Bound

This song is the first of a diptych-- a matched set of two. The next one is called "Unbound."

This song is fairly self-explanatory: "I am asking you/ if you might still want me."

The speaker is honest about it, though. She is not trying to pass off a car with 70,000 miles on it as new. So, "still," despite what?

Despite having been through life. She doesn't say that she has been through Hell, or any massive disaster, but simply "the world." The ordinary erosion of having been around: "I am ruined by rain/ Weathered by wind." Even these have "ravaged my body/ And bitten my soul."

She reminds this person, the one she is offering herself to, that he once did find her attractive: "Once you said/ I'm made of fine stuff." But she wants to be clear that she is not showroom new anymore: "I've been corrupted."

It is is interesting that she feels the need to ask if he still wants her. After all, he has said as much: "Now you appear/ Making your claim." So... yes, he does want her.

Perhaps she is in a state of disbelief. Perhaps she feels the need to explain, "You want the 'me' you used to know. I'm a new person now, and you need to know that, so that you don't take me back, realize this, and them reject me again. You need to know what you are getting this time."

She wants him, that much is clear: "Inside my heart/ Is the sign of our name." But she is hesitant to say so until she knows how he feels once he has been fully informed: "All these words/ Like 'darling' and 'angel' and 'dear'/ Crowd my mouth/ In a path to your ear." She wants to call him these things, but can't... yet.

She closes with the statement that is the very definition of commitment: "When I said 'I am bound to you forever'/...I meant, 'I am bound to you forever.'"

So she is willing to state that she has a very close connection with him. While that may imply a romantic feeling, there are other ways to be "bound" to someone, and she just said she is not ready yet to call him "darling."

So this is to say, "You say you still love me. But I have to tell you that I have been through some experiences that hurt and changed me. So, if you still love me after knowing that, wonderful-- I love you, too. If not, I still want you in my life, regardless."

This is a divorce album, and in many other songs, Vega has made it clear she does not feel affection for her ex-husband anymore. This song is not for him. She does not say "...if you still want me back."
And why would she tell her ex that she'd been through hard times if he were the one who made those times hard?

No, this seems to be to someone she knew from before her marriage. Now that she is available again, they have the opportunity to try again. But she is an adult, and want to be above-board. She knows what secrets and lies can do to a relationship, and she wants this new one to work, so she has to reveal her issues at the outset.

Yes, it is ironic-- to give the new (or renewed) relationship to work, she has to reveal the reasons it might not. Let's hope he can put all of his cards on the table, too.

Next Song: Unbound

Edith Wharton's Figurines

Edith Wharton's novels include The House of Mirth, Ethan Fromme, and the Pulitzer-winning The Age of Innocence. Her main topics, like Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters before her, were of women's status and the Catch-22 they faced: Since men controlled society, the only way to advance was to be (or at least act) dependent on men. For women who insisted on independence of thought and action, life was difficult and lonely.

(First, we should say that this is one of the prettiest melodies and arrangements Vega has ever composed. Perhaps it is meant to echo the music of Wharton's day.)

Like Vega's previous song on this album, "Pornographer's Dream," this song is about beauty and how it fades. This time, the price for the fading of beauty is examined, and what expenses, sacrifices, and costs people will endure to keep from paying that price.

The speaker examines some figurines that either once belonged to Wharton or which depict characters in her novels. They "still speak" to her with the stories they represent, and they both "play"... and "wrestle."

Another dichotomy appears in the next line: The characters had to weigh their "passions" and "prudences," in other words, being carefree or being practical. They also had to consider how much money they had, and how it could help them face (or not) their "fears."

"Her face and what it's worth to her/ In the passing of the years." So, like the woman in the nursery rhyme who admitted "my face is my fortune," she has to decide how much of her "finances" she is going to invest in her "face," since that is the asset that is worth the most (as opposed to, say, investments, real estate, etc., which women may not have been able to own).

The speaker likens a painted, made-up face to a "portrait come to life," but points out that instead of a canvas, this picture is supported by "vanity." But is that fair? Is it mere vanity that makes people slather on make-up and get facials and chemical peels?

No, the speaker admits: "In the struggle for survival/ Love is never blind." In the world of Wharton, men could not leave women; divorce was almost unheard of in the upper classes. But men could still cheat, giving time, offspring, and even their inheritance to younger, prettier mistresses. So staying pretty was vital for the social and economic "survival" of women. Did their husbands "love" them? Yes, but they also were not "blind." (Were the men themselves attractive? Well, with money, land, status, and power, "attractive" for men became a broader term.)

