Silver Bridge

The idea of dying being a "crossing over" into another land or place is a universal one. So is the idea of that other land being across a body of water that has to be rowed across... or perhaps spanned with a bridge.

This song is about watching someone standing on that bridge cross over it. In other words, it's about someone dying.

The song starts with the end of the story, that it is about a "recently departed" individual who went into "that land uncharted."

There is foreshadowing in the "old man" going up to his room by "the stairway he ascended" after a goodnight kiss. The speaker reports him "struggle" all night to live, yet also reaching out to "Saturn," the king of the mythical gods.

The speaker enters the room, not sure what to do and "frozen" with indecision and "wonder." She simply "stared upon his body" in the "silver" moonlight. This moonbeam she images as the "silver bridge" in the title, between here and the hereafter.

Yet, she does nothing, having "witnessed all there was to see." She doesn't "move to him," since he "wasn't [hers] for claiming." Instead, she "withdrew."

Then she realizes he is, in fact, dead, "so much more than sleeping." She stays with him as a "vigil" the rest of the night and morning and even into the "afternoon." (Why she does not alert the authorities-- or the party for which he was "for claiming"-- much sooner is not mentioned, but highly irregular. Most would call as soon as they realized the person had died, or even if they thought he might be dying.)

The experience has had a profound impact on the speaker. She wonders about sleepless nights, and if they represent a form of "standing on that bridge." And, if so, "which way are you facing?" Is it the Land of the Living, or the "land uncharted"?

The lines are thin between sleep, unconsciousness, coma, brain death, death itself, and even animal and plant states like stasis and hibernation. It is understandable that a person with no medical training might not be able to tell the difference, certainly not by simple observation from several feet away.

The speaker seems to understand this and does not berate herself for not getting help sooner. She sincerely thought he was asleep.

But now, it seems, she is having trouble sleeping herself. And more troubled, in that she feels troubled by her inability to sleep... and worried about what that means, and what it portends.


Next Song: Song of the Stoic

As You Are Now

This song is a lullaby to Vega's daughter, Ruby.

In it, she promises to save souvenirs of her daughter's life: her "tears," her "teeth" that fell out as a child, and her "hair" which was, we assume, regularly cut.

Now, the album's copyright date is 2007, and Ruby was born in 1994, which would make the "child" about 13 when the album came out. Since she had long since stopped losing her teeth, we have to imagine that the song was written long before.

So why include it on an album at this point? Because this is a divorce album. While many of the songs herein are about her ex and their break-up, Vega is more than just an ex-wife. She is also a mother, and she wants her child to be reassured that her love for her continues unabated.

What better way that to say, "Listen to this song I wrote you when you were just a girl! You're still my daughter now, and I still love you as much."

How does one, in practical terms, collect tears? By collecting "salty tissues." She calls these tears "diamonds," referring to the salt crystals left behind after she, it says, dries the tissues in the sun.

And teeth? In a "cardboard box." These are like another gemstone, "pearls," and they remind her of "laughter." There is a pun here-- the teeth are kept in "ticking," which is tough but decorative cotton or linen fabric. The line is that the teeth are kept "through the ticking and the tocks," as in the tick-tock of passing time.

The hair-- evidently a ponytail snipped off all at once-- will be woven into a "braid of gold/ For you to keep when you are old."

The mother then finishes the lullaby with a "kiss" on her "milky skin." Then she tucks the child, and her "soul," in a "sheet of silk."

The child will have given her mother all of these keepsakes of her growth and development. What will the mother pay her with for these gifts? Why, the kiss itself: "Put this kiss upon your brow."

Then comes the line that gives us the title: "Treasure you as you are now."

It doesn't, you will note, say "I will treasure you." No, the verbs are "put" and then "treasure." So who should be doing the putting and treasuring?

The child. She should put her mother's kiss on herself. She should treasure herself. As she is now. Whenever "now" is.

Her mother will have memories of the baby, the toddler, the girl, the teen, and the young woman, and she will collect mementos of those moments. The child however, needs to treasure each moment as it comes, and herself as she experiences it.

