaning all of humanity's wants? Something about this woman-- this sacred, silent Clare-- is desirable, it seems.

The woman who left is now called a "bold little bird." She is told to "fly away home." This is a reference to the nursery rhyme "Ladybug, ladybug/ Fly away home." As ladybugs are also called "ladybird beetles," some have misheard the rhyme to be about an actual bird, not a bug.

In any case, she left here, and is going "away" there. But there is "home," so she is returning there, yes? And then she will "return" to here, we hope, where our candle burns for her.

The speaker wishes she could have accompanied her to smooth the way: "Could I but ride herd/ On the wind and the foam." From "foam," we know the woman is traveling over the sea (as in "oceans/ White with foam" from "God Bless America.") The speaker wishes she could have ridden herd, or been in control of, the waves on that sea, so as to make this woman's sea-path as smooth as possible. 


It is this travelling woman's willingness to travel that makes her desirable. After all, the "souls/ That curl by the fire" like a bunch of homebodies will "never know/ All man's desire." But she travels away from the hearth.

Now it is "spring," which implies the earlier part of the song took place in the winter, a bad time for sea travel. This explains why they were so worried about her, and why they were curled by the fire themselves.

It is early enough for the "snow" to "melt," the "stream" to unfreeze and run, and even "green" things like the water-dwelling vegetable "watercress" to grow. But it is still "cold."

Evidently, out travelling woman made it to dry land. She is shown "barefoot" and "cold," and standing or sitting "by the side of the road" now. She is "holding" both "a lyre," or small harp, and "all man's desire."

Why she had to go "home" to do this is unclear. Is she waiting for a ride to take her to her family's house? Is she lost? Or even shipwrecked on the wrong shore? We aren't told.

The lyre is obviously a symbol of music itself, and of poetry. It is associated with poets like King David and the god Apollo.

So, before, it was a "fire," and now a "lyre" that can "hold all man's desire." Perhaps this shows evolution. Early people craved the heat and protection of the fire, and learned of its ability to help cook food and make pots and tools. Later, when these basic needs were conquered, man could turn his desire to finer things, like the arts.

The song ends as it began. The implication is that the woman has not yet returned. The speaker awaits her still, praying for the saint's intervention and keeping the candle lit for her. (The only difference is that we now know it is a "white" candle, if that is significant.)

People go home to visit all the time, then come back to the place they now dwell. They usually travel in good weather if it can be helped, so we may assume that this woman's need to go "home" was urgent. Yet, once she has arrived on her native shore, she seems in no hurry to make it all the way from the port to her destination point. Or has she been home, and is now on her way back to us?

While it is difficult to even understand the sequence of events being described, it is harder still to understand what is being said here.

It seems odd to talk about saints, and women too poor to afford shoes, being ones who hold "all man's desire." Whether "man" means male people or all people, surely many people desire more-- or at least other-- than what it is these women offer, which is enlightenment and piety.

What about the things Clare herself is patron of? Don't people "desire" gold, and fine embroidery, and television? I'm sorry, but the statistics are pretty clear-- people want good reception as much as they want godly redemption.

Perhaps we are reading too much into the song. Perhaps the imagery is merely impressionistic. It is very pretty, sparse in its arrangements as an Order of the Poor Ladies' cloister.

Or perhaps one needs to know more about Suzanne Vega, or Saint Clare, to truly understand it.


Next Song: Zephyr and I

Lightning

In 1986, composer Philip Glass wrote the music to an album's worth of songs by some of the best living lyricists: Paul Simon (1 song), David Byrne (2), Laurie Anderson (2)... and Suzanne Vega, then 27 years old, who wrote this song and the next we will discuss. The writers did not perform the songs; in this case, Janice Pendarvis sang it. The album was called Songs from Liquid Days.

Most likely, the song is not about lightning itself but some event with similar characteristics: sudden, unexpected, and devastating. The event happened "a while ago," but the effects are still being felt: "It's blazing much too fast... it's happening so quickly."

The imagery continues, implying that the bolt started a fire of sorts, "but give it rain of waiting time/ and it will surely pass, blow over." These last two words are meant in the sense of a passing storm, as in, "The scandal will blow over; we can run him again next election and no one will remember."

Well, the soothing rain of "waiting time" is not here now. Now we have "the flaming time." And she's still in the midst of the fire, "grop[ing] about the embers." She wants to "release [her] stormy mind," and discuss her emotions, but events are too turbulent just yet, and she has to focus. She repeats "blow over," this time in the sense of "The wind is so strong, I think the barn might blow over and collapse!"

