Song of the Stoic

While the ancient belief of Stoicism was more complex than that, the word "stoic" today means a person who declines to show emotion.

The speaker here is a "man" whose life's major incident are few. Mostly, he's been "working all [his] days."

Now he's having a post-midlife "accounting": "More years are behind me now/ Than years that are ahead," so it's time to take stock.

First, he wants us to know that at 18, he "faced down" his father who physically abused him-- "18 years of pain." He does not blame his father, but the "demons" of his mental illness. Still, he is covered in "layers of bruises." So the emotion here is dignity, self-assertion.

He left home and "learned to love the road," an emotional response. He learned that some things can be "spoken" and some not.  He does physical labor, earning his "coin" with "another/ Knot within [his] back." There are many emotions here.

He married, somehow, which would seem a major life milestone, but we learn of this only because he was tempted to stray. The other woman had a "gifted touch" but yet they "confine [themselves] to friendship/ And [they] stay out of the bed." It seems that he might have divorced his wife to marry her, had she been single. The fact that she would not leave her spouse to be with him must have been painful.

Now, he is "facing" another foe, "the specter of [his] age." He wants to die already: "My soul, it fights my body/ Like a bird will fight its cage," wanting to escape. He sees death as "peace" and "release."

Yet, he will not kill himself-- "I keep myself upon the earth"-- and simply accept his fate, even as he measures not his gains and achievements but only "what [he's] lost."

So that's his life's story-- abuse, then labor and massive disappointment. Has he ever had the chance at happiness? "Winged things, they brush against me/ Never mine to hold."

Instead, he has resigned himself to grinding labor, saying "I keep my eyes upon the ground/ And carry on."

Why? "Ecstasy and pleasure come at much too high a cost." Since all he has known has been pain, he has two choices-- accept pain and try to live with it... or try for happiness knowing that it will either be unattained or lost, and then pile that pain onto the existing one. Not worth it, he decides.

The man is a stoic for this reason, or reasoning. His childhood was painful, his marriage is unfulfilling, his work shows no progress for all his effort. Any idea that hope was a good thing has been beaten out of him, either figuratively or literally.

For a song about a person who avoids emotions, the story leaves the listener with a deep one: sadness.


Next Song: Laying on of Hands/Stoic 2

Don't Uncork What You Can't Contain

This song presents three scenarios of people, each opening a mysterious container.

In the first, "a man finds a bottle" and begins to uncork it. In the second, Pandora of myth accidentally opens her box of evil.

And in the third, a genie is released from a lamp-- not by Aladdin but by Macklemore, who found it at a thrift shop (You see, there was this rapper in the early 2010s who went by "Macklemore," whose first single was a novelty tune about shopping at a "Thrift Shop." It went to #1. Yup.)

But when the man tries to open the bottle, and when Pandora did open the box, and when the genie did emerge from the lamp, each thought or said the same thing: "Don't uncork what you can't contain."

Like "don't bite off more than you can chew," this expression means to be careful or you might get in over your head. The one about food is about attempting what is beyond your capabilities, and the one about a drink is about not unleashing forces you can't control (just ask Dr. Frankenstein.)

Also, in each case the person "must" or "couldn't help," opening the container, or simply didn't consider what they did to have any consequences.

Ah, but what if you are the container? What if you have something inside that you can no longer keep bottled up? And you shouldn't, or "your head will spin/ And your mouth is all tongue-tied."

Then you have to put that into a container. The speaker suggests you channel it into art, "the page or the stage."

Words or performance (or the visual arts, one infers) can contain those "feelings."

But the container the speaker has in mind is not a bottle, box or lamp, but a "cage." Why? Because "rage" is like a "tiger." One that'll cause you "pain."

So, a tip of the (tall, striped) hat to Dr. Seuss: "The page and the stage [are] the cage for that tiger rage."

In conclusion: Don't uncork what you can't contain-- unless you can pour it into your artwork, which can contain it.


Next Song: Jacob and the Angel

Soap and Water

We talk about some breaks being "clean" breaks. The speaker here uses the metaphor of "soap," not unlike Lady MacBeth. Well, the speaker here isn't trying to cleanse herself of murder-guilt, just relationship-residue. In both cases, the stain is metaphorical, but they try to use actual soap to remove it.

The speaker asks a lot of the soap. She wants it to "take the day from my hand," and let her begin the night anew.

She wants to "scrub the salt" from her skin. What salt? Was she cooking, or sailing in the sea? More likely this is the salt of tears on her face, or wiped away by her hand.

And she wants it to "slip me loose of this wedding band." Well, when a ring is stuck, one uses soap, or butter, or Vaseline, or something else slick to lubricate it loose. This seems more... permanent. She wants to wash away her marriage.

It's not only her outsides that she wants cleansed-- her "heart," too. After it is clean, she will "hang" it on a "(clothes)line" to dry, where the wind-whipped "sand" will "scour" it. Then she wants it "bleach(ed)" and disinfected with "vinegar" and then polished to a "shine."

This is an almost violent amount of cleaning, even for an organ as resilient as a heart. She must really be needing to get rid of him.  Not just from her house, but from her life and psyche.

Lastly, she asks the soap to "wash the year from my life." Evidently, it has been a very difficult year, and she wants it erased from her memory.

She wants the soap to do the job of starch and an iron, to "straighten all that we trampled." She realizes that the divorce, like necessary medicine, can also have side effects on the route to healing.

