We of Me

The song starts with the line: "My squeezed heart divides into two wide wings," which implies that something was pressuring her to choose between two sides, but somehow she was able to choose both. Perhaps the wings take her back and forth between the two sides.

"The world is a sudden place if you don't belong to anything," she says next. What is meant by "sudden" is not clear-- does the world appear suddenly, when there was nothing before? Is it constantly startling with no one there for support or structure? Perhaps the word is "sullen," which would make more sense; a world in which one did not feel connected would be sullen, indeed.

"This must be the irony of fate/ I and the world are always separate," she continues. "All other people have a 'we' to claim/ Except for me, in my own name." If she is feeling disconnected, that is sad, and perhaps it is her fate to be alone. But in what sense is that an "irony"? She just said she belongs not to no world, but to two! That's more belonging, not less.

Now, this is from Vega's album about Carson McClullers (a woman), who was married and divorced, and then lived with another man for a short while without marrying him. I don't see anything about her having children, and the two men never met as far as I can see.

This also doesn't seem to be about Vega herself. She is divorced from her first husband, with whom she had a child she is still close to. And she is remarried now. So this "squeezed heart" idea could stem from that, but then why say there is no "we" for her to be part of in her own name-- what about her own child? Well, the kid does have her father's last name...

I'm going to say this is about Vega herself, as McCullers' story lines up even less, even if Vega-as-McCullers features heavily in the video. McCullers seems too haughty, world-weary, and jaded to have come up with such a tender idea, anyway. True, the part about being "separate" from the world does seem to apply.

The song continues: "I belong to be with the two of you/ And we make three/ As a family/ That is why you're the 'we' of me." Is she trying to get her daughter to be part of her new family with her second husband? We do not know when she wrote the song, but she re-married in 2006 and released the son in 2016. If the kid and her step-father are not close after 10 years... Or maybe they were, but then something caused a rift and she is trying to sew it back up.

The Biblical story of Noah is invoked: "Noah may have got it wrong... Noah's ark admitted only two by two/ We know this isn't always true... because there's one more that could belong."

According to the Bible, the animals that boarded the ark in pairs were the "unclean" ones,  and the "clean" ones came in in herds of seven. But most likely that detail is not what she means to refer to.

Rather, she rebuts the idea that families are made of pairs by saying there can be a family of three-- a pair of parents and a child.

So, what does the expression "the we of me" mean? It probably means "my 'we,' that is, the people I mean when I use the word 'we.'" Namely: herself, her current husband and her daughter. By extension, her current husband's 'we' includes himself, her, and the child.

On a psychological level, "You are the 'we' of me" means "You two are the group I most intensely feel myself a part of."

Wings can be for flight, away from danger. But wings can also be spread over a family for warmth, closeness, and protection.


Next Song: Annemarie

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

Brother Mine

Vega considers this the first song she ever wrote, at 14. It's a country song, dedicated to her kid brother, Matthew. But it wasn't released until her Close Up 4 album.

While it's about being a big sister, the tone is fairly maternal; she even leads off by calling him "Sonny boy." She notices that needs new shoes, and also "just about everything," so she plans a shopping trip.

Perhaps she saw his beat-up shoes by the door first, then his face once she got further inside the house. Because most people would first notice his black eye that isn't mentioned until the second verse.

Yes, his eye is "black and swollen," because he got into "another fight." She calls him a "troublemaker," and irresponsible for needing medical attention when they "don't have much money."

She seems to back off a bit-- "Maybe I shouldn't yell/ I know you're just a kid." But really, it's only her tone she is apologizing for, not her message. She is, in fact, in earnest: "I don't expect you to get everything just right/ But I think you ought to use a little more sense."

She admits that she tends to "worry too much," and that she should accept that "what [he's] got to do, [he'll] go ahead and do it."

Until now, she has ended every statement with "I know everything will be all right," or "I think everything will be all right." After she tells him to use more sense, she says, "Maybe then things will be all right." So they will be... and now are not. And, it's his, or at least his impulsiveness', fault.

