If I Were a Weapon

How far we have come since "If You Were in My Movie."

This is a couple that should be glad, at least, that they are breaking up.

He says that she reminds him of a "gun." In trying to unpack that, she guesses he means that she is "lethal at close range" with her words, and also capable of shutting down communications (she has a "silencer") and shocking people.

She feels, however, that she is a "needle." She's always "pulling on the thread," which could either mean that he is as annoying as a loose thread... or that when she pulls on the thread of one of his lies, it unravels endlessly into an unbroken string of falsehoods. Also, he doesn't listen; she is always "making the same point" and "wondering if [he] heard."

Meanwhile, what weapon does she think he is? A "hammer." He's very "blunt" in his honesty. He's "heavy at the end," which seems to mean that when he starts to say something hurtful, he never stops before finishing. And he is "coming down on [her]" with criticism and threats from on high.

She then admits that she has a secret weapon. She likens it to a "pocket knife" in that the blade is "concealed." This language implies that she knows a secret of his that can hurt him. She doesn't want to use it, but she will if she is backed into a corner. How do we know it's his? Once he "sees" it, he will want it "back." Perhaps it is an incriminating photograph or receipt.

She concludes that: "If I am that weapon/ I am pointing now at you." What has been a name-calling contest has now escalated to threats.

Why did it get to this point? This is not just a stand-off. He has a "hostage." Evidently, the divorce involves a custody battle, and he's winning.

If he forces her hand, she will ruin his reputation. But if he backs down on the custody issue, she is willing to continue to negotiate: "We'll talk this down until we see this through."

This is a couple that needs to no longer be a couple. It is good that they are separating. Does it hurt? Yes, but if they stay together, they will just keep causing each other more pain.

I may not be a marriage counselor, but if a couple's fights are about what kind of "weapon" the other person is, they probably they should no longer share a mailbox.


Next Song: Harbor Song

Priscilla

Dar Williams has a lovely song called "The Babysitter's Here," about the relationship children develop with those who care for them, whether they are related or not. Williams' babysitter, for instance, was in a play that she went to see.

The speaker here remembers that a woman "20 years older," named Priscilla (the name is only given in the title), used to play with her. It is not made clear if this is a babysitter, but it seems that if it were an older cousin or aunt, that would bear mentioning. Also, it does not say that her parents were there, so it seems they were not. A non-relative tending a child by herself, I think, qualifies as a babysitter.

Mostly, they would dance. Regardless of the type of "music" they played (also not given but also, it seems, not important) it was played "loud." They'd aim a lamp at themselves like a spotlight and perform for an imaginary audience.

Their dance style was "awkward ballet." Priscilla had a proper tutu, "her skirt of layers of chiffon." The child's tutu was more makeshift-- the fabric from a broken umbrella. But they "were in costume/ and this was a game."

And what kid doesn't love an adult willing to be as dance-y as they are?

Priscilla also made the child a paper doll, decked out in ribbons and lace. What a sweet gesture.

Sometimes, communication happens with words. With this babysitter, the connection was through movement: "Something will shine through the body."

It is important for children to have many influences in their lives. Vega is not a dancer as such, yet she felt the need to write a song about a woman she danced with, not the person who taught her to sing or play guitar or write songs.

"I think of her now I'm older/ I still love to dance," she says. She might have grown out of her dance-y ways... unless she had seen, as a child, another grown-up still dance in the hallway. And give her permission to still dance, 20 years and more later.


Next Song: If I Were a Weapon

Last Year's Troubles

This song doesn't seem to need much explanation. Vega contrasts the romanticized way poverty and crime are depicted in Dickens novels (and the movie versions thereof), old ballads, operas, and other entertainments with the poverty and crime of our day, which we see for ourselves and in our news.

"Maybe it's the clothing," she says, "the earrings, the swashbuckling blouses," and the "petticoats." Even their "rags are so very Victorian."

Criminals used to be daring, robbing people on the highway or at sea. Today, a "pirate" is someone who illegally downloads a movie-- hardly a role Erroll Flynn could sink a cutlass into.

Overall, those old problems "shine up so prettily" and "gleam with a luster they don't have today."