Alternately, one could read the verse as one long sentence: "now I kiss... put... treasure." In this, perhaps more literal, reading, the mother kisses the daughter on her forehead (and the "sheet," for some reason... and, somehow, her "soul") and treasures her as she is now.

The tenses are of note. She says she will collect the tears, teeth, and hair... but that she is "now" kissing, tucking, and treasuring her. Which implies that, at the time of the song's writing, the child had yet to lose any teeth, but still had time to grow a substantial ponytail. On average, the first "baby" teeth fall out at 6 or so, and therefore that's not really on a parent's radar until the kid approaches that age. We're going to say Ruby was 5 when the song was written... or that it was written to make it seem so.

Again, the song is now offered to the young adolescent whose parents are divorcing as a way of saying, "While a wife and husband can stop loving each other, a parent never stops loving a child. I still have your baby teeth and your childhood ponytail, and I still treasure you as well."


Next Song: "Angel's Doorway."

Rusted Pipe

Another song about illness. It seems that the patient was able to speak and move once, but has since lost those abilities due to, perhaps, a head trauma or stroke. Now, they are beginning to regain these abilities, slowly and haltingly...

Through speech therapy of some sort, which has just begun: "Now the time has come to speak."

The speaker compares her ability to make sounds to "water through a rusted pipe." The sounds are sometimes human, like a "stutter," "moan," or a "mutter," sometimes animalistic, like a "hiss" (which could also be made by steam). Mostly, they are water-like, as she said to begin with: "gurgle," "rush," "foam."

The overall impression is that the words are halting, staccato, and intermittent. Above all, unintelligible.

The passage, from a literary standpoint, is a small masterwork of onomatopoeia. But not alliteration! There is the opposite of that-- competing sounds, a cacophony.

Then there is the bridge, which indicates that there was a long "winter" of no sound or movement-- a coma?-- before even this level of progress. The idea of a dormant period being compared to this season as is least as old as Shakespeare's line about a "winter of our discontent."

How is the progress? Speaking is but a "croak," followed by a frustrated, resigned "sigh."

Yet... even this "creak" from "somewhere deep within" her body and psyche "lets the tale begin." There is hope. A tale has a beginning, but then keeps progressing.

Then, in comes the physical therapist, who says, "Now the time has come to move." Similarly, progress is slow and long in coming. But, as before this shambling movement is a step past her earlier status, when she "was not able" to "move" at all.

Again, she compares her movements to water's: "trickle," "freeze." She falls a lot, too: "stumble," "trip," "fumble."

But still-- even though it is a mere "stagger" or "creep"-- there is forward movement. And when her legs fail, her hands can react to help; she is able to "grip."

Most importantly, she has not lost her sense of humor. The last two movements she says she can made are "slip and slide." While this may be a nod to the Paul Simon song "Slip-Slidin' Away," more likely it is an allusion to the childhood toy called a "slip 'n' slide."

This device, introduced in 1961 and an immediate success, is a plastic sheet, at one end of which is a perforated tube running its width. When a hose is connected to the tube, water seeps out of the perforations, rendering the entire sheet almost frictionless. Children then slide on the sheet on their bellies or backs, as if sledding.

That the speaker, in her almost-immobile and exceedingly frustrated state, can still joke is an excellent sign. That she can remember a happy childhood when movement was taken for granted is strong motivation for her to be able to endure the work needed to return to that state.

The "water" of her life-force is still flowing. It is only the "pipe"--its container, her physical body-- that is "rusted." With enough effort, the rust can be scrubbed off and the pipe should return to its healthier, more vigorous function.

Next Song: Book of Dreams

Men in a War

Illnesses, especially unusual ones, are a regular topic for Vega, and this time she deals with Phantom Limb Syndrome. This condition is characterized by the feeling of, well, feeling in a limb that has been amputated. Yes, people can feel sensation, even pain, in an arm or leg they no longer actually have. Every nerve pathway has two ends, and just because one no longer exists in the limb does not mean the other, in the brain or spinal column, falls silent. Not every amputee has phantom limb syndrome, but as many as 60-80% do.

