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

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

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