And, in having "torn" the family bonds, she left a "cut," which she now wants the soap to disinfect and "heal." What cut? The one "we call husband and wife."

In the two choruses, she addresses the child of this now-ending marriage. In both, she says, "Daddy's a dark riddle." Not just a "riddle," as some of those can be fun or at least unobtrusive, but a "dark" one. Rather than try anymore to solve the riddle, she has decided to simply cut him loose-- she doesn't even care to try to find the answer anymore. There are some boxes labeled "Danger" that are simply not worth opening.

Then she describes herself, alternately, as "a headful of bees" and "a handful of thorns." In doing so, she acknowledges that the split, while necessary, was also harmful. Yes, the relationship was more harmful and had to end, but maybe there might have been a way to minimize the damage caused during the split, and by it.

But... was there? Or was she going through an emotional turmoil herself, what with her marriage ending? Did she lash out, stinging, inappropriately at times? Well, that was wrong... but there was still a reason for it. Her head was buzzing with preoccupations both practical and emotional; as far as supporting others, all she had to offer was "a handful of thorns."

So lastly, she acknowledges that this experience must have been tempestuous for her (their) daughter. "You are my little kite," she says-- totally at the mercy of forces she could not control-- her father's cold absence, her mother's scatterbrained frustration and psychological exhaustion. These, she refers to as a "wayward breeze"-- it's powerful, it's random, and there's nothing the poor kite can do about it.

She also knows that the child was aware of the routine fighting going on between her parents. These, she likens to "household storms" their kite of a child was "caught up" in.

A wayward breeze is bad enough-- a forgotten playdate, a missed birthday party. But for a child to have to hear her the thunder and lightning of her parents fighting is very difficult.

Maybe now the fighting is over, because the father isn't there anymore for her to fight with. But think of a "storm"... and its aftermath. Sure, the sun is out now. That doesn't mean everything is fine, though; what about the felled trees, the downed power lines, the flooded basements left in the storm's wake?

These can be cleaned up and cleared away with some effort. Then, to really make the house look normal again, you're going to need a roller and a can of paint, a mop and a bucket... and a lot of soap and water.

Are there clean breaks? Maybe with inanimate objects. With people, though...


Next Song: Songs in Red and Gray

Lightning

In 1986, composer Philip Glass wrote the music to an album's worth of songs by some of the best living lyricists: Paul Simon (1 song), David Byrne (2), Laurie Anderson (2)... and Suzanne Vega, then 27 years old, who wrote this song and the next we will discuss. The writers did not perform the songs; in this case, Janice Pendarvis sang it. The album was called Songs from Liquid Days.

Most likely, the song is not about lightning itself but some event with similar characteristics: sudden, unexpected, and devastating. The event happened "a while ago," but the effects are still being felt: "It's blazing much too fast... it's happening so quickly."

The imagery continues, implying that the bolt started a fire of sorts, "but give it rain of waiting time/ and it will surely pass, blow over." These last two words are meant in the sense of a passing storm, as in, "The scandal will blow over; we can run him again next election and no one will remember."

Well, the soothing rain of "waiting time" is not here now. Now we have "the flaming time." And she's still in the midst of the fire, "grop[ing] about the embers." She wants to "release [her] stormy mind," and discuss her emotions, but events are too turbulent just yet, and she has to focus. She repeats "blow over," this time in the sense of "The wind is so strong, I think the barn might blow over and collapse!"

The cataclysmic, lightning-like event has left her "Shaken... laughing and undone"... as well with a "sleeplessness" that's keeping her awake like "a blinding bolt." The laughing could be in genuine joy or disbelief.

So, that's rain's coming any minute, right, to cool things down? No, this has all "just begun," even though the lightning struck "a while ago." Maybe she was unable to process anything in the flash itself, but the blaze is now steady enough for her to begin to assess its effects.

As with any sudden event, there is a panic reaction: "...a windy, crazy running." Also, the lightning was so overwhelming, she barely has any recollection of the event itself, or the moments after; it's as if the lightning resulted in "time burned away."

The sensations have been building, now climaxing in an aftershock: "Now I feel it in my blood/ All hot and sharp and white/ With a whipcrack and a thunder/ And a flash of flooding light." The memory of the lightning strike is as real as the strike itself.

When the fire "finally dies," then "there'll be a think and smoky silence in the air," and the "ashes of the time burned away" we discussed earlier. And then we true effects will at last be known, especially, "Who'll be left there."

So... what was the "lightning"? Was it good or bad? Was this a sudden rush of love, a lottery win, receiving an international honor? Or was it more like a car crash, a divorce, an actual natural disaster?

We don't know, and it doesn't really matter. The sequence of events that takes place when any kind of "lightning" strikes is similar. In the split-second of the incident, we are shocked. When we look back, we forget what happened just after, as we were in a state of that shock.

Soon, we regain our senses, and realize that, as Stevie Nicks put it, "the rooms are all on fire." We are in emergency mode. We are flooded with emotions, but the need to respond snaps us into focus.

When we finally remove ourselves and think back to what we just underwent, the realization of its impact hits us like a second lightning bolt. We are finally safe enough to feel the emotions we experienced earlier.

And then things finally subside and return to somewhat-normal. So we look around, to see who make it through the fire with us. If all goes well, it's the people we were hoping would.

Next Song: Freezing