Carson McCullers was an American novelist. Vega has been a lifelong affinity for her (Carson was a woman) work and even wrote a play about her life.
This song is the first of an album, Lover, Beloved: An Evening with Carson McCullers. It is the soundtrack to Carson McCullers Talks About Love (with the same subtitle), Vega's one-woman show about the writer, whom Vega plays.
The song is only two verses long. The first lists a number of things that the speaker says she'd been compared to or called: "A wounded sparrow," "a fallen deer," "a childish liar," "a devilish bitch."
At first, she denies being cruel, while owning that she has two sides: "I'm an iron butterfly." McCullers may not have known, but Vega certainly does, that there is a classic rock band called Iron Butterfly; while they formed a year before McCullers' death, they were not widely known until a year after.
Then, the speaker cops to sometimes being surprisingly harsh: "I can be sweet I can be wise... I can be innocent and charming and suddenly switch" to the opposite.
Even so, she still has an excuse: "you've got to understand that I've never belonged." Well, which is the cause and which the effect? Is it possible that someone who comes across as nice and then lashes out venomously might have have a hard time keeping friends?
Despite looking in from the outside, or perhaps due to that state, she says she has everyone pegged: "I've got every one of you mirrored in my deep sad eyes/ I know where you've been to and who you're afraid to be." She even quotes the Roman playwright Terence: "Nothing that is human is alien to me."
And how, without having "belonged," does she do this research? "I talk to strangers."
This short song is a portrait of someone who has said to humanity at large, "You can't fire me, I quit." Having been rejected for so long, she has begun pre-rejecting potential new friends and poisoning potential relationships. Why go through the trouble of getting hurt when you could be the one inflicting the pain?
Next Song: New York is My Destination
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