Brother Mine

Vega considers this the first song she ever wrote, at 14. It's a country song, dedicated to her kid brother, Matthew. But it wasn't released until her Close Up 4 album.

While it's about being a big sister, the tone is fairly maternal; she even leads off by calling him "Sonny boy." She notices that needs new shoes, and also "just about everything," so she plans a shopping trip.

Perhaps she saw his beat-up shoes by the door first, then his face once she got further inside the house. Because most people would first notice his black eye that isn't mentioned until the second verse.

Yes, his eye is "black and swollen," because he got into "another fight." She calls him a "troublemaker," and irresponsible for needing medical attention when they "don't have much money."

She seems to back off a bit-- "Maybe I shouldn't yell/ I know you're just a kid." But really, it's only her tone she is apologizing for, not her message. She is, in fact, in earnest: "I don't expect you to get everything just right/ But I think you ought to use a little more sense."

She admits that she tends to "worry too much," and that she should accept that "what [he's] got to do, [he'll] go ahead and do it."

Until now, she has ended every statement with "I know everything will be all right," or "I think everything will be all right." After she tells him to use more sense, she says, "Maybe then things will be all right." So they will be... and now are not. And, it's his, or at least his impulsiveness', fault.

But now the she realizes that she can't be there to police him at all times, this is going to keep happening. And she lets slip a note of doubt: "I sure hope things will be all right." Maybe her intuition is smarter than her optimism..?

Well, right now, it's bedtime, so all she wants is to kiss him goodnight. So she tucks him in...

...with a not-quite-comforting observation: "I know if you were gone, I'd miss the sound of laughter." Wait, she's 14 and he's her kid brother, so even younger. What makes her think he's "going" anywhere, and somewhere she'd "miss" him? He's certainly going to be coming home every evening for the foreseeable future, right, and not off to college or the army or an overseas business trip. Or does she think his impulsiveness is going to get him, well, killed?

If she is that worried about him getting into "trouble" he can't get out of, she needs to tuck him in, then go have a conversation with her parents about him.


Next Song: The Silver Lady

Daddy Is White

This is a very personal song for Vega (it's a rare track, released on volume 4 of her Close-Up series). Her birth father had a heritage based in the UK, but he and her mother divorced when she was very young. Her stepfather, whose last name she still bears, was from Puerto Rico.

Now, it's one thing when your parents come from different ethnic backgrounds, but their differences show up in your face. In Vega's case, they did not: "I am an average white girl... When you look into my face, it's clear what everyone else knows/ Daddy is white, so I must be white, too."

But... was she? "I was raised half-Latin," she explains. "This caused me some problems."

To her white friends, she was not entirely white. But to her Latino friends... she wasn't that, either. (She also had "foes"-- bullies, we assume.)

"When you look into the mirror/ What comes looking back at you?" She also wondered, herself, about who she was.

The issue of identity is pervasive. She says that she could feel herself being weighed and judged as she simply walked around by the passers-by: "I feel the tension in the street, I feel it ticking all around/ I feel it filling up the sidewalk, in the spaces in between... my face and your face and the public places we get seen."

The last verse tells a brief story of two "strangers" at a bar: "He called her 'baby,' she called him 'boy.'" The result? "It ended as a fight." Too bad, because it began as a "conversation" and they wound up "broken-hearted" which implies that initially, there was a flirtation that might have bloomed.

Vega's understanding was that the situation deteriorated because "he was black and she was white." But I think she may have-- however inappropriate her response-- been reacting to him calling her "baby," which she perceived as sexist. Perhaps there are still deeper layers; perhaps a way of addressing someone of the opposite gender is acceptable in some communities and not in others, and that is what Vega meant.

The larger issue is the need to define oneself, and others, in terms of culture and race. It is a need we seem to have as individuals and as a society... 

...and as mommies, daddies, and kiddies.

Next Song: Brother Mine

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

Anniversary

This is one of Vega's loveliest songs. It recalls Billy Joel's "Summer, Highland Falls" in the prettiness of its melody juxtaposed with a mellifluous and erudite verbiage.

It begins with idea of feeling nostalgic in the autumn. The weather chills, and you know the year is ending... so you get a bit sentimental, musing on your "memories," jumping from one to another "unrelated histories," and mourning "unresolving fantasies." Even the wind is "thick with ghosts."

This wind "whips around in circuitries," spinning fallen leaves in miniature tornadoes. The wind "carries words as strangers exchange pleasantries." But does "as" mean "the same way that" or "at the same time that"? Depending on which it is, "do they intrude upon your private reveries" could have its "they" refer to the strangers or to their pleasantry-words themselves. Either way, here you are, lost in memory-- when a stray "Hello, there" jolts you back to reality.

The rest of the song is a series of pieces of advice; it's what Vega might say if asked to give a commencement speech at a graduation: Notice people being brave every day. Notice how people find new ways to be nice to each other. Touch objects that will remind you of these things people did.

