Instant of the Hour After

This is a rare track. It can be found on Volume 3 of the mostly acoustic "Close Up" series of remixes.

It seems to be about a drunk couple fighting, and she is trying to wind it down so they can sleep: "That's enough out of you tonight, my darling... I detest all this drunken brawling/ Now, let's see if you can make it into this bed." Probably, though, he can: "You're not as drunk as you seem."

Still, they are "trapped here inside of this bottle." Both of them are trapped by the alcoholism, although it's unclear if she is also an alcoholic or 'only' someone who qualifies for Al-Anon.

As for the fight itself, it must have been quite the circus, but now, "The show is over/ The monkey is dead."

She is of two minds about her significant other: "How I love you/ How I loathe you." To the degree she does love him, it comes in waves so peaked that they become spikes: "It's a sharp, quick love."

Something casts a "sweet shadow" on his "cheek." Perhaps he did make it into bed, and these are the blankets she tenderly draws up over him. And he doesn't seem to calm down and ease into sleep, but rather simply 'conk out' suddenly from a state of stress: "The pulse in your neck, how I'll know it, right to the end."

Alternately, these images could be of love-making. The "sharp, quick love" could be him entering her, the "sweet shadow" could be of her face on his, and the "end" could be his climax.

This seems less likely, however, considering his words, which sound like those of a literary critic: "Reverberating acuity... lousy simile... vacant majesty." These sound like the ramblings of a drunk intellectual as he drifts off. And one who didn't like what he'd just read or heard, at that.

Of course, they could have made love and then he passed out muttering.

Yet another possibility is that the song is about her critics, and she is only using the relationship image as a metaphor.

The next "hour" passes like an "instant." And in that moment, she realizes "Right now/ It's you and me."

This is where the image being trapped in a bottle of liquid comes in. Of course, they'd have to be small to be trapped in a bottle, so she imagines them as "flies" who are "drowning" in the liquid.

"When the frenzy's over"-- the fighting, the sex, or both-- "We're crawling specimens/ Spent and exhausted/ We press to the sides" of the "bottle."

She knows she has to do something about the situation. But the situation itself is simply too exhausting, physically and emotionally, for her to plan and enact such an escape.

A nearly drowned fly may know it has to leave the bottle in order to prevent himself from nearly drowning again, but right now he's too drained from just having nearly drowned to figure out where the bottle's opening is and how to get there.


Next Song: Daddy is White

Men in a War

Illnesses, especially unusual ones, are a regular topic for Vega, and this time she deals with Phantom Limb Syndrome. This condition is characterized by the feeling of, well, feeling in a limb that has been amputated. Yes, people can feel sensation, even pain, in an arm or leg they no longer actually have. Every nerve pathway has two ends, and just because one no longer exists in the limb does not mean the other, in the brain or spinal column, falls silent. Not every amputee has phantom limb syndrome, but as many as 60-80% do.

As Vega puts it: "Men... if they've lost a limb/ Still feel that limb/ As they did before." The missing words here are "in a war," although it is not clear that such conditions must have been the ones in which the limb was lost. The arm or leg could also have been taken by an accident or disease, for instance. (I do not know if those born without a given limb can acquire this condition, but it seems unlikely.) 

She imagines a case in which a soldier is in an infirmary-- "on a cot," and not, say, in a hospital bed-- and "feeling the thing he had not." The locution here is awkward, Vega does not write, "feeling the thing he didn't have," which is how one might say it in conversation, to point out the awkwardness of the emotion-- the poor soldier is "mute," unable to express the idea that his missing arm hurts, or afraid to say this for fear of being considered insane.

The verse ends on the word "not." This rhymes with "cot," but more importantly it emphasizes the "not," the idea of absence. It also sounds as if a sentence has been cut off, echoing the limb that has been so. (Now I'm doing it!)

The speaker then empathizes. "I know how it is/ When something is gone," she says. She gives some examples: "A piece of your eyesight," such as with cataracts, glaucoma, or macular degeneration, conditions of the eye that remove or obscure part of one's vision.

Another example? "When something is gone... Maybe your vision." Wait, didn't she just say "eyesight"? So now she means, what, going totally blind? Why not say "A piece of your eyesight, or maybe all of it"?

Probably she means "vision" in the other, more mental sense, as in "one's vision of oneself" or "one's vision of time." We often ask presidential candidates about their "vision" for the country and its future. 

"A corner of sense," she explains, "goes blank on the screen." She imagines the picture in one's mind like a television screen, when part of it stops working. Yes, this can mean that part of a person's vision is impaired, but she says "sense," as in "making sense," as what is "gone." You may have trouble with names, or faces, or recalling recent events, or balancing, or flashbacks-- any number of such glitches.

"A piece of the scan"-- the work of an X-ray machine or desk-top scanner here stands in for the scanning our senses do of the our environment. If we lose our sense of hearing, of brain may "fill in" by memory, the sound of someone's voice when they greet, us the same way you could fill in the rest of a ruined photo with paint.

The speaker says these phenomena are similar to the phantom limb cases. In both situations, the brain uses memory to "fill in the blanks" left by reality. "You know what it was/ And now it is not," she explains. "So you just make do with/ Whatever you've got."

