This is not a song about an angel, but of a man with the name of Angel. We learn of his line of work by dint of clues.
When Angel enters his house, his clothes cast a "cloud" of "dust and dirt and destruction." With only this much information, it's possible he is in demolition work.
He also works amid "fires and flesh and confusion." So it's more likely he's a fire fighter.
Whatever he does, he cannot talk about. At his "door," he has to "leave it on the floor." He is told "Don't bring it in."
That seems harsh. He had to live though it, now he can't even talk about it? Who came up with that policy?
His wife or girlfriend. "He can't show/ What she doesn't want to know/ Those things he's seen... that life he can't tell."
It's bad enough that she can "smell" the ashes on his clothes. Does she actually have to listen to his tales of death, gore, pain and loss? No, she has decided. No, she doesn't. Or at very least, she can't handle it, and is willing to admit that.
But that protection of her psyche comes at a price to his. "Inside his brain/ It's never the same/ Though he tries to maintain the illusion." Not being able to share your life with your spouse has got to make a rough job even worse. He can't about it at work, because it's the job and he has to "suck it up." But he can't talk about it at home, either. So where can he unburden himself?
There are jobs that we leave at the door. Police officers, soldiers, surgeons, rescue workers, funeral- home staff, prison guards... all have stories that they have to leave at the workplace and cannot share with their spouses. Sometimes because the spouse loves this person but simply cannot stomach the "realness" of the stories he or she lives every day.
People who see accident or crime victims on a daily basis may have to develop a numbness to that horror in order to do their jobs. And they need support to help them deal with seeing the absolute worst of humanity, and human suffering, on a daily basis. They need a place to empty themselves of these stories, to share their experiences with others who have dealt with similar things. Maybe a bar, maybe a support group.
But not, in many cases, home. The one place they should feel safe is also the place their spouses want to feel safe. Ironically, that spouse may have been drawn to someone who is strong in this way precisely because they are not, themselves, brave. A fearful, insulated person might want a knight in Kevlar armor to protect them... but then never talk about how they are doing just that.
So why is this character named Angel? Perhaps because he does the heavenly work of saving people every day... and so lives an otherworldly life he can never explain to those he is saving.
Next Song: "Anniversary"
Showing posts with label silence. Show all posts
Showing posts with label silence. Show all posts
Monday, September 5, 2016
Monday, December 14, 2015
Birth-Day (Love Made Real)
Just to make it clear what the song is about, it's song's title is "Birth-Day." With a hyphen. It's not a "birthday," the anniversary of a birth, but the actual day of the actual birth.
In Vega's case, most likely that of her daughter, Ruby, who was born in 1994. This is the first song on Vega's Nine Objects of Desire, which was released in 1996. Her previous alum, 99.9..., came out in 1992; both albums were produced by Mitchell Froom, whom she married in 1995.
So, chronologically, it goes-- 1992, 99.9 is produced and released; 1994, Ruby is born (and this song was likely written); 1995, Vega and Froom marry; 1996, Nine Objects is released. (Sadly, Vega and Froom will separate in 1998, but that's covered in later albums, and first we have to get through their marriage, song by song).
To this song itself... it starts with the acknowledgement of the pain of childbirth, but with the self-reassurance that "this pain will go" once the process is over. But she must "step through all that's left to feel," first, and it is a gradual series of steps in most cases, not a running or rushing in any way.
Many couples feel the way the speaker does about their child, that it is their "love made real." Love itself is very abstract, but a child that is literally the product of that love, and is genetically half of each of them, becomes a living symbol of that love.
The directive, "Don't move, don't touch/ Don't talk so much" may be to herself, or to her over-helpful partner. Or both.
While many deliveries in the Western world are done with the mother on her back, there has been a movement to prefer-- or at least try-- earlier, more traditional methods. These include having the mother stand or squat, so that gravity can help pull... and having the mother on her hands and knees, imitating the way other mammals deliver. The speaker here tries these positions, telling herself to "strip" and then "find a place to kneel."
Even in the throes of the pain, the mother is keenly aware of the special-ness of the moment. Before, she calmed herself with the idea that the pain would "go," now she is sad to realize that "this day will go," and what is now an experience will soon be a mere memory.
