I Never Wear White

"The Man in Black" is, of course, Johnny Cash; he sings a song by that title as well. But it's also Wesley, in The Princess Bride, as The Dread Pirate Roberts. And then there are The Men in Black, alien hunters from the movie of that title. Now, the 2016 TV show Westworld, based on a 1970s movie, has a character named "Man in Black." (Zorro is also a man in black, although not called as such.)

A quick search reveals that "Man in Black" is used for everyone from racing's Dale Earnhardt to characters from TV's Lost and filmdom's For a Few Dollar's More-- and novels from Stephen King back to... Geoffrey Chaucer!

However, "women in black" are far rarer. The novel The Woman in Black is only from 1983, and everything based on it is even more recent. There is also a movement of anti-war protesters who came to be known as The Women in Black.

Well, now we might finally have a musical Woman in Black to compare to Cash.

The song is basically two lists: one of the kinds of people who do wear white, and then another of those who wear black.

"White," it says, is for: virgins, "children in summer," and brides.

"Black," meanwhile, is for: outlaws, dancers, "the poet of the dark," the crone, the bastard, "the schoolgirl in uniform," "the servant in the hall," the gangster, and the widow.

What's wrong with white? Nothing in general, just that it's wrong for her. Again, why? Well, "white is too blinding/ Always reminding/ Of the innocent who fall."

So, black is either for those who already fell, or for those who were never innocent to begin with and started, so to speak, on the floor. "Those," as she puts it, "of my station in life" (see the above list).

Black, furthermore, "is for secrets... it's the shade and the shadow." While white is "blinding" and revealing, black hides, and allows things to be hidden. While white shows things to the eye, black is "the depth into your eye," the pupil, the part that sees. Yes, ironically, it is the blackest part of the eye that lets the light in.

Let's look again at the list of black-wearers. The outlaw and gangster are criminals; of course they need to hide. The poet doesn't need to hide, but prefers to, the better to observe without being observed. The widow wears black out of grief and somberness; she is not supposed to attract men's romantic attention with color. So these prefer black by choice.

The servant is never to be the center of attention, but is meant to serve those who are. The old crone and bastard are, by their nature, outcasts and affronts to decent society, and so shunted into the shadows. The schoolgirl is likewise deemed unimportant by society-- she is both young and female, making her doubly dismiss-able. These are made to wear black so that they fade into the background, even against their will.

Then there is the dancer. She chooses to wear black, yet is in the spotlight! Public as she is, she as a person is less important than her art, her movements. By wearing black, she disappears as an individual, and becomes a mere screen on to which the audience projects its self-image.

"Black is the truth of my situation," the speaker concludes. "All other colors lie." So she either is made to wear black but has embraced it, or has chosen it outright. It allows her to hide.

Musically, the song is one of Vega's hardest-rocking numbers, at least since 99.9oF.

Next song: Portrait of the Knight of Wands

Fool's Complaint

This is a song about tarot cards, a series of cards with pictures which, according to superstition, can tell your future and fate when dealt and "read" by a psychic. This is not the first time Vega has discussed this topic; see the song "Predictions."

There are two cards discussed. One is the Queen of Pentacles (there are some cards with no suits; others have suits of Cups, Swords, Wands, or Pentacles-- five-pointed stars). The other is The Fool, or jester, similar to the Joker in a typical deck of playing cards and likewise suit-less.

The song is short, and mostly an attack on the Queen of Pentacles. I am no expert in tarot, so I looked this card up. Evidently, it is a card related to a focus on the home and what a pregnant couple would call "nesting."

The speaker sees this card, however, as representing a domesticity that precludes wandering. It's not just the Queen prefers to stay home, she insists upon it; this is "domestic tyranny." And, since she will not leave her imperious "golden throne," all things must be brought to her-- and yes, that means all things.

The speaker likens this selfishness to being like a "drain" in a sink or bathtub, whose "vortex" sucks everything toward its bottomless abyss. She is also likened to Rome, in that "all roads lead" to her; "her needs and wants and wishes and whims/ All take precedence."

Since she never works for her gains, she doesn't value them ("never knowing any cost"), or those who bring them to her. She has even invented a game of "fetch" with her servants, as if they were dogs: she "throws around her finery/ For us to fetch when it gets lost."

The speaker decries this state, for both its static sameness and its spoiled selfishness.

Luckily, this is not the speaker's card! Her card is "the Fool." The Fool is not bitter, but "merry." The Fool is not stolid, but a "rootless... with air beneath [his] footstep." The Fool is not confined by schedules, either, but has "Providence as [his] plan."

And the speaker identifies with this attitude, claiming it as her own. She excoriates the whiny, bratty Queen of Pentacles and embraces the happy, happy-go-lucky Fool.

