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
Showing posts with label sadness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sadness. Show all posts
Monday, December 5, 2016
Monday, July 18, 2016
New York is a Woman
So many songwriters have written odes to New York City, it would be pointless to try to list them all. But this is an interesting take-- if (especially for Vega) it's a very conventionally written song, even with its clever use of internal rhyme.
What's interesting is that it likens the city to a, as it says in the title, a woman. The woman is, of course, a New Yorker. She is, at least "from the 27th floor," glamorous in that film noir, "late-night TV" kind of way: like a femme fatale, she "spread herself before you... undressed" seductively, flashing her "bangles and spangles and stars." This refers to both the twinkling lights and sequins of the nightlife scene and "stars" in the sense of "celebrities."
The listener was so overwhelmed and excited, he had to descend in an elevator and "go cruising all the bars."
And who are "you" in the song? A "suburban boy here for your first time." This is also a double entendre; yes, for the literal first time visit, but also (New York is a woman, remember) here to lose some of your virginity and innocence. You are here on a business trip, but you decided to stay for Friday night, Saturday, and Sunday, to experience the mad whirl of the city for yourself: "You were startled by her beauty and her crime." (This line also gives the entire album its title.)
Speaking of "crime," the city's seedier side is not necessarily a "turn-off." But aside from the seedy, there is the sad. New York is famous for its opulent depravity, but also its obvious deprivation: "Look down and see her ruined places." And, aside from poverty, there has been terrorism: "smoke and ash still rising to the sky" could refer to the attacks of 9/11, which too place in 2001, and while this album was released in 2007, some wounds never heal.
But that's the dichotomy that makes New York so fascinating. There is a reason so many songs have been written about New York and not Dubuque, Iowa (no offense... but I have been there a few times, so I know). As Vega puts it, it's her "her steam and steel"-- the hot, ephemeral aspects and the cold, hard ones.
This endlessly changing face is a major reason New York is so enthralling. You feel this passion "endlessly," even "desperately."
Even whirlwind weekends must wind down, though. "She's happy you're here, but when you disappear/ She won't know that you're gone to say goodbye."
Why? Well, New York is the most populous city in North America.* And to her, well, "You're just another guy." She's seen them come and go. "If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere," according to another New York song... but some don't make it there.
And even the ones who stick around don't make much of a lasting impression. She's a great weekend fling, but you're not one in a million, dude. And even if you are... well, to make it there, you've got to be one in eight million.
New York is there for everyone, but she belongs to no one. I have been there a few times, so I know.
Next Song: Pornographer's Dream
*(but not in "the Americas" altogether-- Mexico City and even Sao Paulo, Brazil have more people.)
What's interesting is that it likens the city to a, as it says in the title, a woman. The woman is, of course, a New Yorker. She is, at least "from the 27th floor," glamorous in that film noir, "late-night TV" kind of way: like a femme fatale, she "spread herself before you... undressed" seductively, flashing her "bangles and spangles and stars." This refers to both the twinkling lights and sequins of the nightlife scene and "stars" in the sense of "celebrities."
The listener was so overwhelmed and excited, he had to descend in an elevator and "go cruising all the bars."
And who are "you" in the song? A "suburban boy here for your first time." This is also a double entendre; yes, for the literal first time visit, but also (New York is a woman, remember) here to lose some of your virginity and innocence. You are here on a business trip, but you decided to stay for Friday night, Saturday, and Sunday, to experience the mad whirl of the city for yourself: "You were startled by her beauty and her crime." (This line also gives the entire album its title.)
Speaking of "crime," the city's seedier side is not necessarily a "turn-off." But aside from the seedy, there is the sad. New York is famous for its opulent depravity, but also its obvious deprivation: "Look down and see her ruined places." And, aside from poverty, there has been terrorism: "smoke and ash still rising to the sky" could refer to the attacks of 9/11, which too place in 2001, and while this album was released in 2007, some wounds never heal.
But that's the dichotomy that makes New York so fascinating. There is a reason so many songs have been written about New York and not Dubuque, Iowa (no offense... but I have been there a few times, so I know). As Vega puts it, it's her "her steam and steel"-- the hot, ephemeral aspects and the cold, hard ones.
This endlessly changing face is a major reason New York is so enthralling. You feel this passion "endlessly," even "desperately."
Even whirlwind weekends must wind down, though. "She's happy you're here, but when you disappear/ She won't know that you're gone to say goodbye."
Why? Well, New York is the most populous city in North America.* And to her, well, "You're just another guy." She's seen them come and go. "If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere," according to another New York song... but some don't make it there.
And even the ones who stick around don't make much of a lasting impression. She's a great weekend fling, but you're not one in a million, dude. And even if you are... well, to make it there, you've got to be one in eight million.
New York is there for everyone, but she belongs to no one. I have been there a few times, so I know.
Next Song: Pornographer's Dream
*(but not in "the Americas" altogether-- Mexico City and even Sao Paulo, Brazil have more people.)
Monday, June 1, 2015
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
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
Monday, March 9, 2015
Undertow
To explain the title: The "undertow" is the intense pull, or current, caused by a breaking wave as it recedes back into the sea. Its name comes from the fact that the force is along the sea bed, "under" the surface, and that it can "tow" an object, animal, or person back out to sea along with it, smothering it along the sea bed.
