New York is My Destination

Vega is from New York, but Carson McCullers (the author this album is about) was born in Georgia, so let's say this is in her voice.

Why is she going to New York? And not just to visit but to stay ("New York is where I will be from")? Because "New York is made for grander things, just like me!" What grander things? "Mountains of fame and fortune."

She imagines that the "literati"-- the most highly regarded authors and their set-- "will love me." The
"paparazzi," who stalk the famous to photograph them, will do so to her. The "glitterati" (a portmanteau of "glitter" and "literati") are wealthy sophisticates in general-- actors, models, splashy business-people, Hollywood insiders-- have also "heard of" her. Well, they will, of course, once she gets there.

The rest of the song is largely about partaking on many of New York's storied locales. "The Algonquin" is a hotel notable for its attracting many famous wags and raconteurs in the early part of the 20th Century, like Harpo Max and Dorothy Parker. "The Plaza" is a posh hotel notable for being just that.

Other places mentioned largely serve young and/or single women. "The Three Arts Club" teaches painting, drama and music and gives students a chance to display and perform their work publicly. "The Parnassus" (named after Apollo's mythical mountain) is a boarding house, largely for Julliard students (more about which below). And "Columbia" in this case is a university. "Fifth Avenue" is a major Manhattan street, noted for its high-fashion shopping.

Riding "buses" on this street, she imagines participating in conversations like: "I lost all my money for Julliard (a major performing-arts college); "I hid in the phone booth at Macy's (a major department store)" and even "I slept in a brothel on my way to my destiny." As they say back in Columbus, Georgia: mercy me!

Not only can she not wait to get to New York, she concludes, New York can't wait until she gets there! "New York's waiting for me!" she enthuses.

And they didn't know it at the time, but it seems they were.

Next Song: We of Me

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

Ironbound/ Fancy Poultry

This song uses what is called a "motif," an image that recurs several times. The motif is the idea of things, people, and places being "ironbound."

There is an overhead structure, probably the trestle from an elevated commuter train: "Beams and bridges... the rails run 'round." Its beams-- along with the random wires overhead in any city-- don't so much block the sunlight as bisect into "little triangles."

The trestle is supported by iron beams, regularly spaced. This colonnade makes the "section" beneath it feel "ironbound." Other areas shown to be bounded by iron fencing are the "schoolyard" and the "market." The iron is old, with much visible "rust." This has been going on a long, long time.

And, ultimately, the "border" between the residents and any other possible life is, likewise, "ironbound." This area's many fenced in subsections are revealed as the characters move through them.

The only action is of a woman dropping her child off at school, then going to the market. By watching her, we learn something about her life and circumstances.

She lives near a marketplace where live chickens are displayed and butchered onsite for sale. We see "the blood and feathers near her feet," and later hear the cries of the chicken sellers.

The woman is of indistinct ethnicity-- we are told that her skin is of a "light and sweet coffee color"-- but perhaps she is Portuguese like others in her neighborhood.

We "watch" her walk her son up to the gate of the school. Both are "bound up in iron and wire and fate." The iron beams and metal wires that surround them serve as a metaphor for a prison of a sort, a place and situation that cannot be escaped.

She has some hope for the children, however. Aside from the chickens and the people, the only living thing there is some scraggly, hardy vegetation. She knows the children "will grow like weeds on a fence... they come up through the cracks." She tells us that they "try to make sense" of their situation.
But she stops short of saying they will be able to do anything about it.

"She touches him goodbye," but does not embrace or kiss her son. Perhaps he is too old to be comfortable with such displays in front of his classmates. Or perhaps the very coldness and restrictiveness of their environment has chilled such usual parental warmth.

Leaving the schoolyard, "she stops at the stall," presumably the one selling chickens. She "fingers the ring," probably a wedding ring. Where is her husband, the boy's father? Did he leave for work earlier? Is he home, unemployed? Did he divorce her, simply fly, or even die?

She "feels a longing," but, it seems, not for him. She longs to be, simply, "away from the ironbound border." What seems to trigger the longing, after all, is not the ring. It's the opening of her purse. Why would the routine act of finding money for groceries in her wallet call forth this emotional reaction? Does she miss the man less than the financial stability he provided?

Does she struggle with the idea of selling or pawning the ring, as if doing so would be an admission of the finality of the man's departure? That he left or died and is never coming back? If it's all she has left of him, we can well imagine her dilemma.

The song closes with the cry of the chicken vendor. But it is clear that this sub-song (it has its own title) is also meant to symbolize the treatment of women. It even calls to mind the specter of female trafficking and prostitution.

What is being sold? "Breasts and thighs," the visible parts of a woman most often sexualized. Also, "hearts" are for sale-- emotional commitment can be had for a price. "Backs," the part associate with work (as in "back-breaking labor") are cheap; for not much, you can have a woman cook and clean for you. She could be a maid, a wife, does it matter?

And "wings"? They are "nearly fee." Chicken wings do not have much meat, and so would be sold cheaply. But metaphorically, a woman's "wings"-- her senses of independence and freedom-- are only "nearly" free. Not free... enough. Still, ultimately, ironbound.


Next Song: In the Eye