The cataclysmic, lightning-like event has left her "Shaken... laughing and undone"... as well with a "sleeplessness" that's keeping her awake like "a blinding bolt." The laughing could be in genuine joy or disbelief.

So, that's rain's coming any minute, right, to cool things down? No, this has all "just begun," even though the lightning struck "a while ago." Maybe she was unable to process anything in the flash itself, but the blaze is now steady enough for her to begin to assess its effects.

As with any sudden event, there is a panic reaction: "...a windy, crazy running." Also, the lightning was so overwhelming, she barely has any recollection of the event itself, or the moments after; it's as if the lightning resulted in "time burned away."

The sensations have been building, now climaxing in an aftershock: "Now I feel it in my blood/ All hot and sharp and white/ With a whipcrack and a thunder/ And a flash of flooding light." The memory of the lightning strike is as real as the strike itself.

When the fire "finally dies," then "there'll be a think and smoky silence in the air," and the "ashes of the time burned away" we discussed earlier. And then we true effects will at last be known, especially, "Who'll be left there."

So... what was the "lightning"? Was it good or bad? Was this a sudden rush of love, a lottery win, receiving an international honor? Or was it more like a car crash, a divorce, an actual natural disaster?

We don't know, and it doesn't really matter. The sequence of events that takes place when any kind of "lightning" strikes is similar. In the split-second of the incident, we are shocked. When we look back, we forget what happened just after, as we were in a state of that shock.

Soon, we regain our senses, and realize that, as Stevie Nicks put it, "the rooms are all on fire." We are in emergency mode. We are flooded with emotions, but the need to respond snaps us into focus.

When we finally remove ourselves and think back to what we just underwent, the realization of its impact hits us like a second lightning bolt. We are finally safe enough to feel the emotions we experienced earlier.

And then things finally subside and return to somewhat-normal. So we look around, to see who make it through the fire with us. If all goes well, it's the people we were hoping would.

Next Song: Freezing

Casual Match

The title is a pun-- a "casual match" seems to imply a relationship that was not formal or serious, perhaps more along the lines of what today is called "friends with benefits."

But the song turns the phrase into a metaphor by taking it more literally-- a casually tossed match, of the kind used to light candles and cigarettes, that has caused a fire in some poor farmer's field.

Taking the metaphor back to the relationship, then, the man involved seems to have done something offhanded that-- oops-- torched the entire relationship.

It could be that the relationship between the speaker and her subject was a formal one, but the "casual match" was a fling that the man had with another woman. While it was just a one-night-stand to him-- a "hook-up," as they say today-- it was enough to cause the woman a wildfire of misery and anger. We start to see more evidence of this soon...

But that's the chorus. The song starts with the woman trying to see "what had had set this inner field alight." So the "field" is not a real one but a metaphor for her emotional state. And it's on fire... but why?

The fire's own light indicates the one who set it: "The outline of a man against the night." Perhaps she was wakened by his nighttime return home. He opened the door to the house at night, and she saw his silhouette against the streetlight.

Strangely, he tries to comfort her rather than, say, deny the obvious-- "It's not what you think!"-- or apologize. It's "I'm sorry you got hurt," not "I'm sorry I hurt you." If only she weren't so sensitive...

She is having none of that: "Take back your sympathy." She immediately ends the relationship, too: "I'd rather break the thread/ That bound us close." His making his cheating about her is the last straw.

Then she decides that they should agree "we called a bluff." But who was the one bluffing? Were they both? Did she already suspect him? Did he suspect that she suspected?

Well, it sounds like his infidelity fits what she already knows... they two of them haven't been intimate in a long time-- the hot match landed "in a very dry field." So it's not that big of a shock to her that he had been getting his... needs met elsewhere.

Now that we're back on the agricultural metaphor, she asks, rhetorically, "Gee, you threw a lit match in dry straw-- wonder what's going to happen?" The way he phrases this is within the farming metaphor: "What will be the season's yield?" (The amount of crops harvested is said to be a "yield," as in, "We had a great yield of wheat this year.")

Her eyes are black now, with her pupils dilated in rage. But she uses the fire metaphor this time: "My eyes have gone to coal." Coal is not necessarily on fire, but it is fuel and will catch fire easily.

In such a "moment" she says, "the heat of love becomes the chill of doubt." She was in love with him, but an instant, that "heat" has evaporated, like someone throwing cold water on a flame.

She asks the question again, about what his actions will result in, "what will be the season's yield." This time, she answers: "Fire and ash." It's all over, with no chance to rebuild it.

