Knight Moves

It seems possible that the "queen" in the first line here is the one from the previous song, "The Queen and the Soldier."

However, the point of view keeps shifting, here, between "her" and "me/you." So there are several possibilities.

One is that the queen is one person, and the speaker another, sometimes revealing her own thoughts and actions in her own voice, and sometimes narrating the queen's story. Imagine one person reading a play-- sometimes the character "speaks," sometimes the narrator does, although only one person is actually talking, and the character is not "real."

Another is that there are two people here. One is the narrator telling us about the queen, and the other is the queen herself, speaking her own words.

But if the queen and the speaker are the same person, there is yet another scenario-- that the speaker is saying "I guess I have been acting like a queen." In this case, there is a bit of sarcasm in the presentation. Let's say you have been "putting out fires," as the saying goes, all day at the office, and then yet another crisis rises. In you stride-- saying, "Don't worry folks, the fireman's back," meaning yourself.

If this is the case, the speaker is saying, "Wow, I thought I was a queen and in charge, but I guess I allowed myself to be manipulated there."  Like the queen in the last song who at first is imperious, then allows herself to be bowed to the ground by a soldier, this queen (whoever she is) has turned herself into a pawn. We note the supplanting of the human royalty with that of the chessboard, as well; the "soldier" last time is now the "knight" of the title.

This queen has had a "blurry" night. Perhaps there has been alcohol, or simply a lot of bad judgement. Now, in the "very clear dawn," the consequences become apparent. Evidently, she has fallen for someone.

She asks if he is in a relationship, or single. She asks if he plays the field or is capable of commitment. And then she asks what she really wants to know: "Do you love me?"

Now we remember that there are several meanings of the word "false." One is "untrue," as to one's own nature. But one is "unfaithful." She may be in a relationship herself, although this is not revealed.

Then there is a first allusion to time, a "secret prophecy" about what will happen in the future. There is a bit of oxymoron in the phrase, as a prophet is usually fairly public about his prediction, but there have been prophecies known only to a soothsayer and his client.

If you want to judge her, however, for her false move, first, "hold it up and see"-- examine both sides. "It's one side stone"-- cold and inert-- and "one side fire"-- very much the opposite.

But what is this "it"? Is the "move"? Or is the "it"... the queen? The queen, who is the object of everyone's "desire."

Well, they "want to know" if she is available, if she could, or even does, love them.

And now the speaker addresses "you," but this seems to be another "you," most likely the listener. At this point, the song take a turn from the abstract to the concrete. The speaker is "spitting out all the bitterness/ Along with half of my last drink." (Has she started drinking again, even in the "very clear dawn"?)

Now she tells us about "your" (the listener's) "woman," who is "crying in the hall." This is, admittedly, very confusing.

Or perhaps things are finally becoming clearer.

It seems that there are three people involved. One is a man in a relationship (the listener) who not only is cheating on his partner, but he brought his new mistress (the speaker) home. To his house. While his partner is there.

Starting again from the beginning, it seems that the partner (the "her") is the queen. She wakes up, hungover, to learn that her husband has brought a woman home. She thought she had control over him, but she clearly does not, she now sees. Now, she wants to know how many times he has cheated, and if he has only made love to them or fallen in love with them or what... but mostly if he still loves her.

If one would say that his cheating is somehow her fault (if you "hold it against" her), that she drove him to it, she seems like she is a tease-- the stone/fire image-- who strings men along, the object of "all men's desire." She had enjoyed wielding this queen-like control. But it has backfired.

And now the mistress is in the middle, or at least at the edge, of all this. The wife wakes up to hear a woman's voice alongside her man's through the door, and they now can hear her crying in the hall at his betrayal.

The mistress (whom we know know is the main "I") spits out her drink, and compares it to "drinking gasoline," less the solution than part of the problem. The mistress now asks the series of questions to the man about his capabilities of love and fidelity.

The lines "Walk on her blind side/ Was the answer to the joke" are now clear as well. The man was being strung along, like all other men, by this unattainable partner. They were living together, she was "his" woman, and yet she was not sleeping together, still sure that his desire for her would keep him faithful.

His response to her cruel "joke" was to simply cheat on her. She was "blind" to the possibility, due to her ego, and would never suspect. (This could be the meaning of the title-- in chess, a knight can move over other pieces, blindsiding them from their other sides. Also, there is the obvious "knight/night" pun, as the cheating "moves" happen then.) Eventually, the man was able to bring women home and she still didn't know. Until now.

Still, "there isn't a political bone in her body." The "queen" never did this to assert power, it seems. So... why did she?

"She would rather be a riddle," and unknowable, rather than be in a full, intimate relationship. Something about that scares her, maybe. "She keeps challenging the future with a profound lack of history," we are told. If she has no past at all, perhaps this means she is a virgin. Perhaps all she knows of sex is the excitement of the chase. Like the dog who chases cars-- what would it do with one if it caught it?

And so she plays the only game she knows, the tease that allows her to be in control. Turns out, it wasn't a game... and the man did not like being played.

And now it is her turn to answer the questions from him-- can she love? Many, none... one? Him?

All everyone wants to know is if they are loved. And the hardest part is that each wants the other to go first.


Next Song: Neighborhood Girls