Lolita

Sting, in "Don't Stand So Close to Me," refers to "that famous book by Nabakov." The book he means is Lolita. It is the tale of a man who lusts after a young woman, as in too young.

Most of the works based on this character, like Sting's song and Stanley Kubrick's movie, were created by men, as was the original. Vega's response, as a woman, is to address the character directly; the speaker takes it upon herself to offer a somewhat motherly "a word of protection."

"Lolita, almost grown... go on home," urges the speaker. Have some dignity, she advises, and "Don't be a dog all your life... beg[ging] for some little crumb of affection... a token of blood or tenderness."

The "blood" may refer to the blood that often (but not always!) occurs when the hymen is disturbed during initial intercourse.

This Lolita is trying to "be somebody's wife," and that is not what she needs to be pursuing at this point in her life.

But how can the speaker presume to talk to her, what does she know? Well, a lot, as it happens, and from personal experience: "I've been when you are standing... in your mother's black dress," trying to appear older than she is.

She is "leaning in the doorway" provocatively. But being in a doorway is also being, metaphorically, in a place of transition from one status to the next; she is "almost" grown, but not quite-- so, on the threshold, in the doorway as it were, of adulthood.

Why is this Lolita acting this way? The speaker knows: "So hungry/ For the one understanding." Well, says the speaker, don't go to men for that. Here, I'll be your friend, I'll understand better than any man could.

So don't trade your youth and innocence-- and body-- for the understanding that is not forthcoming from some... guy, dear. Go on home.


Next Song: Honeymoon Suite

Song of Sand

This song is reminiscent of Sting's "Fragile" in three ways: It is short, it has a sparse acoustic arrangement, and it is anti-war. At least, the second verse of this one is.

Oh, also-- both mention "rain" that has not fallen yet, and the idea that blood leaves a "stain."

The first verse is set somewhere sandy-- perhaps a desert or beach-- presumably with sine wave-shaped dunes. She calls these "sand waves." To the speaker, they look like sound waves, and so she imagines what "song" they would make, if in fact they were that.

She would want it to be a "stinging" tune, something sharp and piercing. This seems at odds with the usually smooth, rounded shape one associates with sand dunes. So why does she want something honed to a point?

So it "Could split this endless noon/ And make the sky swell with rain." The heat is so endless, relentless, and intense, that it has felt as hot as noon all day. Wouldn't it be nice if the sky were to somehow be spit open so that the rain could fall and cool everyone off?

This hope for rain makes it more likely, then, that we are in the desert. At the beach, one could just run into the actual water waves and get refreshed.

It's also interesting to note that this verse is comprised of two, if related, questions. The second verse is, grammatically, all one question.

Aside from the opening "if," the second verse seems to have nothing to do with the first. This is where the anti-war message is offered.

"If war were a game" that were winnable... the implication is that it is not. Even winning costs a great deal of human life and pain. And today's wars, especially, are not fought with other nations who can surrender or sign treaties, but with amorphous, hydra-like organizations that feed on grudges and resentment. They never lose (even if they never can win), because as long as they keep fighting, the "war" is still on, in their minds.

But, if there was such a "game"-- and games have rules, yes?-- then "What kind of rule/ Can overthrow a fool" (presumably, the enemy) bloodlessly? The idea is to win but "leave the land with no stain."

That would be a useful rule, indeed. The bloodless revolution is always preferable. Diplomacy, pressure, economic sanctions-- there are many alternatives to war that can achieve the same results, with much less loss of life.

As the war-gaming computer Joshua learns in the movie WarGames, "the only winning move is not to play." Unfortunately, war is often not a game that one can choose not to play. The speaker knows this, which is is why she begins with "if."

One interesting word is "child." She asks about a child winning a war, which is odd because even in those horrifying cases in which children are made the take up arms, they generally are not running the war and certainly did not start it. Perhaps she means that only a child-like person sees war as a game, and a winnable one at that.

The song is pretty, but not cohesive. The first verse wonders: if sand waves were made audible, could they produce a song that would call forth rain from a cloudless sky? The second asks: What if there were a rule of war-- assuming that war was a game, and a winnable one at that-- that could automatically make the opponent step down from power without a fight?