A wave of pain hits, disrupting her philosophizing. Now she seems to "crawl the wall." Evidently, in her all-fours position, she is facing the wall and bracing against it with her hands, so looks like she is trying to scale it or crawl up it.
"She's the ticket to the future," she thinks of her soon-to-arrive baby. "Don't listen down the hall," of the maternity ward, she tells herself. Perhaps she hears the screams of other women in labor and worries that she will be in that much pain; perhaps she hears the cries of newborns and wishes that it were her kid making that noise already. She reminds herself to focus on her own situation.
The position she is in not only resembles crawling, but prostrating oneself in prayer. "You can say your prayer to the head of this bed," she mutters, feeling that no caring God would put people through so much pain just to do the most natural thing, let alone answer a prayer to make it hurt less. And it hurts quite a bit, all over: "It begins at your knees and goes right to your head."
Now, she is re-positioned so that she is on her back, and held in place with a "strap" at each "wrist" and ankle. "I wait to meet my love made real," she repeats, hoping that a focus on her objective will help her endure the next phase.
At this point, she is so worn out that she has begun to "shake all over like an old, sick dog." If the childbirth has been "natural" to this point, now chemical medications are introduced. "There's a needle here, needle there"-- one serum to numb the area, and one to induce the cervix to widen. Her shivering has not subsided, even as the numbness and mental fatigue set in, and she starts to "tremble in the fog."
We're almost there, though... "It's a tight squeeze, vice grip," as the head and then the rest of the body start to pass through the opening. "Ice and fire" might refer to the off combination of numbness and pain at this point.
And...? It's a girl. "She's a hot little treasure," coos the new mother. "And the wave goes higher"-- the elation of holding the newborn in her arms is an intense wave of pure emotion.
The song's short phrases, disjointed images, and general confusion mirror the wild sensations of childbirth. The physical, mental and emotional aspects switch and mingle and compete, with a pain interrupting an emotion which in turn is shoved aside by an instruction from the doctor or a question from a nurse... it's a tumult in many dimensions. And the thudding, swirling music and lyrics capture the sense of being tossed about as if one is in a storm at sea.
But the pain, and the day, do go. And you're left with a baby at the end, who stays.
Not a bad trade, all told.
Next Song: Headshots
In Vega's case, most likely that of her daughter, Ruby, who was born in 1994. This is the first song on Vega's Nine Objects of Desire, which was released in 1996. Her previous alum, 99.9..., came out in 1992; both albums were produced by Mitchell Froom, whom she married in 1995.
So, chronologically, it goes-- 1992, 99.9 is produced and released; 1994, Ruby is born (and this song was likely written); 1995, Vega and Froom marry; 1996, Nine Objects is released. (Sadly, Vega and Froom will separate in 1998, but that's covered in later albums, and first we have to get through their marriage, song by song).
To this song itself... it starts with the acknowledgement of the pain of childbirth, but with the self-reassurance that "this pain will go" once the process is over. But she must "step through all that's left to feel," first, and it is a gradual series of steps in most cases, not a running or rushing in any way.
Many couples feel the way the speaker does about their child, that it is their "love made real." Love itself is very abstract, but a child that is literally the product of that love, and is genetically half of each of them, becomes a living symbol of that love.
The directive, "Don't move, don't touch/ Don't talk so much" may be to herself, or to her over-helpful partner. Or both.
While many deliveries in the Western world are done with the mother on her back, there has been a movement to prefer-- or at least try-- earlier, more traditional methods. These include having the mother stand or squat, so that gravity can help pull... and having the mother on her hands and knees, imitating the way other mammals deliver. The speaker here tries these positions, telling herself to "strip" and then "find a place to kneel."
Even in the throes of the pain, the mother is keenly aware of the special-ness of the moment. Before, she calmed herself with the idea that the pain would "go," now she is sad to realize that "this day will go," and what is now an experience will soon be a mere memory.
A wave of pain hits, disrupting her philosophizing. Now she seems to "crawl the wall." Evidently, in her all-fours position, she is facing the wall and bracing against it with her hands, so looks like she is trying to scale it or crawl up it.