Anyway, that was 100 years ago! Women, as the cigarette ad assured us, have "come a long way, baby!"

Or have they? Well, let's ask Olivia. Who is she? She's the one "under anesthesia." She feels "her own beauty [is] not enough" and is looking to get it augmented with a "routine operation." Which will leave her "wit and wonder snuffed" under a chemical fog... and also under social pressure.

The next verses and choruses are exactly the same. Women still have to balance being passionate and prudent, while men get to just be passionate (prudent? Pff-- "boys will be boys"). Men still control the "finances"... and a woman still gets to face the "fear" of what losing her "face," her looks, will mean to her over time.

With Photoshopped images of physically impossible beauty to be compared to, women today are even more loudly told that "love is never blind."

The speaker concludes that we have not come that long a way, baby. Women still, she says, have their "wit and wonder snuffed." Women comedians, women scientists, women entrepreneurs, women creators of all kinds are still outnumbered and out-salaried by men.

"In our routine operations"-- simply going about the business and busy-ness of life-- "our own beauty [is] not enough." Still.


Next Song: Bound

Frank and Ava

Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner had a brief, tempestuous marriage. It only lasted 5-6, years but was filled with passion-- both the good and bad kinds. Whole books have been written about it, since their affairs and external friendships involved many other celebrities, as well as colorful characters like big-game hunters, starlets, and matadors. It involved, indeed, everything from drunken scenes to slashed wrists.

The song, however, makes no reference to any specific couple, as their last names are not given. So this is about that famous couple... but only as a metaphor for all such high-emotional, disastrous relationships (Vega herself had recently been divorced; she mentions "you and me" toward the end.).

Vega lays the blame for the failed relationship at both their feet. Ava could be imperious and act the "queen." Frank's love could be overwhelming, but explosive; his heart was a "tinderbox," and "the fire of his desire meant/ That everything must come undone."

Conclusion? "It's not enough, to be in love." The love must be between two compatible people, ones with the emotional maturity, stability, and stamina to maintain that love, through the natural ebbs and flows of time. Expecting first-kiss fireworks all the time is unrealistic and leads to shattered expectations.

Her aloofness didn't help. While he's hot for her, "she's cool." Which "makes him cruel." So they "needle" each other until "the jewels go raining down upon the ground." Either some jewelry box was knocked over, or someone was hit or shaken hard enough to make their jewelry fall off.

Eventually, the bad was acknowledged to outweigh the good, and they divorced: "They woke up, and they broke up."

While they were busy making each other miserable and being "volatile," of course, they wasted the time they could have spent on others: "Life passed, it went so fast."

Although it was doomed, it was a tragedy. Surely the public longed for two such attractive and talented people to find happiness together amidst the glamour of Hollywood. And while they were fire and ice, they were still attracted to each other: "They never could forget their chemistry."

So, more like oil and water, as it "proved go keep them both apart for life."

It's not enough to be in love. You have to find the right person, at the right time. And "indoor fireworks," as Elvis Costello put it, "can still burn your fingers." So while passion is important and should definitely be a part of any healthy relationship, it can't be the only part.

"Love does not consist in gazing at each other," noted The Little Prince author Antoine de Saint-Exupery, "but in looking outward together in the same direction." It also does not consist in gazing at the other person and hoping to find a reflection of yourself, or seeking a source of the fulfillment of all your needs.

It doesn't consist of looking at yourself, either. Even if you are as good-looking as a movie star.


Next Song: Edith Wharton's Figurines

Pornographer's Dream

Bettie Page was a real person. She was a pin-up model, and a very sexual one at that. Some of the photos of her feature her, and others, in states of bondage or domination. What was all the more remarkable is that her career largely spanned the 1950s, often thought of as a very stodgy time.

Page comes up later in the song, so she is not necessarily the "she" spoken of in the song's opening line. All we know for certain is that the person in question is compared to Page later on.

The opening line seems to have been something someone said to Vega, about someone else. Which made Vega wonder, what does a pornographer have left to dream of? Can't he write and direct any scenario he can imagine? As she put it, "What kind of a dream would he have/ That hadn't been spent?"

No, he wouldn't dream of the "flesh" he could have access to. Rather: "Wouldn't he dream of the thing/ He never could never quite get the touch of?... He's dreaming of what might be... of mystery."

Now, we turn to Page (pun intended). If anyone was, she was a pornographer's dream-- her proportions, her openness, her bravery, her sunshine-bright smile-- at once innocent and seductive. But what was the real secret of her, well, success as a pin-up?