This is a surprisingly violent song. While it is about a relationship, it is not a love song, as it does not contain the word "love" or anything like it. Instead, there is only need... and the hatred of that need.
The speaker wants to "swallow" the songs' object-- "whole," the way a serpent does-- then disgorge "only bones and teeth." Later, we have sharp or pointed weapons like "the edge of a knife," "needles," and "bullets." We also have hard things, like a "stone," a "diamond," and another "bone."
Then there are signs of negative emotions: "tears," "secrets," "hunger," being "weak."
Even if all of these images are only metaphorical, what is the end of all of this hostility and angst? She wants him to be, of all things, "free."
The conflation of freedom with death is a longstanding one, the premise being that mortal life is a prison sentence, and only death can set one free. She has the idea that the body is some sort of cage, and that by removing it, the spirit will be released, at liberty.
Her current plan toward this objective is to... digest him. "We could see what was underneath/ And you would be free then."
Her previous plan was to use the salt of her tears to erode his flesh. "Once, I thought only tears could make us free/ Salt wearing down to the bone/ Like sand against the stone."
In other words, now she is using anger-- before, sadness.
Again, what is the reason for either of these plans for skeletonization? It seems that, if he is miserable enough, he won't have the wherewithal to leave her. He won't have the physical or emotional strength to resist her, and she can thereby possess him: "I am friend to the undertow," she says, using that imagery of grabbing, pulling, and drowning. "I take you in, I don't let go/ And now I have you."
She takes the idea of "possessiveness" to the extreme, as in the book and movie Misery.
She does not want this "freedom" only for him, however. She herself wants to be "sleek," to pass through life without attachments or friction. That's why she is fascinated with streamlined things-- things with edges, blades, and points. They can do damage without being damaged themselves. They can inflict pain, yet feel nothing, experience no pain themselves. She has clearly experienced pain in relationships before, and so tried to shed all connections.
In short, if she could be "sleek," she "would be free then." Which is what she wants.
But shedding all externalities has not produced the desired effect. Her emotional anorexia has failed to render her "sleek" as a python, polished pebble, or sword blade. Instead, "this hunger's/ Made [her] weak."
One mystery is resolved-- why she now resorts to imagery of consumption. She's psychologically hungry and wants to feed. She's eaten away at herself so much, she has nothing left, and so she turns to another, to feed off of him.
But she can barely admit that she needs someone else. So instead of saying, "I need him here to satisfy me," she sees herself as altruistic! "He needs me here to satisfy him!" she thinks. "I will do him the favor of stripping him 'down to the bone,' too, and 'free' him as I have freed myself."
Naturally, if the man wants to be "free," what he should really be is... elsewhere. If he has enough strength, still, to make it to shore.
Next Song: Some Journey
This is a surprisingly violent song. While it is about a relationship, it is not a love song, as it does not contain the word "love" or anything like it. Instead, there is only need... and the hatred of that need.
The speaker wants to "swallow" the songs' object-- "whole," the way a serpent does-- then disgorge "only bones and teeth." Later, we have sharp or pointed weapons like "the edge of a knife," "needles," and "bullets." We also have hard things, like a "stone," a "diamond," and another "bone."
Then there are signs of negative emotions: "tears," "secrets," "hunger," being "weak."
Even if all of these images are only metaphorical, what is the end of all of this hostility and angst? She wants him to be, of all things, "free."
The conflation of freedom with death is a longstanding one, the premise being that mortal life is a prison sentence, and only death can set one free. She has the idea that the body is some sort of cage, and that by removing it, the spirit will be released, at liberty.
Her current plan toward this objective is to... digest him. "We could see what was underneath/ And you would be free then."
Her previous plan was to use the salt of her tears to erode his flesh. "Once, I thought only tears could make us free/ Salt wearing down to the bone/ Like sand against the stone."
In other words, now she is using anger-- before, sadness.
Again, what is the reason for either of these plans for skeletonization? It seems that, if he is miserable enough, he won't have the wherewithal to leave her. He won't have the physical or emotional strength to resist her, and she can thereby possess him: "I am friend to the undertow," she says, using that imagery of grabbing, pulling, and drowning. "I take you in, I don't let go/ And now I have you."
She takes the idea of "possessiveness" to the extreme, as in the book and movie Misery.
She does not want this "freedom" only for him, however. She herself wants to be "sleek," to pass through life without attachments or friction. That's why she is fascinated with streamlined things-- things with edges, blades, and points. They can do damage without being damaged themselves. They can inflict pain, yet feel nothing, experience no pain themselves. She has clearly experienced pain in relationships before, and so tried to shed all connections.
In short, if she could be "sleek," she "would be free then." Which is what she wants.
But shedding all externalities has not produced the desired effect. Her emotional anorexia has failed to render her "sleek" as a python, polished pebble, or sword blade. Instead, "this hunger's/ Made [her] weak."
One mystery is resolved-- why she now resorts to imagery of consumption. She's psychologically hungry and wants to feed. She's eaten away at herself so much, she has nothing left, and so she turns to another, to feed off of him.
But she can barely admit that she needs someone else. So instead of saying, "I need him here to satisfy me," she sees herself as altruistic! "He needs me here to satisfy him!" she thinks. "I will do him the favor of stripping him 'down to the bone,' too, and 'free' him as I have freed myself."
Naturally, if the man wants to be "free," what he should really be is... elsewhere. If he has enough strength, still, to make it to shore.
Next Song: Some Journey
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