(This track is found on the import CD Tried and True, a best-of compilation.)
Sometimes a so-called "shipboard" romance takes place on land, but it still happens during a vacation. In this case, in Spain-- specifically, the town of Grenada.
The speaker is reminiscing about a brief infatuation she had there, and addressing her former crush across the abyss of memory and space. "Do you remember how you walked with me?" she begins, "How the women selling rosemary pressed the branches to your chest/ [and] Promised luck?"
Not with themselves, though! They were offering luck for the two who entered looking like a couple. Rosemary was once used as a wedding bouquet, carried by a bride. Obvious, although the two had "met... just the day before," they were quite simpatico.
For her, the attraction was both physical and immediate: "How I wanted to break in/ To that room beneath your skin." And...? "But all that would have to wait."
The couple next meet up in a garden-- first part of a church, then a private mansion, now a city park-- called "The Carmen of the Martyrs." Many statues of saints and martyrs dot the grounds, and some seem to be depicted in the state in which they were, well, martyred; their "heads and hands were taken." Nevertheless, the garden is considered romantic and weddings are even held there.
Back to the couple... "I had come to meet you," she says, "with a question in my footsteps." There is definitely a way to approach someone so that they know you are about to ask them something...
"I was going up the hillside," she continues, "And the journey just begun." We're pretty sure she doesn't mean her hillside hike. She's really hoping something will come of this.
Well..? Did it?
By way of answer, the speaker shifts to metaphor: "My sister says she never dreams at night/ There are days when I know why." This doesn't sound good, but go on...
"Those possibilities, within her sight, with no way of coming true." Oh, how disappointing! Yes, she realizes, "Some things just don't get through into this world, although they try."
Sigh. Maybe if she had bought the rosemary..?
And now? "All I know of you is in my memory." Wow, it sounds like she never even took his picture, not that she needed to. "All I ask of you," she says, is that he "remember" her, in kind.
She needs to at least feel she made some sort of impression. It's bad enough that nothing happened. It would be worse if he didn't regret that, too.
Next Song: Penitent
Monday, March 28, 2016
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, March 14, 2016
Freezing
For the story behind this album, please see the previous entry, on the song "Lightning"; it's on the same album.
In this case, a more famous person sings it: Linda Ronstadt.
The song is very short, only 13 lines. But still haunting and mysterious.
The first 7 lines ask a hypothetical question: "If you had no name/ history/ books/ family... if you were only you, naked on the grass, who would you be, then?"
So, with no name to define yourself, or family to claim you, or history to put you in any past context, or even any books to give a clue as to your interests, would you still have an identity?
It is an interesting question-- what defines a person? What gives that person an identity, a self? Is it only a matter of what name we are given, what people call the place we are born, the stories our families shares with us, and our possessions?
If I had been born in another country, and had some other name, language and religion, would I have the same personality, interests, and talents? What if I woke with total amnesia, and had been abandoned in some place no one knew me? Who would I be, then? It's a hard question to consider in an age of DNA identification and instant global communications.
Then comes the line, "This is what he asked." All we know of the question-poser is that he is male.
The speaker considers the question and, as anyone might, responds that she "wasn't really sure."
Then, perhaps sarcastically, she says, "But I probably would be cold."
The song ends with the next line-- like something out of Edgar Allen Poe or The Twilight Zone-- "And now I'm freezing."
So... did it happen? Did this mysterious stranger go through with it, strip her of her identity-- her name, family, and memory-- and leave her "naked in the grass"? Was he so cruel as to want to see if she was right? If she had given another answer, would his method of torture have been different?
Now, if she remembers the question, she remembers what a "name" is. She knows what a "family" is. If someone finds her, or if she finds someone, to help her, she may be able to get those things back. She would be taken to a hospital, or a police station, or at least someone's home, and the journey to get her identity back would begin. The authorities would be contacted, her photo would be taken and shared with the media, etc. Certainly a tale of a "mystery woman with total amnesia" would be a top news story. Again, if she finds help before she freezes too much.
No pun intended, this is one of Vega's most chilling works. In a short space, she limns the borders of a self, then erases them... leaving only questions floating in a vacuum as cold as outer space.
Next Song: Book and a Cover
In this case, a more famous person sings it: Linda Ronstadt.
The song is very short, only 13 lines. But still haunting and mysterious.
The first 7 lines ask a hypothetical question: "If you had no name/ history/ books/ family... if you were only you, naked on the grass, who would you be, then?"
So, with no name to define yourself, or family to claim you, or history to put you in any past context, or even any books to give a clue as to your interests, would you still have an identity?
It is an interesting question-- what defines a person? What gives that person an identity, a self? Is it only a matter of what name we are given, what people call the place we are born, the stories our families shares with us, and our possessions?
If I had been born in another country, and had some other name, language and religion, would I have the same personality, interests, and talents? What if I woke with total amnesia, and had been abandoned in some place no one knew me? Who would I be, then? It's a hard question to consider in an age of DNA identification and instant global communications.
Then comes the line, "This is what he asked." All we know of the question-poser is that he is male.
The speaker considers the question and, as anyone might, responds that she "wasn't really sure."
Then, perhaps sarcastically, she says, "But I probably would be cold."
The song ends with the next line-- like something out of Edgar Allen Poe or The Twilight Zone-- "And now I'm freezing."
So... did it happen? Did this mysterious stranger go through with it, strip her of her identity-- her name, family, and memory-- and leave her "naked in the grass"? Was he so cruel as to want to see if she was right? If she had given another answer, would his method of torture have been different?
Now, if she remembers the question, she remembers what a "name" is. She knows what a "family" is. If someone finds her, or if she finds someone, to help her, she may be able to get those things back. She would be taken to a hospital, or a police station, or at least someone's home, and the journey to get her identity back would begin. The authorities would be contacted, her photo would be taken and shared with the media, etc. Certainly a tale of a "mystery woman with total amnesia" would be a top news story. Again, if she finds help before she freezes too much.
No pun intended, this is one of Vega's most chilling works. In a short space, she limns the borders of a self, then erases them... leaving only questions floating in a vacuum as cold as outer space.
Next Song: Book and a Cover
Monday, March 7, 2016
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
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
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