Annemarie

This song is heart-wrenching, compelling, hyperliterate, intricate... a mini-novel. It shows that Vega is an artist still at the height of her powers.

Since the subject of the album the song is on is Carson McCullers (a female 20th Century American writer), the subject of this song is likely to be fellow author Annemarie Schwarzenbach, McCullers' lesbian crush, who typically dressed in men's clothes and with who she claimed to have shared a kiss. Of her, McCullers wrote: "She had a face I knew would haunt me the rest of my life." While they never achieved couplehood, McCullers dedicated her novel Reflections in a Golden Eye to Annemarie.

The song starts by referring to the quote about Annemarie: "I saw your face; I knew you'd haunt me for all of my life."

The next three words define how McCullers saw Annemarie-- as completely unattainable: "Rising above me." The rest of the song is a painful list of all the ways Annemarie is superior to her.

"Everyone sees you, everyone knows you," she says. Everyone also "loves... wants... needs... worships" Annemarie. So, even though McCullers would say, "If you would want me I'd be no man's wife," what's the point? After all, "Who could possibly hold one so fair?"

"How can I possibly compare?" she asks, "How can I possibly compete?" Annemarie, is "brilliant"; she "moves through the world with money and family... [and] perfect beauty."

Let's talk about that beauty for a minute. We already know her face is "haunting." But people "worship" Annemarie! At least our speaker does: "If I could see God, His face would be sacred like yours." Just... wow. "But God's face is hidden, and your face is suddenly all I can see."

This is beyond smitten-- this is obsessed.

Nevertheless, Annemarie has issues too, and it seems, a lot of them: "Who could contain you, with all of your pain?" She is "stormy," as well.

But even this the speaker finds attractive: "She glitters with trouble... How can I possibly complain?"

So the speaker, McCullers, feels that Annemarie is perfect, even in her imperfections. Are the perfections a way... in? No. Even pained, Annemarie is the impossible dream, the unreachable star: "Who could possibly make you complete?" Even if someone could, in theory, do so, it would not be the speaker: "Could I gather up all that you remain?"

The object of affection is summed up in three words: "Terror, pity, love-- Annemarie." The speaker is terrified of her... and how she feels about her, which makes her vulnerable. She pities the poor little rich girl, whose status makes her beyond the (what McCullers is sure would be) the healing power of her affection.

And "love" is what she considers all of these emotions to be, in sum.

Does she love her? She admires her, to the point of "worship." She is jealous of her status and stature, yet pities Annemarie for the isolation she has on her mountaintop. But does that amount to love?

You can love some you feel is out of your league. But the line, "How could I possibly compete?" makes me feel that the desire is more to achieve Annemarie, and to match her accomplishments, than to accompany her as a partner: "Oh, if I were Annemarie's girlfriend, life would be awesome. Everyone could see I was her equal."

But that will never be. So McCullers gets to play the martyr. No one else is good enough for her... except for the one person who is too good. So she gets to be the victim, and never has to actually have a relationship. She has trapped herself on Keats' Grecian Urn... on purpose.

Next Song: Twelve Mortal Men

We of Me

The song starts with the line: "My squeezed heart divides into two wide wings," which implies that something was pressuring her to choose between two sides, but somehow she was able to choose both. Perhaps the wings take her back and forth between the two sides.

"The world is a sudden place if you don't belong to anything," she says next. What is meant by "sudden" is not clear-- does the world appear suddenly, when there was nothing before? Is it constantly startling with no one there for support or structure? Perhaps the word is "sullen," which would make more sense; a world in which one did not feel connected would be sullen, indeed.

"This must be the irony of fate/ I and the world are always separate," she continues. "All other people have a 'we' to claim/ Except for me, in my own name." If she is feeling disconnected, that is sad, and perhaps it is her fate to be alone. But in what sense is that an "irony"? She just said she belongs not to no world, but to two! That's more belonging, not less.

Now, this is from Vega's album about Carson McClullers (a woman), who was married and divorced, and then lived with another man for a short while without marrying him. I don't see anything about her having children, and the two men never met as far as I can see.

This also doesn't seem to be about Vega herself. She is divorced from her first husband, with whom she had a child she is still close to. And she is remarried now. So this "squeezed heart" idea could stem from that, but then why say there is no "we" for her to be part of in her own name-- what about her own child? Well, the kid does have her father's last name...

I'm going to say this is about Vega herself, as McCullers' story lines up even less, even if Vega-as-McCullers features heavily in the video. McCullers seems too haughty, world-weary, and jaded to have come up with such a tender idea, anyway. True, the part about being "separate" from the world does seem to apply.

The song continues: "I belong to be with the two of you/ And we make three/ As a family/ That is why you're the 'we' of me." Is she trying to get her daughter to be part of her new family with her second husband? We do not know when she wrote the song, but she re-married in 2006 and released the son in 2016. If the kid and her step-father are not close after 10 years... Or maybe they were, but then something caused a rift and she is trying to sew it back up.

The Biblical story of Noah is invoked: "Noah may have got it wrong... Noah's ark admitted only two by two/ We know this isn't always true... because there's one more that could belong."

According to the Bible, the animals that boarded the ark in pairs were the "unclean" ones,  and the "clean" ones came in in herds of seven. But most likely that detail is not what she means to refer to.

