Pilgrimage

This song is about entropy-- or, as it applies to human life-- mortality. So why is the title about a spiritual journey to a holy place?

Let's start with a simpler question: What does the first line of the song mean? "This line is burning..." What line?

She means the line of the song, the line of music, the words she is singing themselves. The words and notes live on the ear for a fraction of a second apiece before dispersing into scattered waves.

Similarly, once a moment in time has passed, it may as well be ash. Its potential has been burned up like a spent matchstick, a used wick, or a piece of kindling. She begins this thought by mentioning the days of the week, and the words "months" and "year."

The next thought concludes logically: "This life is burning." Time started before we were born and will continue after we die. We are here for a few moments, relatively speaking (if the Earth's history were one year, all of human existence would take place in the last hour of December 31). So if time is being burned up, so is our lifetime.

But she holds out a note of hope. Yes, "every death is an end," but for all this "stopping," there is also "starting," or new birth. This is a "march over millions of years," and each generation takes its steps in turn.

All of this progress is pointing where, though? Here is all this "travel." Where is the destination, the "arrival"? The progression is, she says, "toward a source." So... Heaven? It would explain the title-- all of life is a pilgrimage back to the Heaven (which certainly counts as a holy place) from whence we came.

Then the speaker gets both more specific and more enigmatic about her destination: "I'm coming to you." To whom? God? A passed-on relative waiting in Heaven? (If so, this song might link to the previous one. That song was about a suicide attempt; perhaps the person tried to kill themselves to reunite with someone waiting in Heaven, and this song is from her perspective.)

The idea of "burning" and "turning to ash" is now applies to the land. The soil erodes, the continents rise and sink, and the whole Earth itself has a time limit due to the Sun's inevitable collapse.

The speaker closes with a parting gift: "Take this/ Mute mouth/ Broken tongue." The deceased is bequeathing her very silence as an inheritance. Why is silence a gift?

Death, which the speaker says she has been marching toward for years, has arrived. And now the "dark," painful-- perhaps physically so but certainly emotionally so-- life, has hope... the hope of an end.

"Now," that the pilgrimage has ended, the Promised Land of relief and release has been attained: "Now this dark life is shot through with light."

Many who have had near-death experiences speak of seeing a great light. But even without such a vision, the idea of life ending may not seem frightening to some. For those with "dark" lives, an end to such a life just means an end to the darkness, and so, light.

There is a movement now to take the idea of euthanasia a step further. Rather than it only being used to speed an inevitable death and avoid a protracted and agonizing decline, some would like a medically assisted suicide to be available to those with chronic pain, both of the physical and mental varieties. There are fates worse than death, a life of suffering may be one.

The speaker here has made grand claims about the entropy of the universe to rationalize her desire-- we're all dying all the time anyway, so what's the big deal? But really, she just wants to die so that the pain of missing her lost loved one can end.

There is a old comedy line: "If you can't live without me, why aren't you dead yet?" But the question is not funny, or rhetorical, to the speaker here. She would reply, "Give me a minute, I'm working on it."

Is the person making a pilgrimage to Heaven, or to the embrace of a lost loved one? For the speaker, those places are the same.


Next Song: Rock in this Pocket

Wooden Horse

Here, Suzanne Vega treats the mystery of Caspar Hauser. This person appeared one day in 1800s Germany. He, then a teen (possibly 16), made several claims: that he had been held in captivity all his life until then, that his father was a now-deceased cavalryman, and, later, that people were trying to kill him. Over the course of his short life, many kindly people took Hauser in, some of whom later denounced him as a congenital liar; it may have been that he was simply a person with mental issues that included a loose grasp of the truth.

He has been the subject of endless speculation, including that he was of noble blood; this claim has since been weakened by DNA evidence. Whole books have been written on the case of Caspar (or Kaspar, or Gaspard, depending on the language of the author), and much "information" is available online.

Vega's haunting song starts with a line that explains, from Hauser's point of view that he "came out of the darkness" of solitary confinement. He brought one artifact of that time in his life-- one of his toys, a "small, white wooden horse."