As Vega puts it: "Men... if they've lost a limb/ Still feel that limb/ As they did before." The missing words here are "in a war," although it is not clear that such conditions must have been the ones in which the limb was lost. The arm or leg could also have been taken by an accident or disease, for instance. (I do not know if those born without a given limb can acquire this condition, but it seems unlikely.) 

She imagines a case in which a soldier is in an infirmary-- "on a cot," and not, say, in a hospital bed-- and "feeling the thing he had not." The locution here is awkward, Vega does not write, "feeling the thing he didn't have," which is how one might say it in conversation, to point out the awkwardness of the emotion-- the poor soldier is "mute," unable to express the idea that his missing arm hurts, or afraid to say this for fear of being considered insane.

The verse ends on the word "not." This rhymes with "cot," but more importantly it emphasizes the "not," the idea of absence. It also sounds as if a sentence has been cut off, echoing the limb that has been so. (Now I'm doing it!)

The speaker then empathizes. "I know how it is/ When something is gone," she says. She gives some examples: "A piece of your eyesight," such as with cataracts, glaucoma, or macular degeneration, conditions of the eye that remove or obscure part of one's vision.

Another example? "When something is gone... Maybe your vision." Wait, didn't she just say "eyesight"? So now she means, what, going totally blind? Why not say "A piece of your eyesight, or maybe all of it"?

Probably she means "vision" in the other, more mental sense, as in "one's vision of oneself" or "one's vision of time." We often ask presidential candidates about their "vision" for the country and its future. 

"A corner of sense," she explains, "goes blank on the screen." She imagines the picture in one's mind like a television screen, when part of it stops working. Yes, this can mean that part of a person's vision is impaired, but she says "sense," as in "making sense," as what is "gone." You may have trouble with names, or faces, or recalling recent events, or balancing, or flashbacks-- any number of such glitches.

"A piece of the scan"-- the work of an X-ray machine or desk-top scanner here stands in for the scanning our senses do of the our environment. If we lose our sense of hearing, of brain may "fill in" by memory, the sound of someone's voice when they greet, us the same way you could fill in the rest of a ruined photo with paint.

The speaker says these phenomena are similar to the phantom limb cases. In both situations, the brain uses memory to "fill in the blanks" left by reality. "You know what it was/ And now it is not," she explains. "So you just make do with/ Whatever you've got."

The speaker then reverses the situation. Sometimes, "if your nerve is cut," then, as you might expect, you can no longer feel that part of yourself and make it move. It as if that part of you has lost its volition, its drive. In fact, when someone loses courage, we say they have "lost their nerve." 

"If your nerve is cut," she elaborates, "You don't feel your will/ You can't find your gut." This can be taken two ways. One, literally-- if you have no sensation in your hand or torso, you literally cannot find your gut. Figuratively, you can't find your guts, as in "You can't work in human resources because you can't find the guts to fire people."

The second line of this verse also has two meanings, but is more of a pun. "If you're kept on a stretch," may mean a "stretcher"-- that portable cot used to transport the wounded. But it can also mean under constant psychological stress, "if you are continually stretched thin emotionally." We explain that someone was "stretched to the breaking point" before they "snapped."

She illustrates with an example of a woman who has been under some sort of attack: "She lay on her back/ She made sure she was hid," meaning someone was after her and she was trying to hide. Like the wounded soldier, "she was mute and staring." She was silent-- as one is when one is hiding-- and hyper-aware, making sure her follower was not approaching. 

The woman "did" some "thing"-- perhaps the act that provoked her pursuer. But she is "not feeling" what it was. She is divorced from it, emotionally. This does not mean she is psychotic, necessarily. It just means she is not just now, being in immediate danger and all, able to spare the time to contemplate and psychologically register the relevant emotions. Perhaps later, with a therapist, once she reaches safety.

Vega starts with the idea of a phantom limb and expands upon it to explore the some of the ways in which our brain "helps" us create our realities by supplementing missing information with guesses, memories, and even imaginary physical sensations. Sometimes, however, the brain helps a little too much, and worsens problems rather than solving them. 