These are interesting questions, but not related. It seems as if the producer said that there were a few more minutes on the CD, and would Vega like to put something there? And she looked in her notebook and said, "Well, I have these two ideas. I'm not sure they are a song, though, together." And the producer said, "Why don't you sing them and we'll see?" And they were pretty enough, and now here they are... or it is.

As to which war is meant...? This album was released in 1992. The Gulf War took place the year before. In 1992 itself, there were wars in Rwanda, Somalia, Bosnia, Croatia, Georgia (the country), and Afghanistan, as well as unrest in Iraq. It is too hard, sadly, to say which-- if any specific-- war Vega was thinking of, or which "fool" she was hoping was to be deposed; many of these wars involved a brutal dictator, in which he was attacking a weaker neighbor or his own citizens.

The song seems a somewhat haphazard way to end the disc, even if the song did recall her earlier albums. Which she already did with "Blood Sings," a much stronger and cohesive song.

The song also calls to mind two other tiny songs. One is "Song for the Asking," the last song on Bridge Over Troubled Water, itself the last Simon and Garfunkel album. The other is "Her Majesty," a cute ditty that ends Let It Be, itself (by some lights) the last Beatles album. It's sort of a song to send you out the door, with a parting thought.


Next Song: Woman on the Tier  

Blood Makes Noise

This is another song in which Vega discusses a disease. In this case, tinnitus. This inner-ear malady's name shares a root with "tintinnabulation," or "the ringing of bells."

So yes, this is the disease that involves, as she says, "a ringing in my ears." To the accompaniment of clanging, thumping music, she describes the "noise" in her ears: "I'm standing in a windy tunnel."

There is a type of tinnitus that means the ear has become hypersensitive to electrical impulses in the body. But Vega here refers to the "pulsatile" version of the disorder, in which changes in either the blood flow or the ear make the heartbeat, the "pulse," more audible. Or, as she more bluntly puts it, "blood makes noise."

The song is presented as a one-way conversation between a patient and her doctor. However, it is almost impossible to discuss the disease because of the disease-- she can't hear her own words or his responses: "I'd like to give the information... I think you might want to know/ The details and the facts," she apologizes, but "I'm shouting through the roar... I can't really hear you."

In the end, the disease wins out. "Forget it Doc," the patient capitulates. "I think it's really cool that you're concerned/ But we'll have to try again after the silence has returned." Which, of course, it will not... on its own. The must be a medical intervention.

One would hope that they doctor would not be satisfied by his patient's frustration and agree to call it a day. First, there is reason to fear that the symptom indicates larger problem. If something is restricting the blood flow-- a clot, a tumor, some plaque, a kink in a blood vessel-- at least some scans are indicated.

Second, there is the patient's mental well-being. She is in denial, but has admitted to a "thickening" or increasing "of fear." The patient even blames the blood itself for causing her to forget what might have triggered the problem: "There's something in my blood/ [That] denies the memory of the acts."

Even without a doctor's training, the patient guesses there is a potentially larger issue at hand. What the patient needs is an advocate like the one in Vega's earlier song "Fifty-fifty Chance" who says: "I hate to ask, I need to know."

Let's hope the doctor has dealt with other patients whose hearing loss creates a communication barrier he or she has overcome. There are multiple solutions, the most obvious of which is a pen and paper. Taking turns typing on the doctor's laptop might even be faster and more legible to both parties, as well as allowing for easy revisions and a record of the conversation.

The patient is sitting on the "butcher paper" in the exam room and is starting to babble with worry. A good doctor will wait, listen, then calmly respond, diffusing the stress and finding a way to communicate past the "noise" and the rising panic it is causing.


Next Song: In Liverpool

The Queen and the Soldier

It should be noted at the outset that this song is in "waltz time," or 3/4, and interesting departure for a folk song, but appropriate to the European court setting of the narrative.

The story is about a soldier who confronts his queen. He wants two questions answered: "Who's the woman for whom we all kill?"... and "why" do they kill for her at all?

He starts off, perhaps, on the wrong foot. Rather than ask these questions, he starts first by saying he refuses to fight for her anymore. Well, what if she did have a good reason? After all, he is a soldier, so he may not think that all killing is wrong.