Also: Note when important things happen, and then celebrate them them every year on that date. Don't plan, now, to later mourn things that will pass; enjoy them while they are here! Make room in your life to do the kinds of things now that you will want to remember later. And "make the time for all your possibilities."

Every verse ends with "each/every corner/street." As you walk along, you will see things. They can either trigger memories and regrets... or offer opportunities to have new experiences. It's the same corner that you turn, the same street you walk.

What can be different is how you see it. But that, of course, is all the difference.

Next Song: The Man Who Played God

Angel's Doorway

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"

As You Are Now

This song is a lullaby to Vega's daughter, Ruby.

In it, she promises to save souvenirs of her daughter's life: her "tears," her "teeth" that fell out as a child, and her "hair" which was, we assume, regularly cut.

Now, the album's copyright date is 2007, and Ruby was born in 1994, which would make the "child" about 13 when the album came out. Since she had long since stopped losing her teeth, we have to imagine that the song was written long before.

So why include it on an album at this point? Because this is a divorce album. While many of the songs herein are about her ex and their break-up, Vega is more than just an ex-wife. She is also a mother, and she wants her child to be reassured that her love for her continues unabated.

What better way that to say, "Listen to this song I wrote you when you were just a girl! You're still my daughter now, and I still love you as much."

How does one, in practical terms, collect tears? By collecting "salty tissues." She calls these tears "diamonds," referring to the salt crystals left behind after she, it says, dries the tissues in the sun.

And teeth? In a "cardboard box." These are like another gemstone, "pearls," and they remind her of "laughter." There is a pun here-- the teeth are kept in "ticking," which is tough but decorative cotton or linen fabric. The line is that the teeth are kept "through the ticking and the tocks," as in the tick-tock of passing time.

The hair-- evidently a ponytail snipped off all at once-- will be woven into a "braid of gold/ For you to keep when you are old."

The mother then finishes the lullaby with a "kiss" on her "milky skin." Then she tucks the child, and her "soul," in a "sheet of silk."

The child will have given her mother all of these keepsakes of her growth and development. What will the mother pay her with for these gifts? Why, the kiss itself: "Put this kiss upon your brow."

Then comes the line that gives us the title: "Treasure you as you are now."

It doesn't, you will note, say "I will treasure you." No, the verbs are "put" and then "treasure." So who should be doing the putting and treasuring?

The child. She should put her mother's kiss on herself. She should treasure herself. As she is now. Whenever "now" is.

Her mother will have memories of the baby, the toddler, the girl, the teen, and the young woman, and she will collect mementos of those moments. The child however, needs to treasure each moment as it comes, and herself as she experiences it.

Alternately, one could read the verse as one long sentence: "now I kiss... put... treasure." In this, perhaps more literal, reading, the mother kisses the daughter on her forehead (and the "sheet," for some reason... and, somehow, her "soul") and treasures her as she is now.

The tenses are of note. She says she will collect the tears, teeth, and hair... but that she is "now" kissing, tucking, and treasuring her. Which implies that, at the time of the song's writing, the child had yet to lose any teeth, but still had time to grow a substantial ponytail. On average, the first "baby" teeth fall out at 6 or so, and therefore that's not really on a parent's radar until the kid approaches that age. We're going to say Ruby was 5 when the song was written... or that it was written to make it seem so.

Again, the song is now offered to the young adolescent whose parents are divorcing as a way of saying, "While a wife and husband can stop loving each other, a parent never stops loving a child. I still have your baby teeth and your childhood ponytail, and I still treasure you as well."


Next Song: "Angel's Doorway."

Unbound

This song forms the second half of a pair; the first was "Bound," the previous song on the album.

Many larger plants come with their roots wrapped in cloth and bound with twine for easier, cleaner transportation. Often the cloth is organic-- left on once the plant is settled into its new earthy home, the roots will penetrate the cloth as they grow and it decomposes.

However, this one plant was the exception. "I knew a plant/ Whose roots were bound/ And then returned/ Into the ground." But in this case, "every day/ It struggled so."

The solution? Simply remove the cloth: "I dug it up/ I cut the twine." It worked: "I watched it drink/ I watched it feed/ And grow beyond/ Its simple need."

This process had an impact on the gardener, too. Once she freed the roots, she felt, "I made it mine." Now the plant was not bound by a physical barrier, but wrapped in an emotional relationship. Well, on the gardener's part, in any case. The plant's side of the story remains untold.

In case you thought the song was only about transplantation techniques for garden flora, the speaker explains why this plant's story resonated with her: "I was once/ Bound at the root/ Confined with twine/ Both mind and foot." Both her ability to think and travel independently were being hampered.

But "I cut it loose/ And now I'm free." The song, once again, seems to be about Vega's divorce. Here, we really see the psychological restraint and restriction the marriage must have had.

"Now I'm (as) free/ As anything alive could be." Now, she can, like her plant, "grow beyond (her) simple need" and perhaps, even supply the needs of others. Funny how that works.


Next Song: "As You Are Now."