Lover, Beloved

This sounds like a love song. And... it's about love, but is it a "love song"?

It starts by positing "lover" and "beloved" as opposites. In fact, when the lover "pursues," the beloved does not stand and wait to be caught, let alone turn and run toward the lover. No-- here, the beloved "flees." They are "from countries apart," but they stay apart, "Each one alone in the land of the heart."

They do have some things in common. Both are "forever stripped bare" of pretense. One desires, the other is desired, passively. They are both "there... in the night," we presume, in bed.

The lover, however, is also somehow a "liar," a dealer in false pretense. He is also a "hero" and a "thief"-- he saves the beloved from isolation, yet steals her solitude, for instance. Thus, his efforts and intentions cancel each other out, and ultimately, he "brings no relief." Frustrating! This is true whether she considers him a "brother" or "husband."

While a lover is a "brave cavalier," nevertheless his love "rais[es] hatred and fear" in the beloved. This is for the above reasons, but also while each "crav[es] the touch" of the other, this desire is for something lacking, and a lack is a weakness, a vulnerability.

Finally, "each bears the burden of loving too much." The lover is distraught that his love is unrequited; the beloved is being smothered by all this affection and attention.

But what about a lover who has died, who has crossed the River "Styx"? He "will send/ Flowers from beyond the end." Even though he is gone, she still relishes his memory. He is "her lover for eternity" since he is no longer in control of his leaving her thoughts, once he has left her side. It seems the only good boyfriend is a dead one.

In the play Torch Song Trilogy. Harvey Fierstein opines: "It's easy to love the dead. They make so few mistakes." Also, they ask so little of you.

This song is pretty, like a love song. But it presents love as a battle between predator and prey, with one party forever hungry for more closeness, and the other desperate for less.

Next Song: The Ballad of Miss Amelia

It Makes Me Wonder

This song is about what's known in psychiatric lingo as a "Madonna-Whore Complex." It happens when a man has difficulty sexualizing his wife... because she is also the mother of his children. She can't be both the holy Madonna and the raunchy whore! The same person, both, as the song says, "sacred and profane"? Impossible.

In this case, the woman is having some trouble of this sort of her own. While in the throes of passion, her "Virgin Mary" necklace flies up and hits her in the mouth, as if to punish her for her sinful behavior.

Which... is how one becomes a mother in the first place, right? It's very confusing.

The next verse appears to be about a baby that refuses to nurse. However, since this is the only verse about this, it may not be about that at all, but about a man who is acting like a "sulky baby" because he is turned off by her lactation. Leaving her "untouched" and unfulfilled. "Reject"-ed.

So she starts to "wonder" if he is holding her. Holding her, that is, to "the same blue flame" that he feels he is subject to. "I feel you scolding me," she says, instead of holding her. Scolding her for wanting sex when she shouldn't. And then making him feel bad for rejecting something she shouldn't want him to have to begin with.

Like I said, confusing.

She sees what the problem is. "Your virgin mary's in the way," she says-- when you look at me, you want to see a virgin... so you "hallucinate" one, she explains. This false vision "obscures" his view of the real her. "It's me here, made of clay!" she reminds him. She is not holy, but human; even the Bible says people are made from clay. So go ahead and grab her! It's OK.

He sees a thin line. On one side, "austerity" and celibacy. On the other, "just give in" and "embrace that white oblivion." Which could mean death (he says)... but also ecstasy (she says).

Frustrated, she tells him his "expectations" are too "high": "Who could live up to this?" Who could, in fact, be so pure? She wants to be chased, not chaste!

Even when he does kiss her, it's like that of an "angel." Pure, and "cold." Full of love, maybe, but not lust.

Sadly, in many such cases, the man will be unable to bring himself to have sex with his suddenly-holy wife and even cheat on her! With someone he does not esteem, and so feels comfortable "using."

While right after childbirth is no time for hanky-panky, the woman's body does reset in four to six weeks. By then, the husband should be missing having his wife in all her... ways and want to start things back up.

When he doesn't, when by that time he has idolized and idealized her, then the trouble starts.