The speaker then reverses the situation. Sometimes, "if your nerve is cut," then, as you might expect, you can no longer feel that part of yourself and make it move. It as if that part of you has lost its volition, its drive. In fact, when someone loses courage, we say they have "lost their nerve." 

"If your nerve is cut," she elaborates, "You don't feel your will/ You can't find your gut." This can be taken two ways. One, literally-- if you have no sensation in your hand or torso, you literally cannot find your gut. Figuratively, you can't find your guts, as in "You can't work in human resources because you can't find the guts to fire people."

The second line of this verse also has two meanings, but is more of a pun. "If you're kept on a stretch," may mean a "stretcher"-- that portable cot used to transport the wounded. But it can also mean under constant psychological stress, "if you are continually stretched thin emotionally." We explain that someone was "stretched to the breaking point" before they "snapped."

She illustrates with an example of a woman who has been under some sort of attack: "She lay on her back/ She made sure she was hid," meaning someone was after her and she was trying to hide. Like the wounded soldier, "she was mute and staring." She was silent-- as one is when one is hiding-- and hyper-aware, making sure her follower was not approaching. 

The woman "did" some "thing"-- perhaps the act that provoked her pursuer. But she is "not feeling" what it was. She is divorced from it, emotionally. This does not mean she is psychotic, necessarily. It just means she is not just now, being in immediate danger and all, able to spare the time to contemplate and psychologically register the relevant emotions. Perhaps later, with a therapist, once she reaches safety.

Vega starts with the idea of a phantom limb and expands upon it to explore the some of the ways in which our brain "helps" us create our realities by supplementing missing information with guesses, memories, and even imaginary physical sensations. Sometimes, however, the brain helps a little too much, and worsens problems rather than solving them. 

Next Song: Rusted Pipe

Luka

This is, arguably, the song that put Suzanne Vega on the map.

It is a very powerful song, dealing with the issue of physical abuse, and from the point of view of the victim as well.

While some may feel this song is about a woman who had been beaten-- and the emotions and reactions presented certainly apply to such a victim-- the video makes it clear that the simple lyrics are coming from a child who has been attacked, and a male child at that.

But perhaps Vega chose the rare (in America) name "Luka" because it is indistinct in gender and origin, to universalize the song. (Probably the most famous "Luka" before this was the minor character in the Godfather film, the hitman Luca Brasi.)

The song begins with the victim introducing himself. It is important that we, the listeners, know that his apartment is above ours. Since we have heard the sounds of abuse coming through our ceiling, Luka feels it necessary to address them.

He does so by telling us to... not investigate. "If you hear something, late at night/ Some kind of trouble, some kind of fight/ Just don't ask me what it was."

Luka tries to explain away the bruises that we must see, or perhaps a limp: "I think it's 'cause I'm clumsy...  I walked into the door again."

But, again, he waves away our offer of, perhaps, an ice pack or bandage. "Yes, I think I'm OK," he says. In fact, he dismisses our involvement altogether: "It's not your business, anyway."

Luka, however, does open up to us about the effect the abuse has had on him. For one, it has made him withdrawn: "I try not to talk too loud... I try not to act too proud." For another, it has made him feel that he has deserved and brought about the punishment-- and even doubt his own sanity: "Maybe it's because I'm crazy," he says, perhaps echoing and internalizing the verbal abuse that might have accompanied the physical pain.

Luka also reveals some of the dynamics of the abuse's patterns. At first, it seems, he resists and defends himself. This self-assertion only enrages his abusers-- he says "they," so it might be both of his parents. It is only once his spirit is broken and they have satisfied themselves that they maintain dominance that they cease the violence: "They only hit until you cry."

"After that, you don't ask why," Luka admits, and "you just don't argue" either. He realizes asking them to justify their actions is pointless. There is no "why," no reason. He doesn't deserve the abuse in the first place! And if crying makes the reason-less punishment stop, well then, here are your tears, folks-- you win again, you can stop now.

His ultimate wish is to withdraw completely. Luka is either being abused by his family-- with objects (or worse?) being "broken" and "thrown"-- or being asked to discuss the abuse by well-meaning outsiders. And so the abuse comes to define him. He is no longer "Luka, the kid who plays soccer," or "Luka, the kid who loves comic books." He is "Luka, the kid whose parents hit him." The only one who knows him any other way is himself. And so he tells us, "I'd like to be alone."

Then Luka is done talking. He has said all he can bear to say for now. But he also sets up the parameters for our next encounter. Now that we know all this, he says, "Just don't ask me how I am."

We now know very well how he is: utterly miserable.

IMPACT:
As was said, this was Vega's biggest chart success. It went to #3 in the US and remained on the charts for 19 weeks (almost 5 months). Vega also recorded the song in Spanish.

At the 1988 Grammys, Vega performed the song, which was nominated in three categories: Record of the Year (a producer's and performer's award), Song of the Year (a songwriter's award), and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance (as opposed to Classical). She did not win in any category, but she did get to perform before an audience of hundreds of millions.

But aside from the effect the song had on Vega's status and career, it gave voice to the millions of abuse victims who had suffered so long in silence. And it taught us how to recognize the signs of abuse.

While may songs are credited with changing lives, how many have actually saved lives?


Next song: Ironbound/Fancy Poultry