It's the element of surprise. "Who's to know what she'll show?" In other words, is it "what she reveals, or what she conceals" that "is the key to our pleasure?"

The pornographer dreams of the women whose sexual contours and comportment he will never capture on camera. The viewer of a Page pin-up is as excited by the "leather" she wears as he is by the bare parts of her body.

Someone tossed an unusual remark to Vega, and she caught it. She knew that the person had simply meant to say that the woman in question was very sexy. But what he hadn't realized he had implied that what was sexy about her was that she was unattainable. She would remain a "dream."

"Out of our hands, over our heads," and other expressions are employed... but even Vega is no match for Keats, who dedicated his famed "Ode on a Grecian Urn" to this very subject: "Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss/ Though winning near the goal... She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss/ For ever wilt though love, and she be fair!"

Some things are best kept "out of reach," enshrined in art, but not experienced in reality. Whether captured on a ceramic vase or a piece of film, "a thing of beauty is a joy forever" (same poet, different poem).

Next Song: Frank and Ava

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.)

Ludlow Street

Ludlow Street runs between Houston and Divison, in Manhattan's Lower East Side. This is the second song on the album, and the second set in New York.

The song is a simple one. It's about how a place evokes the memory of the people we knew there.

In this case, the place is the above-mentioned street, and the person is named "Tim." We don't find out his name until the end of the song, but since we don't learn anything about him specifically during the course of the song, it doesn't seem to matter.

In fact, "love is the only thing that matters." Now, on the one hand, "it's still the hardest thing to feel." Yet, "love is the only thing [she] feels" when she thinks about Tim now.

Rather, the loss of that love. We don't learn where Tim is now, or even if he is alive-- the song does have an elegiac feeling to it. All we know is where he is not: "each stoop and doorway" of Ludlow Street.

What is there, now? "Another generation's parties." Perhaps she knew him though a series of parties when they were both there.

Aside from "love," and their fondness for get-togethers, can we glean anything about their relationship? "I can recall each morning after/ Painted in nicotine." Oh. Very well, then.

There is no other information here-- how long they knew each other, how long they saw each other, what happened to their relationship, or what happened to Tim.

All we know is that, for her, Ludlow Street should be named Tim Street. Because his memory is all that is there for her, now.

(The liner notes reveal the answer. Tim Vega was her brother, who lived on Ludlow Street before he passed away.)


Next Song: New York is a Woman

Zephyr and I

A "zephyr" is a light breeze. "Zephyr," the Greek god whose namesake this gust is, is the god of the West wind, and therefore of Spring. He was so jealous that he killed a young man rather than have a rival have him.

The song kicks off with a riff that calls to mind the song "Wild Thing" (the Troggs one, not the Tone Loc one).

The speaker introduces us to a man named Zephyr. They are hanging out on West End Avenue, on the western shore of Manhattan, an area visited many times in Vega's songs. They are reminiscing, "talking about the things that all of us used to do" and "the 1970s."

While they are, "the wind kicks up, with the smell of rain." This is foreshadowing, along with a nod to Zephyr's name.

The name Zephyr, as we have seen, is an old one. And the song is what what leaves and what stays. The Greeks no longer worship their old gods, but we still know their names. Likewise, "The kids are gone but the souls remain." The souls of those kids live on in the adults they became.

The Mall of America is a real place, a gigantic indoor mall (how big is it? It contains a roller coaster) in Minnesota. Here, the speaker says, "there was a youth mall of America on this street." Instead of hanging out at the mall, she means, they used this street as a meeting place. They were as frequently seen there as "cops on a beat." Specifically, there was a monument to firefighters who died in the line of duty that "fatherless teenagers" congregated around. They were as diverse as America itself.

More imagery of what is lost and what stays-- "The graffiti" and "flowers" leave but the "walls" and "earth" remain. Later, she opines that the walls don't just remain, but "complain" that their decorative paint jobs have been worn or sandblasted away or painted over.

"In the spring" (Zephyr's time), "the tide in Riverside will wash away the cold and frozen." Riverside is a park on the Upper West Side. The "river" it is on the "side" of is the Hudson.

And the rain? "Rain will clean the stain and wash away downstream."

Years pass, but the cycle of seasons remains. The old gets washed away by the new, as always. But the memories remain. The souls that were shaped in those formative teenage years live on.

It is possible that there is no Zephyr who is a childhood friend talking to her. Or even a god she is communing with. It may, in fact, just be a zephyr--a passing breeze that stirs up some leaves... and memories.

Next Song: Ludlow Street