And... that's the whole song. I told you it was short.

Next Song: I Never Wear White

Crack in the Wall

This is the first track off of Vega's album, Tales from the Realm of the Queen of Pentacles; it was released in 2014 (shortly before I began this blog).

The song has a very interesting rhyme scheme. For the first two verses, it's a b c b c c d b (as long as we rhyme "sun" with "ravine" and "scene"). Then the last verse is longer; it starts the same but then keeps going: a b c b c c d b e e f b.

The song's lyric is structured like a traditional fantasy story. Instead of a wardrobe leading to Narnia, a rabbit hole leading to Wonderland, or a train platform leading to Hogwarts, our speaker sees the following: "A crack appeared inside a wall/ A door sprang up around it... a wildish wind blew it open wide." 

While such stories are always about young people and the speaker is not that, nevertheless she has a "childish mind" and enters. After all, the door seemed to be made especially for her to find: "I could not believe I found it." 

Once she entered, did she find the fantastical fauna of Pandora from Avatar, the outlandish characters in Willy Wonka's factory, or the mystifying creatures of Oz? After all, she says, "A world of wonder lay without"...

"It was all of nature's calling." She's... outside. In nature. A really spectacular example of nature, but basically just outdoors. She lists: "field, forest, cloud, sun, heights and valleys, ravines, ivy, thorny scenes."

Still, she is enraptured, saying that she was "surrounded" by her "heart's delight." What made this "lap of nature's sprawling" so amazing? Well, there were "cascades of salt water falling," and that doesn't usually happen; saltwater is already in the sea, and the rivers that form waterfalls on the way to the sea are freshwater, having been made by rain or melted snow. 

But aside from that salient (pun intended) fact, she felt delighted to be there because "each thing did love its place."

The chorus is simply "And so, and so it goes." This is a commonplace expression, but it is one popularized by Kurt Vonnegut in his book Slaughterhouse Five; in it, Vonnegut's narrator is usually saying "so it goes" while reacting to something negative, often a death, with a feeling between acceptance and resignation... but sometimes rue. 

Back to our song. The speaker meet "the one whose land it was" and asks for a "token," something to take back to her world as a private souvenir. She is told "no" three times. The way she phases this is that she was "thrice denied," which echoes the three times Peter denies that he knows Jesus in one night (as Jesus predicts). She asks one more time, as humbly as possible, without any "pride"...

..."and found [she'd] lost that world." Oh, no. She has somehow been cast out-- or more pointedly, cast back in, to within her wall.

She has "returned as one now broken/ To a crumb, a rag, a withered leaf." This is how she sees her world-- the one she'd always lived in before entering that "door"-- now. 

She freezes in the "chilly wind of cold relief." Wait, why is she relieved? We thought she was sad to be back. Perhaps this uses the other meaning of "relief," a sculpture carved into a wall. When something is said to be "thrown into relief" it is made real, given depth. 

Like Dorothy returning from Oz, she is "as from a dream awoken." 

But also like Dorothy, she can go back (there are more than a dozen books in the Oz series). Alice returns through the lookingglass, and the children pass through the wardrobe into and out of Narnia as if it had a revolving door. 

Here, too, the speaker ends her song: "But then a crack appeared inside a wall/ And a door sprang up around it." She gets to go back in... as long as she never takes anything out with her.

In most cases, we imagine the questing youth going "into" the new world. Here, the speaker goes "outside" through the door that the crack opens in the wall; the world of wonder lay not "within" but "without."

She lives in a world of walls. A house, a city. She has had the opportunity to explore nature-- maybe she went camping?-- and now sees her urban world pale by comparison. But she knows that to return with a shell or stone is to subtract from the very nature she loves.

Now, however, she has something more important that a thing to remind her of that wondrous place-- she has a way to get back to it. And she can't wait until she does.

There, "each thing did love its place." The same seems not to be the case in the city. At least for her; she realizes she hates it there.

(While the young adult novels referenced herein are relatively recent, in history-of-literature terms, the idea of going through a portal into another world is at least as old at the tale of Orpheus following Eurydice through a cave into Pluto's cavernous underworld.)

Vega's first song on her first album in years is "Crack in the Wall," and the first song on her debut was "Cracking." Does she consider this album, seven years after her previous one, some sort of new debut? 

Next Song: Fool's Complaint

The Silver Lady

This rare track is available on volume 4 of the Close Up series.

What starts off as a traditional folksong turns into a meditation on an issue of incredible emotional trauma-- what to do with an elderly parent, especially one with mental-health issues.

The song begins as if describing a child's visit with an imaginary fairy-friend: "When I was a little girl... I once spoke to the Silver Lady/ But I never saw her again." It continues that this mystical lady "flew out of the sky" and could go "riding on the water" and on a "golden pony." So, typical fairy-tale imagery.