In any case, he begins by saying this, and then he says many more things. Rather than use silence to draw her out, he (very soldier-like) keeps trying until he gets a response. By the end of the song, the queen has barely spoken at all. But let's start at the top.

First, the soldier approaches the queen's "door." Why she has a front door (and not, say, a drawbridge) and why she answers it (and not some guard) we don't know. The queen "knew she'd seen his face someplace before," but we don't know if she tells him that. In any case, she never asks.

Even after his open insubordination, she lets him "inside." As we shall see, this is not just a physical invitation, but an emotional one.

The soldier repeats his declaration of disobedience: "I am leaving tomorrow and you can do what you will." At this point, it's a wonder that she suffers him to live, let alone desert, but perhaps she is intrigued by his brashness.

Shockingly, she invites him into her bedroom. Perhaps she has needed this excuse, all along, to unburden herself of something, of her reasons for continuing the war.  But "she never once took the crown from her head," letting him know who is still in charge.

And then... he talks again! Clearly, she means to tell him something, but his impatience wins out. Perhaps, more than an answer, he wants a chance to unburden himself. He wanted to know for whom he kills, and now that he has met her, he observes, "You are so very young." He also says that they are losing the war: "I have seen more battles lost than I have battles won."

Finally, she speaks: "You won't understand, and you may as well not try." But he's not buying it. She didn't bring him into her private chambers to tell him... that she wasn't going to tell him anything. Now, she seems vulnerable, though: "Her face was a child's, and he thought she would cry." It seems that he might pity her. That she might be suffering somehow. Maybe if he fixed it, she would feel better, and then perhaps she'd even call off the war.

Then she says her longest statement: "I've swallowed a secret burning thread/ It cuts me inside, and often I've bled." This enigmatic statement, however, is really only a recapitulation of her previous one: "I'm not telling you because I can't." But yes, she is suffering, and yes, the battle is her way-- however horrifying-- of coping. If she can't be happy...

It may be, given her age, that she has begun menstruating: "often I've bled," she says, from "inside." She says she feels she is being "cut... inside" by a "thread"-- a fair description of menstrual cramping. And she may even have swallowed a string at some point in childhood, and now mistakenly attributes both symptoms to this. It may also be that, as she is a young queen, her mother is not there to guide her through this experience (having died and left her daughter queen), and so she developed this other theory herself.

The soldier then does something odd. He doesn't probe further, asking, "What do you mean by a 'thread'?" He doesn't offer her unconditional acceptance. He doesn't say, "If you tell me, and I think it's a good cause, I will fight again,"

Instead, he places his hand on her head and bows her to the ground. It may be at this point that her crown falls off.

Now that she has semi-revealed her secret, he asserts (again, like a soldier) his victory. He begins to say condescending things, accusing her of being "hungry" and "weak." He may think he is being understanding, but he forgets that, crown or no, she is still queen. And even now that she has semi-answered his question, he repeats that he will not fight for her.

Since this is likely the first man she has had any openness with, it is not odd that she quickly develops an infatuation: "She wanted more than she ever could say," knowing that a queen does not marry a commoner. She is "frightened" by her feelings, and "ashamed." After all, to love is to be vulnerable, and a queen leading a battle can be nothing of the sort.

Surprisingly, he confesses that he is falling for her! A woman who daily puts him in mortal peril, and does not even have the decency to give him a reason. Yet, she is young and troubled-- and in a song, this is often enough.

All of this is too much for her. Predictably, the soldier is killed at her order. The outward reason, of course, is his blatant insubordination. But the deeper reason is that he potentially wields power over the queen, and that is not acceptable.

The queen doesn't need a man-- she is not ready for one in any case. She needs a mother. Someone who can teach her what being a woman, and a queen means. Someone who can show her that vulnerability is strength. Instead, the queen continues "strangling in solitude," and the battle rages on.

For the soldier, the moral of the story is: if you going to desert, desert. Sneak away silently, even if you never knew why you were fighting. Don't lose your head over it.

IMPACT: Vega became the first celebrity to perform a concert in Second Life, a virtual-reality world in cyberspace, with this song.

Next Song: Knight Moves