Of course, it might have nothing to do with childbirth. A man may simply fall in love with a woman in a deeply spiritual way and feel it is wrong to "sully" that purity with passion.

In all such cases, both the man and woman suffer, and counseling is strongly urged... so that the urge can once again become strong.


Next Song: Soap and Water

Honeymoon Suite

Get your mind out of the gutter right now. This song is not about what (ahem) happens in the privacy of a newlywed couple's hotel room.

This is about a nightmare the groom has, during the honeymoon.

First, we see the room itself. It is in "France," and the ceiling is painted with "angels in a dance." This is a nice detail, but it also presages another sort of procession, one in a dream. A dream often uses whatever imagery the waking mind had handy as fodder.

Her new husband has a "was not feeling well," a sure-fire killer of a romantic mood, so when they "went to bed," it was, disappointingly, in the literal sense. Sleep does not provide a cure, sadly. He wakes up with a headache.

He describes to her his nighttime experience: "A hundred people" of varying ages "had come through our room that night" and each "asked if he was all right." They each "lined up to touch his hand." But he told each in turn, "They had come for the wrong man."

But did they? He was sick, and they were asking if he was OK, something you only ask sick people. So while he dismissed their help out of pride or shame, they kept coming.

Perhaps superstitiously, the couple decides the dream was not the result of a malady or a reaction to a heavily-sauced French dinner, or even a night of Parisian club-hopping. It is also not thought to be a subconscious reaction to another circumstance in the man's life, such as getting married or simply sleeping under a picture of people in an endless line.

No, they ask the concierge if there had been an incident in the room, "a death, or something strange." She smiles, but says nothing.

Again odd is the new wife's reaction. She does not try to interpret the dream. She does not worry about her husband's mental state, either in the sense of "Gee, I hope he's OK," or "Did I just marry a crazy person?"

Instead, she makes this about her. "What I'd like to know is... with all the people in that room/ Why none appeared to me?"

This may seem like a joke. Of course you can't see figures in someone else's dream. Not outside of a sci-fi movie, anyway.

But she presses her point. "When we sleep so close together that our hair becomes entwined/ I must have missed that moment in the gateway to his mind."

If she is really that concerned about not feeling emotionally connected to her new husband, perhaps she should be asking a different question. She never could have seen what was inside his dreaming mind.

But she should wonder why, with all the people the man imagined asking after his welfare, why were none of them her? To be fair, he didn't seem to imagine any of his family, friends, or co-workers asking him if he was "all right," either.

Still, if any one person should be there, shouldn't it be her? Why didn't he see her asking if he were OK? And not in some queue, either, but at his sickbed's side?

Here is a man so physically miserable, he can't even enjoy his honeymoon. And instead of worrying if he is in need of medical attention, or if he's psychosomatically reacting to whatever it is his dream is about, she is worrying that he's keeping secrets from her... secrets he doesn't even know he has!

What if you were this woman's friend, and received this phone call: "Oh, Paris is fine, and we have a lovely room. But last night, that new husband of mine had a dream, and I didn't have the same dream! I have no idea what the dream means, and who cares. Hmm? Oh, the dream was about people asking if he's OK. Is he OK? No, he was so sick he had to go to bed early and woke up this morning with a headache. But the real problem is that I can't read his subconscious mind."

If she missed a "gateway" to his mind, it may be that it's because she was so focused on her own. And he may have been dreaming that a thousand strangers were asking if he was OK because his deepest wish is that someone-- like the love of his life over here-- would actually ask.

There seems to be a vicious circle, here. He worries that she doesn't care, so he shuts her out... and she worries that he doesn't share, so she retreats inward. He, at least, is trying to reach out by telling her his dream. Now she has to reach back and try to help him understand his dream's meaning.

She's upset that she doesn't know his dream? But she does! He just told it to her!

It's time for her to stop bothering the benighted hotel staff with her problems, imagining ghosts of murder victims, and talk to her husband about himself. About his view of their relationship.

Then, the next time he dreams about strangers asking him how he is, he can tell those dream-figures, "Don't worry about me. I'm fine-- my wife's taking good care of me."