The Ballad of Miss Amelia

This song is from Suzanne Vega's one-person show about the author Carson McCullers. It's a retelling of the plot from her story "The Ballad of the Sad Cafe."

The basic plot is about a woman, Amelia, who marries the wrong man. He almost ruins her life, but she chases him off (with violence). For a while, she is happy with a new man. But then the first one comes back to finish the job (with violence). What made it worse was that the new man helps him.

Framing this story, Vega expresses that his is a very Southern story: "On any Southern afternoon... a face appears inside a house." The face is described as being "terrible... sexless... white... and dim."

It's the face of Amelia, "waiting by the window... sitting by the shutter/ Remembering the laughing/ In he cafe down below."

It makes sense that her face would bear a "terrible" look, if she is remembering the brief good times with the second man. After all, was it all a lie, if he could turn on her with so little provocation, and to aid the man who wanted to hurt her at that?

Why exactly this story is so Southern, I am not sure. It does smack of Tennessee Williams.

Maybe the humidity makes everything sultry and torrid.


Next Song: Carson's Last Supper

Song of the Stoic

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