Silver Bridge

The idea of dying being a "crossing over" into another land or place is a universal one. So is the idea of that other land being across a body of water that has to be rowed across... or perhaps spanned with a bridge.

This song is about watching someone standing on that bridge cross over it. In other words, it's about someone dying.

The song starts with the end of the story, that it is about a "recently departed" individual who went into "that land uncharted."

There is foreshadowing in the "old man" going up to his room by "the stairway he ascended" after a goodnight kiss. The speaker reports him "struggle" all night to live, yet also reaching out to "Saturn," the king of the mythical gods.

The speaker enters the room, not sure what to do and "frozen" with indecision and "wonder." She simply "stared upon his body" in the "silver" moonlight. This moonbeam she images as the "silver bridge" in the title, between here and the hereafter.

Yet, she does nothing, having "witnessed all there was to see." She doesn't "move to him," since he "wasn't [hers] for claiming." Instead, she "withdrew."

Then she realizes he is, in fact, dead, "so much more than sleeping." She stays with him as a "vigil" the rest of the night and morning and even into the "afternoon." (Why she does not alert the authorities-- or the party for which he was "for claiming"-- much sooner is not mentioned, but highly irregular. Most would call as soon as they realized the person had died, or even if they thought he might be dying.)

The experience has had a profound impact on the speaker. She wonders about sleepless nights, and if they represent a form of "standing on that bridge." And, if so, "which way are you facing?" Is it the Land of the Living, or the "land uncharted"?

The lines are thin between sleep, unconsciousness, coma, brain death, death itself, and even animal and plant states like stasis and hibernation. It is understandable that a person with no medical training might not be able to tell the difference, certainly not by simple observation from several feet away.

The speaker seems to understand this and does not berate herself for not getting help sooner. She sincerely thought he was asleep.

But now, it seems, she is having trouble sleeping herself. And more troubled, in that she feels troubled by her inability to sleep... and worried about what that means, and what it portends.


Next Song: Song of the Stoic

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

Calypso

Vega is not the only one to have been enchanted by this mythical nymph, whose name means "to hide or deceive."

Jacques Cousteau named his boat for her, and John Denver wrote a song with this same title about that scientist. There have been other US and UK military ships with the name as well. The piece of tech that is branded Calypso is, aptly, an underwater camera.

There is an entire genre of Latin dance with this name; Harry Belafonte recorded an album of its music. Calypso is also the name of a moon of Saturn, an asteroid, and what NASA called its "Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations (CALIPSO)" orbiter.

And "Calypso" is a town in North Carolina, a cave in Malta, a soap opera in Venezuela, an airplane in Belgium, and an orchid found almost everywhere.

But the most appropriate use of the name must be Calypso Deep, the lowest point in the Mediterranean...

Because Calypso, according to Homer, lived on the Mediterranean coast. And it was she who kept Odysseus in thrall for seven of the ten years between his leaving the Trojan War and his return to his beloved Penelope. Yes, of all of the monsters he faced in The Odyssey, the most victorious over him used no other weapon than song.

Vega tells the tale from the sea nymph's viewpoint. She has Calypso introduce herself and explain that she saved Odysseus from "drowning."

The time of this song? The day he leaves after seven years. "Now today, come morning light, he sails away/ After one last night, I let him go."

She is aware that the only reason he stayed is that she made him. She had hoped that he would eventually simply love her of his own. But, while she "could taste the salt on his skin," she knew it was both "salt of the waves and of tears and while he pulled away, I kept him here for years."

While she was beautiful-- "my garden overflows... My hair blows long as I sing into the wind"-- she knew that her willowy wiles were no match for Penelope's pull on him.

She is well aware that his departure is permanent. "It's a lonely time ahead," she acknowledges, but "I do not ask him to return."

Instead, "I will stand upon the shore with a clean heart and my song in the wind."

There is no proper chorus, but five times in this short song, Calypso repeats "I let him go." It seems she is of two minds about this decision.

One is that she proud of herself. It would have been easy to continue to imprison Odysseus eternally-- she could have made him immortal. But she knew that the relationship was forced, and so false. And she finally could not allow the situation to endure. So she did the grown-up thing and let him go. "Yes, the whole mess was my fault-- but I fixed things in the end and now I want credit for that," she seems to say.

So much for her mind. Her heart is very upset with the new reality, however. "I let him go!" it weeps. "How could I have done such a thing! He's gone forever, and I'm alone again, and he could have just stayed here, and I could have been at least falsely happy instead of truly miserable. This is just awful. Yes, the situation had to end, but I'm still so, so sad that it did."

The first thing Calypso told us about herself was not that she was immortal or magical or even musical, but that she has "lived alone." Now that Odysseus is gone, she foresees "a lonely time ahead." Her solitary status is how she defines herself.

If she could only find someone to love her for her many gifts, to love her for her "sweetness," her beauty, and her talent. And not someone who was already taken, someone she had to force to stay. Surely in all the sea there is a lonely sailor with no one waiting at home, who would willingly stay and hear her sing eternally while combing and combing her long hair.

Maybe he won't be Odysseus. But Jason's a hunk, too.


Next Song: Language