Meanwhile, today's homeless "just don't give it their best," she smirks sadly. Also, there seems to be a difference in place as well as time. The above comment is about "the ones here at home." "Here," she repeats, meaning America, "it's just dirty and violent and troubling."

Is there more or less "trouble" now or "last year"? "It would be the same, would be my guess," she concludes.

Which is worse, the threat of debtor's prison for bankruptcy and being hanged for pickpocketing... or the fear of being shot for your sneakers or having to live near a drug den? "Trouble is still trouble," she decides. As for crime, "evil is still evil."

So why are last year's troubles romanticized?

Because everything eventually is. Time softens all tragedy. Conquerors like Genghis Khan and Attila the Hun were played for laughs in Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure and Night at the Museum.

Even Hitler is has been a sitcom character already (it was called Heil, Honey, I'm Home, and thankfully it was quickly cancelled. But this year, Netflix launched one called Look Who's Back). And anyone strict about anything-- from grammar to soup-- is called a "Nazi."

Meanwhile, the heroes are played with, too. There is a movie called Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter, and a new photo app can put your face on Benjamin Franklin's head.

We romanticize the past. Already, the 1980s victims of AIDS are compared, in the musical Rent, to the Bohemians of  La Boheme, which was set in the 1840s. Rap somewhat romanticizes today's urban poverty.

We gave an Oscar and Tonys to a singing Oliver Twist years ago... and this year a rapping Alexander Hamilton looks to sweep the Tonys.

Someday, people will look at today's leaders with the same bemusement. Lord only knows what they will have Barack Obama sing on Broadway in 100 years.


Next Song: Priscilla

Songs in Red and Gray

The song seems to be from the point of view of a mistress. This is only slowly revealed as the song unwinds.

It starts with an encounter between the mistress and her lover's daughter. She sees a "reproach" on her face, and she wonder "how she could know" that this woman, the speaker, was her father's mistress: "Although I had met her just then/ I feel that she peeled back my guilty disguise." Of course, maybe the girl didn't know at all, and the whole idea is just that-- a thought sparked by a guilty conscience.

After all, the affair happened "so much more than a long time ago." How long? At least "19 years." More to the point-- "before (the daughter) was born."

Maybe it's something in the way she looks. Maybe, when it came to mistresses, her father had a "type." After all, the mistresses says, "I am sure I was only but one of a number" of such women and the daughter may have somehow seen others.

The mistress must have known the wife, too, at least to see her, since she recognizes the daughter by her mother's features and gaze: "Her mother, I see, lives within her still/ She looked at me with her eyes." This implies that the wife, the girl's mother, is now dead.

The encounter gives the mistress a flashback to "one night." She remembers details of his house-- "gray" vase holding a "red" rose. A white piece of coral, a "brass candlestick" and another red item, his velvet coat. She has no idea why she flashes on these images.

If the coat is his, does that mean the red items symbolize him, and the gray ones her? If so, then he is the vibrant rose and she the inert vase that "holds" him. This could be an image of restraint, but a vase is more an image of support.

Later, that makes him the "red leaf" that looks to her, the "hard gray stone." A red leaf is one in autumn-- once alive, now dead. The stone, of course, was never alive at all.

Does it matter that we, the listener, don't fully comprehend the symbolism? No, she says "to each other, they know what they mean." Said more grammatically straightforward, this also implies "They know what they mean to each other." A stone, for all its impassivity, is also solid and dependable, while a leaf, though organic, is transitory and easily tossed away by a breeze.

She wonders if he ever told his wife about her, or "was I the name you could never pronounce?" She wonders if she even "figure at all" in any discussions or fights.

There is a mention of the "young" daughter's "pencil marks on the wall." This could mean that the child, like many mischievous others, wrote on the walls. It could also refer to the pencil marks parents make on walls or door-frames to chart their child's growth.

So she asks if her shadow, when she was over for a tryst, fell on these markings. The symbolism is powerful-- the heartwarming evidence of a blossoming child being eclipsed by the tawdriness of the mistress' very presence.

Half of her feels mortified that she could have had such a poisonous effect. But the other half? Frustrated and disappointed that all the impact she had on this man's life was as much as a shadow's, since she was probably only one of many who "darkened his door."