Then he makes a claim about this toy: "What was wood became alive." It entirely possible that a person kept in confinement, not even able to see his jailer, would impute life to an inanimate object, if only to keep from deeper insanity. We witnessed this phenomenon in the film Castaway, in which a man (played by Tom Hanks) maintains his sanity on an otherwise uninhabited island by befriending a volleyball on which he draws a face (The brand of the ball is Wilson, and thus he names it; it has been noted that Hank's wife is one Rita Wilson).

"In the night, the walls disappeared/ In the day they returned," Hauser continues, describing the idea that, while dreaming, his thoughts were unconfined. But when he awoke, he was again limited by his reality.

On the day he first became known to the public, he did so by handing a note to a soldier, telling him, "I want to be a cavalryman like my father." This seems to be all he was able to say, at first, aside from "horse." The song repeats that part of Hauser's story.

Barely audibly, Vega sings "And I fell under/ A moving piece of Sun/ Freedom." This may be the reaction of someone who has only recently become aware of the seeming movement of the Sun across the sky after lifelong imprisonment.

Taken into various people's homes, he was occasionally left alone. In several cases, he emerged with unexplained wounds. He began to feel, as the song relates, "afraid [he] may be killed." Since someone was bothering to harm him, he concluded "I know I have a power" that his attacker wanted to extinguish.

As it happened, ive years after he emerged, Hauser was dead, killed by a stab wound. Doctors could only conclude that it may have been self-inflicted. As little is known of Hauser's death as of his childhood and life.

The song, like Hauser's story, and the stories he told about himself, lacks rhyme. And-- given that so many aspects of his life are either unknown, fabricated (by Hauser himself as well as by his supporters and detractors), or the subject of Hauser's being brainwashed by his early jailers-- there is not much reason, either.  

There are monuments in Germany to Hauser, one at his grave and one at the spot at which he was stabbed. A library's worth of books, as well as films and other songs, have treated the subject of this mysterious man and his enigmatic existence.

Vega's conclusion seems to be that, from a few shabby threads, one can weave an identity, a life, and a legacy. This may also be due to the human penchant for seeing patterns where there are none-- we abhor a vacuum as much as Nature itself, and fill it with ourselves.


Next Song: Tired of Sleeping

Solitude Standing

There is a literary trope, used here, with a confusing name. "Apostrophe" is not just the term for that floating punctuation mark, but for the literary technique of speaking to an idea or abstract concept.

For example: "Hello, Darkness, my old friend," or "Death, be not proud," or "America, God shed His Grace on thee." As if the speaker could actually talk to Darkness, Death or America.

Here, the speaker addresses Solitude. It seems that she was in a relationship with another person, which has now ended, and now she is alone "with" Solitude, as it were.

The song starts with the speaker entering a "room." Solitude, who already expected that the speaker would be alone when she arrived, post-breakup, has "been waiting." The "slant of the late afternoon" refers to the steep angle at which the light enters the room through the "window."

But Solitude says nothing, at least at first, by way of greeting. Instead, she extends her palm, which contains a curious item: "Her palm is split with a flower, with a flame."

It helps to know that Vega is a Buddhist. Most likely, this refers to a flaming lotus or similar symbol from that wisdom tradition. Flame is a destructive quantity, and a flower symbolizes creation, life, and birth. This shows the two sides of solitude-- criminals are sent to solitary confinement as a punishment, while hermits seek it for spiritual growth.

In the second verse, Solitude has moved from the "window" to the "doorway." There is still a light behind her, as she is seen as a "silhouette." In the first verse, her "eyes" are mentioned; this time, her "long, cool stare" is. Also, she is still silent.

"I suddenly remember each time we've met" means that this sensation of alone-ness is so familiar that all such instances of feeling this way rush from her memory into awareness.

Now, Solitude speaks. She explains that she is not to be feared, but in fact brings solace and healing. "I've come to set a twisted thing straight," she says, soothingly. "I've come to lighten this dark heart."

But the speaker is still wary. "I feel her imprint of fear," she thinks. And then she addresses Solitude in response: "I've never thought of finding you here."

Where? On stage, it seems. "I turn to the crowd as they're watching... their eyes are gathered into one." It's understandable-- why would you expect to find solitude in a room full of people? Yet, she is on stage, and they are apart from her, in the audience.