"She's the ticket to the future," she thinks of her soon-to-arrive baby. "Don't listen down the hall," of the maternity ward, she tells herself. Perhaps she hears the screams of other women in labor and worries that she will be in that much pain; perhaps she hears the cries of newborns and wishes that it were her kid making that noise already. She reminds herself to focus on her own situation.
The position she is in not only resembles crawling, but prostrating oneself in prayer. "You can say your prayer to the head of this bed," she mutters, feeling that no caring God would put people through so much pain just to do the most natural thing, let alone answer a prayer to make it hurt less. And it hurts quite a bit, all over: "It begins at your knees and goes right to your head."
Now, she is re-positioned so that she is on her back, and held in place with a "strap" at each "wrist" and ankle. "I wait to meet my love made real," she repeats, hoping that a focus on her objective will help her endure the next phase.
At this point, she is so worn out that she has begun to "shake all over like an old, sick dog." If the childbirth has been "natural" to this point, now chemical medications are introduced. "There's a needle here, needle there"-- one serum to numb the area, and one to induce the cervix to widen. Her shivering has not subsided, even as the numbness and mental fatigue set in, and she starts to "tremble in the fog."
We're almost there, though... "It's a tight squeeze, vice grip," as the head and then the rest of the body start to pass through the opening. "Ice and fire" might refer to the off combination of numbness and pain at this point.
And...? It's a girl. "She's a hot little treasure," coos the new mother. "And the wave goes higher"-- the elation of holding the newborn in her arms is an intense wave of pure emotion.
The song's short phrases, disjointed images, and general confusion mirror the wild sensations of childbirth. The physical, mental and emotional aspects switch and mingle and compete, with a pain interrupting an emotion which in turn is shoved aside by an instruction from the doctor or a question from a nurse... it's a tumult in many dimensions. And the thudding, swirling music and lyrics capture the sense of being tossed about as if one is in a storm at sea.
But the pain, and the day, do go. And you're left with a baby at the end, who stays.
Not a bad trade, all told.
Next Song: Headshots
Monday, September 7, 2015
Pilgrimage
This song is about entropy-- or, as it applies to human life-- mortality. So why is the title about a spiritual journey to a holy place?
Let's start with a simpler question: What does the first line of the song mean? "This line is burning..." What line?
She means the line of the song, the line of music, the words she is singing themselves. The words and notes live on the ear for a fraction of a second apiece before dispersing into scattered waves.
Similarly, once a moment in time has passed, it may as well be ash. Its potential has been burned up like a spent matchstick, a used wick, or a piece of kindling. She begins this thought by mentioning the days of the week, and the words "months" and "year."
The next thought concludes logically: "This life is burning." Time started before we were born and will continue after we die. We are here for a few moments, relatively speaking (if the Earth's history were one year, all of human existence would take place in the last hour of December 31). So if time is being burned up, so is our lifetime.
But she holds out a note of hope. Yes, "every death is an end," but for all this "stopping," there is also "starting," or new birth. This is a "march over millions of years," and each generation takes its steps in turn.
All of this progress is pointing where, though? Here is all this "travel." Where is the destination, the "arrival"? The progression is, she says, "toward a source." So... Heaven? It would explain the title-- all of life is a pilgrimage back to the Heaven (which certainly counts as a holy place) from whence we came.
Then the speaker gets both more specific and more enigmatic about her destination: "I'm coming to you." To whom? God? A passed-on relative waiting in Heaven? (If so, this song might link to the previous one. That song was about a suicide attempt; perhaps the person tried to kill themselves to reunite with someone waiting in Heaven, and this song is from her perspective.)
The idea of "burning" and "turning to ash" is now applies to the land. The soil erodes, the continents rise and sink, and the whole Earth itself has a time limit due to the Sun's inevitable collapse.
The speaker closes with a parting gift: "Take this/ Mute mouth/ Broken tongue." The deceased is bequeathing her very silence as an inheritance. Why is silence a gift?
Death, which the speaker says she has been marching toward for years, has arrived. And now the "dark," painful-- perhaps physically so but certainly emotionally so-- life, has hope... the hope of an end.
"Now," that the pilgrimage has ended, the Promised Land of relief and release has been attained: "Now this dark life is shot through with light."