But now the she realizes that she can't be there to police him at all times, this is going to keep happening. And she lets slip a note of doubt: "I sure hope things will be all right." Maybe her intuition is smarter than her optimism..?

Well, right now, it's bedtime, so all she wants is to kiss him goodnight. So she tucks him in...

...with a not-quite-comforting observation: "I know if you were gone, I'd miss the sound of laughter." Wait, she's 14 and he's her kid brother, so even younger. What makes her think he's "going" anywhere, and somewhere she'd "miss" him? He's certainly going to be coming home every evening for the foreseeable future, right, and not off to college or the army or an overseas business trip. Or does she think his impulsiveness is going to get him, well, killed?

If she is that worried about him getting into "trouble" he can't get out of, she needs to tuck him in, then go have a conversation with her parents about him.


Next Song: The Silver Lady

Daddy Is White

This is a very personal song for Vega (it's a rare track, released on volume 4 of her Close-Up series). Her birth father had a heritage based in the UK, but he and her mother divorced when she was very young. Her stepfather, whose last name she still bears, was from Puerto Rico.

Now, it's one thing when your parents come from different ethnic backgrounds, but their differences show up in your face. In Vega's case, they did not: "I am an average white girl... When you look into my face, it's clear what everyone else knows/ Daddy is white, so I must be white, too."

But... was she? "I was raised half-Latin," she explains. "This caused me some problems."

To her white friends, she was not entirely white. But to her Latino friends... she wasn't that, either. (She also had "foes"-- bullies, we assume.)

"When you look into the mirror/ What comes looking back at you?" She also wondered, herself, about who she was.

The issue of identity is pervasive. She says that she could feel herself being weighed and judged as she simply walked around by the passers-by: "I feel the tension in the street, I feel it ticking all around/ I feel it filling up the sidewalk, in the spaces in between... my face and your face and the public places we get seen."

The last verse tells a brief story of two "strangers" at a bar: "He called her 'baby,' she called him 'boy.'" The result? "It ended as a fight." Too bad, because it began as a "conversation" and they wound up "broken-hearted" which implies that initially, there was a flirtation that might have bloomed.

Vega's understanding was that the situation deteriorated because "he was black and she was white." But I think she may have-- however inappropriate her response-- been reacting to him calling her "baby," which she perceived as sexist. Perhaps there are still deeper layers; perhaps a way of addressing someone of the opposite gender is acceptable in some communities and not in others, and that is what Vega meant.

The larger issue is the need to define oneself, and others, in terms of culture and race. It is a need we seem to have as individuals and as a society... 

...and as mommies, daddies, and kiddies.

Next Song: Brother Mine

Songs in Red and Gray

The song seems to be from the point of view of a mistress. This is only slowly revealed as the song unwinds.

It starts with an encounter between the mistress and her lover's daughter. She sees a "reproach" on her face, and she wonder "how she could know" that this woman, the speaker, was her father's mistress: "Although I had met her just then/ I feel that she peeled back my guilty disguise." Of course, maybe the girl didn't know at all, and the whole idea is just that-- a thought sparked by a guilty conscience.

After all, the affair happened "so much more than a long time ago." How long? At least "19 years." More to the point-- "before (the daughter) was born."

Maybe it's something in the way she looks. Maybe, when it came to mistresses, her father had a "type." After all, the mistresses says, "I am sure I was only but one of a number" of such women and the daughter may have somehow seen others.

The mistress must have known the wife, too, at least to see her, since she recognizes the daughter by her mother's features and gaze: "Her mother, I see, lives within her still/ She looked at me with her eyes." This implies that the wife, the girl's mother, is now dead.

The encounter gives the mistress a flashback to "one night." She remembers details of his house-- "gray" vase holding a "red" rose. A white piece of coral, a "brass candlestick" and another red item, his velvet coat. She has no idea why she flashes on these images.

If the coat is his, does that mean the red items symbolize him, and the gray ones her? If so, then he is the vibrant rose and she the inert vase that "holds" him. This could be an image of restraint, but a vase is more an image of support.

Later, that makes him the "red leaf" that looks to her, the "hard gray stone." A red leaf is one in autumn-- once alive, now dead. The stone, of course, was never alive at all.