Next Song: Rusted Pipe

Tired of Sleeping

This seems to be a song about illness, told from the point of view of the ailing one.

If the idea of "sleeping" is literal, then this person has intense lethargy, such as with chronic fatigue syndrome, or is perhaps in an actual coma. If it is metaphoric, it can be seen as a state of severe depression, in the psychological, clinical sense.

In either case, the person is aware that she is sick and longs for her wakeful energy to return: "I'm tired of sleeping."

Why? She is not having nightmares, at least not insufferable ones: "The dreams are not so bad." Rather, she feels guilty as her lack of productivity, as if she is aware that others are doing everything for her she is usually capable of doing herself: "There's so much to do."

One of the people, perhaps the main person, caring for her is her mother. It is bad enough to have some paid nurse or orderly checking up on you. But to have your own mother continue to have to mother you as adult is heartbreaking.

Next, she becomes aware of an "old man." She realizes that he is trying to communicate with her. However, she "just can't hear what he's saying," either because he is speaking too quietly, or-- since she feels she just can't hear him-- that the fault is her illness'.

Who is he? Her doctor? A priest? We meet him again later for more clues.

First, we switch from an old man to "kids." They are "playing in pennies," that is, gambling with pennies as the stakes. They seem to have plenty to play with, as they are "up to their knees in money."

But they are also up to their knees in "dirt," perhaps the speaker's opinion of what money is worth. "All your money won't another minute buy," sings the rock group Kansas in "Dust in the Wind." So someone near death might see this quest for money as useful as a quest for dirt.

Now, where is this dirt? At the "churchyard steps." This brings religion into the mix. Combined with the pennies, these images together recall the imagery of moneychangers outside the Temple. And we all know how Jesus felt about that.

Further, the kids are at the "steps" of the church, or more at the steps of the "yard" before the "church." Near enough physically to see it. But while gambling, spiritually distant indeed. For the sake of pennies, they forgo the desire to enter the church and find true "riches."

Now, we return to the man. He "ripped out his lining." We are not sure yet why he would do so, but at this point we assume that she means the lining of a coat or suit jacket.

No. He somehow ripped out the lining of his "body"! Yes, "He tore out a piece of his body." Dare we ask which piece? He wanted to show "us"-- the speaker and her mother-- his "clean quilted heart."

This is quite graphic. And also quite impossible. Aside from the anatomical issues, hearts are made of muscle and are not "quilted." We are left to believe this is an hallucination or dream image.

But of what? The most common image of a person holding his own heart is Jesus, with his hands holding the Sacred Heart.

On the other hand... Jesus was not "old." He was only 33 at the time of his death. So this could be a conflation of Jesus and the Father...?

If the old man is a doctor, perhaps she sees him open his lab coat and show her the donor heart she is to receive, but in her illness-addled state, she sees the images she describes.

What is clear is that the image is a subconscious-based one, a dream image or hallucination. Her condition is medical, so it makes sense that her subconscious is showing her anatomical imagery.

The last image is of a "bird" that has been snared. It is "on" a string, but has not landed to perch there, as if on a branch or telephone wire. Rather, it is "hanging" from it. Further, she cannot leave the string, as she would of course be able to if she has simply lighted there. No, she is "twisting," "dancing," and "fighting" to be loose. She knows that "her small life" depends on her breaking free.

This is an apt metaphor for someone in a coma or other such state. The person-- the consciousness that is a person, the self-- is confined in the uncooperative body, like a trapped animal.

She wants to hear what the old man is saying. She wants to do things for herself, and have her mother stop tending her. She is spending all her psychic energy to re-enter the world of interaction and communication, but she is emotionally exhausted. She just wants to be well already!

The lyrics offer no resolution, and leave us with the frustrated invalid. But the music, which repeats the chorus several times, ends with an upward modulation. The entire time, the song has been sung in a low register. The final time, the melody line is noticeably higher, with a shade of echo.

This may be the singer's way of indicating that the soul has left the body and it, at least, is free.


IMPACT:
The song is the first on the album Days of Open Hand. Which won a Grammy. For Best Album Package.

Well, better than nothing.


Next Song: Men in a War