Many who have had near-death experiences speak of seeing a great light. But even without such a vision, the idea of life ending may not seem frightening to some. For those with "dark" lives, an end to such a life just means an end to the darkness, and so, light.
There is a movement now to take the idea of euthanasia a step further. Rather than it only being used to speed an inevitable death and avoid a protracted and agonizing decline, some would like a medically assisted suicide to be available to those with chronic pain, both of the physical and mental varieties. There are fates worse than death, a life of suffering may be one.
The speaker here has made grand claims about the entropy of the universe to rationalize her desire-- we're all dying all the time anyway, so what's the big deal? But really, she just wants to die so that the pain of missing her lost loved one can end.
There is a old comedy line: "If you can't live without me, why aren't you dead yet?" But the question is not funny, or rhetorical, to the speaker here. She would reply, "Give me a minute, I'm working on it."
Is the person making a pilgrimage to Heaven, or to the embrace of a lost loved one? For the speaker, those places are the same.
Next Song: Rock in this Pocket
Let's start with a simpler question: What does the first line of the song mean? "This line is burning..." What line?
She means the line of the song, the line of music, the words she is singing themselves. The words and notes live on the ear for a fraction of a second apiece before dispersing into scattered waves.
Similarly, once a moment in time has passed, it may as well be ash. Its potential has been burned up like a spent matchstick, a used wick, or a piece of kindling. She begins this thought by mentioning the days of the week, and the words "months" and "year."
The next thought concludes logically: "This life is burning." Time started before we were born and will continue after we die. We are here for a few moments, relatively speaking (if the Earth's history were one year, all of human existence would take place in the last hour of December 31). So if time is being burned up, so is our lifetime.
But she holds out a note of hope. Yes, "every death is an end," but for all this "stopping," there is also "starting," or new birth. This is a "march over millions of years," and each generation takes its steps in turn.
All of this progress is pointing where, though? Here is all this "travel." Where is the destination, the "arrival"? The progression is, she says, "toward a source." So... Heaven? It would explain the title-- all of life is a pilgrimage back to the Heaven (which certainly counts as a holy place) from whence we came.
Then the speaker gets both more specific and more enigmatic about her destination: "I'm coming to you." To whom? God? A passed-on relative waiting in Heaven? (If so, this song might link to the previous one. That song was about a suicide attempt; perhaps the person tried to kill themselves to reunite with someone waiting in Heaven, and this song is from her perspective.)
The idea of "burning" and "turning to ash" is now applies to the land. The soil erodes, the continents rise and sink, and the whole Earth itself has a time limit due to the Sun's inevitable collapse.
The speaker closes with a parting gift: "Take this/ Mute mouth/ Broken tongue." The deceased is bequeathing her very silence as an inheritance. Why is silence a gift?
Death, which the speaker says she has been marching toward for years, has arrived. And now the "dark," painful-- perhaps physically so but certainly emotionally so-- life, has hope... the hope of an end.
"Now," that the pilgrimage has ended, the Promised Land of relief and release has been attained: "Now this dark life is shot through with light."
Many who have had near-death experiences speak of seeing a great light. But even without such a vision, the idea of life ending may not seem frightening to some. For those with "dark" lives, an end to such a life just means an end to the darkness, and so, light.
There is a movement now to take the idea of euthanasia a step further. Rather than it only being used to speed an inevitable death and avoid a protracted and agonizing decline, some would like a medically assisted suicide to be available to those with chronic pain, both of the physical and mental varieties. There are fates worse than death, a life of suffering may be one.
The speaker here has made grand claims about the entropy of the universe to rationalize her desire-- we're all dying all the time anyway, so what's the big deal? But really, she just wants to die so that the pain of missing her lost loved one can end.
There is a old comedy line: "If you can't live without me, why aren't you dead yet?" But the question is not funny, or rhetorical, to the speaker here. She would reply, "Give me a minute, I'm working on it."
Is the person making a pilgrimage to Heaven, or to the embrace of a lost loved one? For the speaker, those places are the same.
Next Song: Rock in this Pocket
Monday, June 8, 2015
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."
Next Song: Gypsy
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
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