Then there is a note of sadness: "Only once did I hear her laugh/ And it echoed far and lonely." So, despite her otherworldly trappings, she is not some sort of angel. She was "the crazy man's only daughter," which might have something to do with her state of mind.

We now hear the conversation alluded to in the opening verse, about the one time our speaker actually "spoke with the Silver Lady." The conversation took place on a riverbank.

The child approached the Lady, who was crying, to comfort her: "If I had wings like you, I would be flying... and singing."

She says she had no wings-- perhaps she only looked like she was flying when she was galloping on horseback?-- or "I would surely be gone."

She continues that she is her father's only daughter, but that he had older sons... who all left her to take care of their "crazy" father, who is also aging.

And now, she is torn. She wants desperately to leave, and is feeling strangled by her being tethered to him: "I feel the ocean pulling me... I want to go with [the breezes]... This life is killing me." But how can she leave him, helpless and alone? Plus, her abandonment would "break his heart."

She turns away, and the child follows the river back home.

"The next day I heard she had taken her horse/ And gone off to parts unknown." This is the first point we know for certain that the Lady is not just a figment of the child's vivid imagination. 

So the Lady does leave. And her father? He stayed at home, stopped coming into town, and started "roaming down by the riverside." And if rumors are to be believed, he committed suicide, drowning himself in the river.

The speaker never saw the Silver Lady again. But now, she says, "when I felt a silver breeze/ I knew she had sent it from wherever she was/ To tell us that now she was free."

For a song that begins in fantasy, the scenario is all too real. The "burnout" felt by caregivers, especially those who care for those with Alzheimer's and other conditions, can be devastating, as can the guilt of leaving them. And far too often, it is their daughters left with this obligation, while the sons are free to leave and start their own families. 

Today, at least for those of us in cities, there are several options. Caregivers can be given respite workers to take care of their loved ones, so that they can continue to have somewhat-normal lives. And in some cases, the best option is round-the-clock professional care in a dedicated facility, provided by people working in shifts to avoid exactly this sort of burnout.

Mental illness never takes a break, let alone a vacation. But human beings, even machines, cannot be expected to work ceaselessly. The Silver Lady should have insisted that her brothers help. She could have reached out to her neighbors, to the local clergy or other charitable organizations. But it sounds like this all took place in a rural setting, with few such resources.

What begins as a child's fairytale of a beautiful Silver Lady turns out to be a lesson in how poorly society has dealt with mental illness throughout most of its history. At least now things are beginning to change, so that women don't have to go gray-- sorry, "silver"-- so young.

Next Song: Crack in the Wall 

Brother Mine

Vega considers this the first song she ever wrote, at 14. It's a country song, dedicated to her kid brother, Matthew. But it wasn't released until her Close Up 4 album.

While it's about being a big sister, the tone is fairly maternal; she even leads off by calling him "Sonny boy." She notices that needs new shoes, and also "just about everything," so she plans a shopping trip.

Perhaps she saw his beat-up shoes by the door first, then his face once she got further inside the house. Because most people would first notice his black eye that isn't mentioned until the second verse.

Yes, his eye is "black and swollen," because he got into "another fight." She calls him a "troublemaker," and irresponsible for needing medical attention when they "don't have much money."

She seems to back off a bit-- "Maybe I shouldn't yell/ I know you're just a kid." But really, it's only her tone she is apologizing for, not her message. She is, in fact, in earnest: "I don't expect you to get everything just right/ But I think you ought to use a little more sense."

She admits that she tends to "worry too much," and that she should accept that "what [he's] got to do, [he'll] go ahead and do it."

Until now, she has ended every statement with "I know everything will be all right," or "I think everything will be all right." After she tells him to use more sense, she says, "Maybe then things will be all right." So they will be... and now are not. And, it's his, or at least his impulsiveness', fault.

But now the she realizes that she can't be there to police him at all times, this is going to keep happening. And she lets slip a note of doubt: "I sure hope things will be all right." Maybe her intuition is smarter than her optimism..?

Well, right now, it's bedtime, so all she wants is to kiss him goodnight. So she tucks him in...

...with a not-quite-comforting observation: "I know if you were gone, I'd miss the sound of laughter." Wait, she's 14 and he's her kid brother, so even younger. What makes her think he's "going" anywhere, and somewhere she'd "miss" him? He's certainly going to be coming home every evening for the foreseeable future, right, and not off to college or the army or an overseas business trip. Or does she think his impulsiveness is going to get him, well, killed?

If she is that worried about him getting into "trouble" he can't get out of, she needs to tuck him in, then go have a conversation with her parents about him.


Next Song: The Silver Lady