She does admit that she does not have definitive proof of his cheating-- "Look for the sign, but it is not revealed." There is no lipstick on his collar, so to speak.

But it is too late. Her suspicions are too intense; she simply can't trust him.

This relationship has gone down in flames. And the guy? He's toast.


Next Song: Thin Man

Pilgrimage

This song is about entropy-- or, as it applies to human life-- mortality. So why is the title about a spiritual journey to a holy place?

Let's start with a simpler question: What does the first line of the song mean? "This line is burning..." What line?

She means the line of the song, the line of music, the words she is singing themselves. The words and notes live on the ear for a fraction of a second apiece before dispersing into scattered waves.

Similarly, once a moment in time has passed, it may as well be ash. Its potential has been burned up like a spent matchstick, a used wick, or a piece of kindling. She begins this thought by mentioning the days of the week, and the words "months" and "year."

The next thought concludes logically: "This life is burning." Time started before we were born and will continue after we die. We are here for a few moments, relatively speaking (if the Earth's history were one year, all of human existence would take place in the last hour of December 31). So if time is being burned up, so is our lifetime.

But she holds out a note of hope. Yes, "every death is an end," but for all this "stopping," there is also "starting," or new birth. This is a "march over millions of years," and each generation takes its steps in turn.

All of this progress is pointing where, though? Here is all this "travel." Where is the destination, the "arrival"? The progression is, she says, "toward a source." So... Heaven? It would explain the title-- all of life is a pilgrimage back to the Heaven (which certainly counts as a holy place) from whence we came.

Then the speaker gets both more specific and more enigmatic about her destination: "I'm coming to you." To whom? God? A passed-on relative waiting in Heaven? (If so, this song might link to the previous one. That song was about a suicide attempt; perhaps the person tried to kill themselves to reunite with someone waiting in Heaven, and this song is from her perspective.)

The idea of "burning" and "turning to ash" is now applies to the land. The soil erodes, the continents rise and sink, and the whole Earth itself has a time limit due to the Sun's inevitable collapse.

The speaker closes with a parting gift: "Take this/ Mute mouth/ Broken tongue." The deceased is bequeathing her very silence as an inheritance. Why is silence a gift?

Death, which the speaker says she has been marching toward for years, has arrived. And now the "dark," painful-- perhaps physically so but certainly emotionally so-- life, has hope... the hope of an end.

"Now," that the pilgrimage has ended, the Promised Land of relief and release has been attained: "Now this dark life is shot through with light."

Many who have had near-death experiences speak of seeing a great light. But even without such a vision, the idea of life ending may not seem frightening to some. For those with "dark" lives, an end to such a life just means an end to the darkness, and so, light.

There is a movement now to take the idea of euthanasia a step further. Rather than it only being used to speed an inevitable death and avoid a protracted and agonizing decline, some would like a medically assisted suicide to be available to those with chronic pain, both of the physical and mental varieties. There are fates worse than death, a life of suffering may be one.

The speaker here has made grand claims about the entropy of the universe to rationalize her desire-- we're all dying all the time anyway, so what's the big deal? But really, she just wants to die so that the pain of missing her lost loved one can end.

There is a old comedy line: "If you can't live without me, why aren't you dead yet?" But the question is not funny, or rhetorical, to the speaker here. She would reply, "Give me a minute, I'm working on it."

Is the person making a pilgrimage to Heaven, or to the embrace of a lost loved one? For the speaker, those places are the same.


Next Song: Rock in this Pocket

Predictions

The desire to know the future is as old as the idea of tomorrow. The ancients warned that inquiring of oracles would inevitably lead one to misinterpretation in any case. And if one could speak the future plainly, like Cassandra, one would be ignored then, too. Their conclusion seems to be that you don't get to know what will happen until it does.

Here, Vega lists, somewhat exhaustively, the ways ancient (and, I suppose, some contemporary) people tried to suss out the future. She also does not speak of tarot cards, palm reading, Ouija boards, tea leaves, horoscopes, or crystal balls, but of more esoteric methods.

Many involve reading the behavior of animals-- "by mice," "by fishes," "birds." Fire-- from the flames themselves, to their "smoke," and even their "ashes"-- is another popular prognostication device. Water, from a "fountain," or its interaction with "hot wax," has been tried. As has light, often in reflection from a "mirror" or even "nails reflecting the rays of the Sun."

Natural objects, like "salt" and "pebbles drawn from a heap," have been consulted. Man-made objects, too, like a "suspended ring" or a "balanced hatchet," and even the rising "dough of cakes" have been investigated.