Does it matter that we, the listener, don't fully comprehend the symbolism? No, she says "to each other, they know what they mean." Said more grammatically straightforward, this also implies "They know what they mean to each other." A stone, for all its impassivity, is also solid and dependable, while a leaf, though organic, is transitory and easily tossed away by a breeze.

She wonders if he ever told his wife about her, or "was I the name you could never pronounce?" She wonders if she even "figure at all" in any discussions or fights.

There is a mention of the "young" daughter's "pencil marks on the wall." This could mean that the child, like many mischievous others, wrote on the walls. It could also refer to the pencil marks parents make on walls or door-frames to chart their child's growth.

So she asks if her shadow, when she was over for a tryst, fell on these markings. The symbolism is powerful-- the heartwarming evidence of a blossoming child being eclipsed by the tawdriness of the mistress' very presence.

Half of her feels mortified that she could have had such a poisonous effect. But the other half? Frustrated and disappointed that all the impact she had on this man's life was as much as a shadow's, since she was probably only one of many who "darkened his door."

The husband-- make that the widower-- and mistress are not getting back together. One of them "broke the thread" and now it is too "late for repairs." But... is it? The song ends with the idea that this couple's future is "yet to come" and "unforeseen."

I can't see them getting back together. What if the daughter sees them together? Being glared at when the mistress can't even be sure she was identified was terrifying enough.

Seeing her father and this woman together-- and confirming her suspicions? The "reproachful" glare that this sight would trigger from the daughter would turn anyone to "stone."


Next Song: Last Year's Troubles

Freezing

For the story behind this album, please see the previous entry, on the song "Lightning"; it's on the same album.

In this case, a more famous person sings it: Linda Ronstadt.

The song is very short, only 13 lines. But still haunting and mysterious.

The first 7 lines ask a hypothetical question: "If you had no name/ history/ books/ family... if you were only you, naked on the grass, who would you be, then?"

So, with no name to define yourself, or family to claim you, or history to put you in any past context, or even any books to give a clue as to your interests, would you still have an identity?

It is an interesting question-- what defines a person? What gives that person an identity, a self? Is it only a matter of what name we are given, what people call the place we are born,  the stories our families shares with us, and our possessions?

If I had been born in another country, and had some other name, language and religion, would I have the same personality, interests, and talents? What if I woke with total amnesia, and had been abandoned in some place no one knew me? Who would I be, then? It's a hard question to consider in an age of DNA identification and instant global communications.

Then comes the line, "This is what he asked." All we know of the question-poser is that he is male.

The speaker considers the question and, as anyone might, responds that she "wasn't really sure."

Then, perhaps sarcastically, she says, "But I probably would be cold."

The song ends with the next line-- like something out of Edgar Allen Poe or The Twilight Zone-- "And now I'm freezing."

So... did it happen? Did this mysterious stranger go through with it, strip her of her identity-- her name, family, and memory-- and leave her "naked in the grass"? Was he so cruel as to want to see if she was right? If she had given another answer, would his method of torture have been different?

Now, if she remembers the question, she remembers what a "name" is. She knows what a "family" is. If someone finds her, or if she finds someone, to help her, she may be able to get those things back. She would be taken to a hospital, or a police station, or at least someone's home, and the journey to get her identity back would begin. The authorities would be contacted, her photo would be taken and shared with the media, etc. Certainly a tale of a "mystery woman with total amnesia" would be a top news story. Again, if she finds help before she freezes too much.

No pun intended, this is one of Vega's most chilling works. In a short space, she limns the borders of a self, then erases them... leaving only questions floating in a vacuum as cold as outer space.

Next Song: Book and a Cover

Blood Sings

We've all seen images of children running to greet their parents, especially ones returning from a long absence, say from an overseas combat zone. Many of us have seen or even experienced reunions among family members. There are even stories of family members who had thought each other dead finding each other again after decades. There are smiles and tears and long hugs.

Even in the Bible, Adam finds a resonance with Eve he does not find with any of the other creatures. "This, now, is bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh," he enthuses about her.