The husband-- make that the widower-- and mistress are not getting back together. One of them "broke the thread" and now it is too "late for repairs." But... is it? The song ends with the idea that this couple's future is "yet to come" and "unforeseen."

I can't see them getting back together. What if the daughter sees them together? Being glared at when the mistress can't even be sure she was identified was terrifying enough.

Seeing her father and this woman together-- and confirming her suspicions? The "reproachful" glare that this sight would trigger from the daughter would turn anyone to "stone."


Next Song: Last Year's Troubles

Soap and Water

We talk about some breaks being "clean" breaks. The speaker here uses the metaphor of "soap," not unlike Lady MacBeth. Well, the speaker here isn't trying to cleanse herself of murder-guilt, just relationship-residue. In both cases, the stain is metaphorical, but they try to use actual soap to remove it.

The speaker asks a lot of the soap. She wants it to "take the day from my hand," and let her begin the night anew.

She wants to "scrub the salt" from her skin. What salt? Was she cooking, or sailing in the sea? More likely this is the salt of tears on her face, or wiped away by her hand.

And she wants it to "slip me loose of this wedding band." Well, when a ring is stuck, one uses soap, or butter, or Vaseline, or something else slick to lubricate it loose. This seems more... permanent. She wants to wash away her marriage.

It's not only her outsides that she wants cleansed-- her "heart," too. After it is clean, she will "hang" it on a "(clothes)line" to dry, where the wind-whipped "sand" will "scour" it. Then she wants it "bleach(ed)" and disinfected with "vinegar" and then polished to a "shine."

This is an almost violent amount of cleaning, even for an organ as resilient as a heart. She must really be needing to get rid of him.  Not just from her house, but from her life and psyche.

Lastly, she asks the soap to "wash the year from my life." Evidently, it has been a very difficult year, and she wants it erased from her memory.

She wants the soap to do the job of starch and an iron, to "straighten all that we trampled." She realizes that the divorce, like necessary medicine, can also have side effects on the route to healing.

And, in having "torn" the family bonds, she left a "cut," which she now wants the soap to disinfect and "heal." What cut? The one "we call husband and wife."

In the two choruses, she addresses the child of this now-ending marriage. In both, she says, "Daddy's a dark riddle." Not just a "riddle," as some of those can be fun or at least unobtrusive, but a "dark" one. Rather than try anymore to solve the riddle, she has decided to simply cut him loose-- she doesn't even care to try to find the answer anymore. There are some boxes labeled "Danger" that are simply not worth opening.

Then she describes herself, alternately, as "a headful of bees" and "a handful of thorns." In doing so, she acknowledges that the split, while necessary, was also harmful. Yes, the relationship was more harmful and had to end, but maybe there might have been a way to minimize the damage caused during the split, and by it.

But... was there? Or was she going through an emotional turmoil herself, what with her marriage ending? Did she lash out, stinging, inappropriately at times? Well, that was wrong... but there was still a reason for it. Her head was buzzing with preoccupations both practical and emotional; as far as supporting others, all she had to offer was "a handful of thorns."

So lastly, she acknowledges that this experience must have been tempestuous for her (their) daughter. "You are my little kite," she says-- totally at the mercy of forces she could not control-- her father's cold absence, her mother's scatterbrained frustration and psychological exhaustion. These, she refers to as a "wayward breeze"-- it's powerful, it's random, and there's nothing the poor kite can do about it.

She also knows that the child was aware of the routine fighting going on between her parents. These, she likens to "household storms" their kite of a child was "caught up" in.

A wayward breeze is bad enough-- a forgotten playdate, a missed birthday party. But for a child to have to hear her the thunder and lightning of her parents fighting is very difficult.

Maybe now the fighting is over, because the father isn't there anymore for her to fight with. But think of a "storm"... and its aftermath. Sure, the sun is out now. That doesn't mean everything is fine, though; what about the felled trees, the downed power lines, the flooded basements left in the storm's wake?

These can be cleaned up and cleared away with some effort. Then, to really make the house look normal again, you're going to need a roller and a can of paint, a mop and a bucket... and a lot of soap and water.

Are there clean breaks? Maybe with inanimate objects. With people, though...


Next Song: Songs in Red and Gray