Human behavior is popular as well, from "walking in a circle," to simply "laughing," and of course "dreams." One's "features" can be read, so perhaps this is an allusion to palm reading, but more likely these features are facial.

But perhaps the largest category she lists is markings made by people. From "dots made at random," to the dots of "dice," or the "numbers" they represent. And "letters," too, and words, even whole "passages in books."

Do any of these methods... work? "One of these things will tell you something," she assumes.

A pattern emerges from these methods. A person must begin by saying "I will now set this random process in motion. Once it occurs, I will see how the elements are placed, and by their arrangement-- which I caused but did not control-- I will see what is to be."

It's a combination of intent and instigation by the clairvoyant on the one hand, and the random result of their action upon the object(s) in question on the other. Then the seer explains the result, to either the glee or chagrin of the client.

The interpretation, naturally, will differ depending on the "skills" of the soothsayer consulted, which may not only include the saying of sooth, but the reading of the client's body language, clothes, and political power.

The whole exercise is moot, of course. We cannot foretell the future, since no-one has won the lottery every month or even predicted the Super Bowl winner every time.

It's all about trying to find patterns in the randomness. The scattered ashes or salt grains stand for the randomness of human events and interactions. The prophet tries to see patterns-- mostly gathered from what the client has said while drinking his tea, not from the tea leaves left in the bottom of his cup after.

There are two problems with this. One is that events often are random, with no pattern. The other is that, to the extent that there are patterns to events, no two people will agree entirely on what they are.

This disagreement extends to events in the past, as well. No two historians, even reading over the same evidence, will come to the exact same conclusion. And police officers will tell you that there are as many opinions about a car accident that just happened as there are people at the scene.

It also is true that almost all of the cultures that used these methods are gone. For all of their supposed ability to foresee events, they did not see the plague, drought, volcano, or conquering force arriving from over the hill or ocean that was to eradicate their civilization.

"One of these things will tell you something"? They all will. And all of it worth "dots made at random on paper."


Next Song: Fifty-fifty Chance

Solitude Standing

There is a literary trope, used here, with a confusing name. "Apostrophe" is not just the term for that floating punctuation mark, but for the literary technique of speaking to an idea or abstract concept.

For example: "Hello, Darkness, my old friend," or "Death, be not proud," or "America, God shed His Grace on thee." As if the speaker could actually talk to Darkness, Death or America.

Here, the speaker addresses Solitude. It seems that she was in a relationship with another person, which has now ended, and now she is alone "with" Solitude, as it were.

The song starts with the speaker entering a "room." Solitude, who already expected that the speaker would be alone when she arrived, post-breakup, has "been waiting." The "slant of the late afternoon" refers to the steep angle at which the light enters the room through the "window."

But Solitude says nothing, at least at first, by way of greeting. Instead, she extends her palm, which contains a curious item: "Her palm is split with a flower, with a flame."

It helps to know that Vega is a Buddhist. Most likely, this refers to a flaming lotus or similar symbol from that wisdom tradition. Flame is a destructive quantity, and a flower symbolizes creation, life, and birth. This shows the two sides of solitude-- criminals are sent to solitary confinement as a punishment, while hermits seek it for spiritual growth.

In the second verse, Solitude has moved from the "window" to the "doorway." There is still a light behind her, as she is seen as a "silhouette." In the first verse, her "eyes" are mentioned; this time, her "long, cool stare" is. Also, she is still silent.

"I suddenly remember each time we've met" means that this sensation of alone-ness is so familiar that all such instances of feeling this way rush from her memory into awareness.

Now, Solitude speaks. She explains that she is not to be feared, but in fact brings solace and healing. "I've come to set a twisted thing straight," she says, soothingly. "I've come to lighten this dark heart."

But the speaker is still wary. "I feel her imprint of fear," she thinks. And then she addresses Solitude in response: "I've never thought of finding you here."

Where? On stage, it seems. "I turn to the crowd as they're watching... their eyes are gathered into one." It's understandable-- why would you expect to find solitude in a room full of people? Yet, she is on stage, and they are apart from her, in the audience.

Yet, they are together with each other-- and she finds herself "wanting to be in there, among them." She wants to be part of her own audience! If only to be a part... instead of apart.

Everyone is looking at her, even Solitude. It's one thing to be alone, but entirely another to be alone where everyone can see you be that way. You might as well be in a fishbowl.

Still, she is trying to see Solitude as bringing her something helpful. Sometimes, it's necessary to be alone with Solitude, to be able to prepare for the next time you meet Togetherness.

IMPACT:
This song reached #94, and remained on the US charts for 3 weeks.

Next Song: Calypso