Yet, they are together with each other-- and she finds herself "wanting to be in there, among them." She wants to be part of her own audience! If only to be a part... instead of apart.

Everyone is looking at her, even Solitude. It's one thing to be alone, but entirely another to be alone where everyone can see you be that way. You might as well be in a fishbowl.

Still, she is trying to see Solitude as bringing her something helpful. Sometimes, it's necessary to be alone with Solitude, to be able to prepare for the next time you meet Togetherness.

IMPACT:
This song reached #94, and remained on the US charts for 3 weeks.

Next Song: Calypso

Freeze Tag

This second song seems a continuation of-- or companion piece to-- the first, "Cracking." It, too, takes place in "wintertime," and while the first detailed a solitary walk to the "park," this one is about a couple going to "the playground."

First, a note to those unfamiliar with American childhood games of the mid- to late 20th Century. Freeze tag is a variation on regular tag. In this version, the tagger-- dubbed "It"-- chases the other children, but when she tags them, they "freeze," and become rooted to the spot, disallowed from running further. When all the other participants are tagged and "frozen," the last becomes the new "It," everyone "unfreezes," and the chase begins again. Children continue to be endlessly inventive with new variations, which leads them to discover the true fun of any game-- arguing about the rules!

Narratively, the song presents a paradox. This couple goes to the playground for some childlike fun, and to revel in their romance in which they are as open and innocent as children. However, once they imagine themselves as children, what do they imagine themselves doing? Pretending to be adults.

The couple goes to the playground as "the sun is fading fast," symbolizing the end of their youth, which they are there to try to recapture. I am reminded of a tradition my high-school sweetheart and I developed, which was to see every new and re-released Disney movie in the theater. We loved them as children, felt "too big" for them as grade-schoolers, and now wanted to enjoy them again as we approached adulthood and wallow in comforting nostalgia.

Such behaviors Vega depicts, using playground imagery, as "slides into the past"-- it's so easy to slip into the soothing familiarities of childhood-- and the ambivalent "swings of indecision" that make us waver between retreat there and advancement into exciting, yet frightening, maturity.

The "dimming diamonds" are likely the glints of light off the snow, now fading as the sunlight does.

The "tickling and trembling" refer to the touches freeze-tag players employ to immobilize each other, and the shivering with both cold-- real and game-imagined-- and with the anticipation of these flirtatious touches.

Now that it is dark, they "play" another game. This is a pun. They are playing at being actors, who in turn "play" roles in films. The night is as dark as in a movie hall. She first pretends to be Marlene Dietrich, and he the tragically fallen James Dean. Then they shift into a more noir mode: "You stand/ With your hand/ In your pocket/ And lean against the wall." Appropriately, they now imagine themselves as Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, major stars of such dramatically fraught, angst-ridden films.

By pretending to be others, they can be more freely themselves (Vega returns to the imagery of romantic role play in her later song "If You Were in My Movie"). And so they become more physically intimate: "We can only say 'yes' now/ To the sky, to the street, to the night." As the sunlight vanishes entirely, their movie end the way movies do: "Slow fade now to black."

But then another starts, one in which they are hero and heroine in a Camelot-based scenario: "Play me one more game of chivalry."

The songs lyrics end with another childhood game: "Do you see/ Where I've been hiding/ In his hide-and-seek?" She calls attention to the fact that she has been revealing aspects of herself through the choices of roles she has adopted. She is like Dietrich in this way, like Bacall in these other ways, like Maid Marian or Guinevere in still more. And she wants to know if he has picked up on this, and knows her better now. In a sense, a mask is a truer face.

The song's imagery revolves around childhood games, but the message is both adult and serious. The only reason a freeze-tag player holds still is that she is obeying the rules. Nothing is actually, physically holding her still.

How like life that is, Vega observes. What is holding them back from embracing adulthood, with all of its amazing freedoms and overwhelming responsibilities? What is keeping our lovers from embracing each other, physically and emotionally? Nothing that does not exist entirely in their own minds, and those others involved in their societal games.

The sun is fading fast. Now, they get to see what they look like in the dark.


Next Song: Marlene on the Wall