"When blood meets blood of its own/ It sings to see itself again," is how Vega puts it, in this song. Recognition is so powerful that it surges the blood and sends it singing through the arteries. "It sings to here the voice it's known/ It sings to recognize the face... I know these bones as being mine/ and the curving of the lip."

But the song is about more than the joy of self-recognition in a family member's face.

The lines "one body split and passed along the line/ From the shoulder to the hip" is enigmatic. If the body is "split... from the shoulder to the hip" does that mean some surgery has been done? If so, why the phrase "passed along the line"-- was this an organ donor?

It could be a metaphorical split. One member of the family could have been separated from the rest somehow. Perhaps the mother, being too young or financially insecure, gave her first child up for adoption, but he was unfortunate enough not to find a permanent home but was instead "passed along the line" from one foster family to another.

And now this child has grown and become a teen; he would become legally independent at 18 but might need somewhere to go, since his foster family could not keep him. He contacts his biological mother, and she agrees to take him in.  Now he is meeting his older siblings, who were raised by their biological mother, who was mature and stable enough when she had them to keep them.

His younger sister's first reaction is joy-- he looks just like them! Look at his features, his bone structure, his lips... even his voice! He really is a member of the family. 

But then she really takes a look at her long-lost brother and asks, "How did this one life fall so far and fast?" Clearly, he has been through many miserable years.

She muses that some people are naturally gifted, others less so: "some with grace, and some without." He seems to be of the latter kind. But "all tell the story that repeats." Is that the story of the genetic code? Or of one that has occurred before, perhaps even in this selfsame family?

This story is "of a child who had been left alone at birth/ Left to fend [for himself]." Worse, "and taught to fight." He has had to defend himself, probably against bullies who taunted him for his foster status. 

"See his eyes and how they start with light," she notices. In this case, "start" is a synonym for "startle." He is not used to light, perhaps being from kept in a dark room, say an attic. 

He has pictures of his childhood, and as the sister rifles through them, she notices that his eyes "get colder" as he ages. It is a sad fact of the foster system that people are willing to take in babies and small children, and less so children as they age. Many, by age eight or so, end up in group homes. 

Evidently, he warms to them enough to tell them his story, or perhaps his case worker fills them in, because "we've all come to know" what it was. "Did he carry his back luck upon his back?" she wonders, as he moved from house to house, but never going to a place that was truly "home."

There was a young woman who, hearing that many foster kids pack to move to their next home in garbage bags, began a national effort to collect luggage for them. If they do have to move, she felt, at least they don't feel like their belongings are garbage when they do

The verse about the joy of recognition now repeats. It seems like this wondering and worrying have subsided, and the happiness at the reunion itself has returned. 

But we have to wonder, once she was able to have and care for her own children, why their mother did not go back and try to find the child she had to give up before. Perhaps she was too upset, or embarrassed, or frightened. Anyway, he is here now, so now the healing can begin.

Structural Note:

The rhyme scheme of the song is unusual too, in that it varies from verse to verse. In the first verse, the first and third lines rhyme: "own/known" (ABAC). In the second verse, the first and third lines rhyme: "line/mine." But so do the second and fourth "hip/lip." (so it's ABAB). In the third verse, the second and fourth lines (semi-)rhyme: "repeats/fight." In the last verse, the second and fourth lines rhyme: "go/know." These final two are ABCB. And then the first verse repeats.

This scheme hints at a shift in perspective. At first, the sister is seeing things through her own eyes, so the rhyme starts at the first line of the verse, as in first person (me). Then she starts to shift her viewpoint ("I wonder what he thinks of me?!" and can rhyme the second line (second person, you) line also; ("You must see me the same way I see you," she thinks of her brother. By the third verse, she has shifted her viewpoint entirely ("What must you have gone through?") and is only seeing his viewpoint. She stays there for the fourth verse. Then she, as she must, returns to her own.

Musical Note:

The song is mostly sung to a solo guitar with a bass line, hearkening back to Vega's earlier work. It stands apart from the other heavily produced, industrial work of the rest of album.  

Next Song: Fat Man and Dancing Girl