Laying on of Hands/ Stoic 2

The "laying on of hands" is the idea that touch, all by itself, has healing properties. It is often used in religious contexts.

Mother Theresa was a Nobel Prize-winning nun who dedicated her life to treating and healing the poorest of the poor in India's slums; her name is fairly synonymous with altruism.

The speaker wonders how someone so in tune with the power of touch was never curious about more... intimate touches, from which a nun by definition abstains. Most of us cannot help but heed "Love's demands," and the body's "earthly commands."

The speaker then addresses the listener: "Touch is a language," she says, and it's true. Touch can convey everything from "brutality" to "tenderness."

Well, if that's the case, "What is it you have to say to me?/ Come and talk about it." Now, of course, if "touch is a language," and the language we will be "speaking," then the "conversation" could become very personal indeed.

In fact, "our bodies are exchanged in all eternity," which sounds like re-incarnation, in which case the same soul would necessarily touch multiple bodies through the eons.

Getting back to the idea of touch being equally capable of wounding or caressing, we must ask ourselves, "In this wilderness, do we hurt or heal within our daily plans?" It's a constant choice.

The ancient Roman named Epicetus was no Mother Theresa. He was a Stoic, like the emotionless person in the previous song. The speaker opines that he was probably sexless, "slept with his hands above the covers" (and away from his "private parts").

Since he, like Theresa, was celibate, he also had no "ex-lovers" to lose sleep over. However, she did not deny herself human contact altogether.

So we have three levels of "touchers," then: those like Epicetus who don't touch anyone else at all, those like Theresa who touches others to help them but not to receive any benefit herself...

And most of us, who like to touch others and to be touched in return, in nonverbal conversation. The speaker's conclusion? Such non-touching "virtue is overrated."

She much prefers "happiness." And happiness, as Charlie Brown, taught us, is a "warm puppy." And, well, other kinds of hugs.

While this is a short song, it says a great deal about our underappreciated sense of touch. Songs often explore the sensual aspect of touch, but ignore the simple relief that being warmly touched by another person can bring. This one manages to encompass both.

Next Song: Horizon (There Is a Road)

Language

Many lyricists, poets, and other writers have expressed frustration with the limits of language, even with the million-worded English. Barry Gibb wrote, for the Bee Gees, "It's only words/ But words are all I have/ To take your heart away." Woody Allen told Annie Hall: "'Love' is too weak a word for what I feel. I lurve you. I loave you. I luff you-- two Fs. Yes, I have to invent..." John Keats wrote to his love, Fanny, "I want a brighter word than 'bright,' a fairer word than 'fair.'" Even Shakespeare has Hamlet mutter: "Words, words, words."

Here, Vega expresses the same problem. "These words are too solid, they don't move fast enough/ To catch the blur in the brain/ That flies by and is gone." She wishes it would be "liquid," so it could "be rushing in."

Well... actually, would that be an improvement? No, it would rush in and fill in the empty space, flooding it and overwhelming it. 

What there is, what is there, actually solves the problem of language's inadequacy. What is there is "silence." And one "more eloquent than any word could ever be," at that.

Liking this idea, Vega then applies it to other contexts. "I'd like to meet you/ In a timeless, placeless place/ Somewhere out of context." If you are going to be wordless, where and when else could you do it but in a "timeless, placeless place"?

Since this is impossible outside of the physics we can readily access, she suggests a spot where, instead of language doing so, "silence" can "come rushing in." 

She knows the spot, as they have been there before. It is a building on Manhattan's Little West Twelfth, so called because it is only 2-3 blocks long. "It's not very far/ And the river is there" (this is either the tiny the High Line River or, more likely, the Hudson, which the street dead-ends into). 

She wants to go near sunset, when "The Sun and the spaces are all laying low." As its name indicates, the street in on the western side of the island, where the sunset view over the river is probably very visible.

Silence is so attractive that she even forswears language altogether: "I won't use words again." Their multiple meanings and vagueness make them untrustworthy for communication: "They don't mean what I meant/ They don't say what I said."

Words are also superficial, she adds. Harking back to the idea of language being "solid," Vega says that they are "just the crust of the meaning." She means not a bread crust but the Earth's crust, as she continues that they have "realms underneath," entire subterranean caverns that have never been probed or explored, "never touched, never stirred, or even moved through."

Compounding the frustration with the limitation of words is the fact that the only way to express this frustration is with, yes, more words. Well, there is music. And the visual arts, like music, sculpture, and dance. 

But also just... silence. More eloquent than any words could ever be.

Next Song: Gypsy