Rather, she rebuts the idea that families are made of pairs by saying there can be a family of three-- a pair of parents and a child.

So, what does the expression "the we of me" mean? It probably means "my 'we,' that is, the people I mean when I use the word 'we.'" Namely: herself, her current husband and her daughter. By extension, her current husband's 'we' includes himself, her, and the child.

On a psychological level, "You are the 'we' of me" means "You two are the group I most intensely feel myself a part of."

Wings can be for flight, away from danger. But wings can also be spread over a family for warmth, closeness, and protection.


Next Song: Annemarie

New York is My Destination

Vega is from New York, but Carson McCullers (the author this album is about) was born in Georgia, so let's say this is in her voice.

Why is she going to New York? And not just to visit but to stay ("New York is where I will be from")? Because "New York is made for grander things, just like me!" What grander things? "Mountains of fame and fortune."

She imagines that the "literati"-- the most highly regarded authors and their set-- "will love me." The
"paparazzi," who stalk the famous to photograph them, will do so to her. The "glitterati" (a portmanteau of "glitter" and "literati") are wealthy sophisticates in general-- actors, models, splashy business-people, Hollywood insiders-- have also "heard of" her. Well, they will, of course, once she gets there.

The rest of the song is largely about partaking on many of New York's storied locales. "The Algonquin" is a hotel notable for its attracting many famous wags and raconteurs in the early part of the 20th Century, like Harpo Max and Dorothy Parker. "The Plaza" is a posh hotel notable for being just that.

Other places mentioned largely serve young and/or single women. "The Three Arts Club" teaches painting, drama and music and gives students a chance to display and perform their work publicly. "The Parnassus" (named after Apollo's mythical mountain) is a boarding house, largely for Julliard students (more about which below). And "Columbia" in this case is a university. "Fifth Avenue" is a major Manhattan street, noted for its high-fashion shopping.

Riding "buses" on this street, she imagines participating in conversations like: "I lost all my money for Julliard (a major performing-arts college); "I hid in the phone booth at Macy's (a major department store)" and even "I slept in a brothel on my way to my destiny." As they say back in Columbus, Georgia: mercy me!

Not only can she not wait to get to New York, she concludes, New York can't wait until she gets there! "New York's waiting for me!" she enthuses.

And they didn't know it at the time, but it seems they were.

Next Song: We of Me

Carson's Blues

Carson McCullers was an American novelist. Vega has been a lifelong affinity for her (Carson was a woman) work and even wrote a play about her life.

This song is the first of an album, Lover, Beloved: An Evening with Carson McCullers. It is the soundtrack to Carson McCullers Talks About Love (with the same subtitle), Vega's one-woman show about the writer, whom Vega plays.

The song is only two verses long. The first lists a number of things that the speaker says she'd been compared to or called: "A wounded sparrow," "a fallen deer,"  "a childish liar," "a devilish bitch."

At first, she denies being cruel, while owning that she has two sides: "I'm an iron butterfly." McCullers may not have known, but Vega certainly does, that there is a classic rock band called Iron Butterfly; while they formed a year before McCullers' death, they were not widely known until a year after.

Then, the speaker cops to sometimes being surprisingly harsh: "I can be sweet I can be wise... I can be innocent and charming and suddenly switch" to the opposite.

Even so, she still has an excuse: "you've got to understand that I've never belonged." Well, which is the cause and which the effect? Is it possible that someone who comes across as nice and then lashes out venomously might have have a hard time keeping friends?

Despite looking in from the outside, or perhaps due to that state, she says she has everyone pegged: "I've got every one of you mirrored in my deep sad eyes/ I know where you've been to and who you're afraid to be." She even quotes the Roman playwright Terence: "Nothing that is human is alien to me."

And how, without having "belonged," does she do this research? "I talk to strangers."

This short song is a portrait of someone who has said to humanity at large, "You can't fire me, I quit." Having been rejected for so long, she has begun pre-rejecting potential new friends and poisoning potential relationships. Why go through the trouble of getting hurt when you could be the one inflicting the pain?


Next Song: New York is My Destination

Horizon

"God is the horizon," said Vaclav Havel, a Czech playwright who became a dissident and was imprisoned, only to become his nation's leader after his release. I only learned that Vega wrote this song about him because she said so when introducing the song in a concert.

I had thought it was about South Africa's Nelson Mandela, but it also could have been about Poland's Lech Walesa India's Gandhi, or Israel's Natan Sharansky, imprisoned by the Soviets (OK, so he hasn't been made head of state in Israel... yet), or even Joseph from the Bible. It's also the story of some women, including Myanmar's Aung San Suu Kyi (she was under house arrest, not jail, but still) and Pakistan's Benazir Bhutto. Even Martin Luther King, Jr. was jailed and then led his country, after a fashion.

The relevant verse comes later in the song, however. It starts simply: "There is a road/ Beyond this one/ ...the path/ We don't yet take." It could be the afterlife, or simply the future.

"I can feel how it longs/ To be entered upon," she continues, "It calls to me with a cry/ And an ache." She feels pulled toward it, compelled to travel its length.

What powers its attraction? "Love pulls us on to that/ Distant horizon so true."

Now we get to the biography: "I knew a man/ He lived in jail... When he was free/ He led his country."

What allows someone to rise from a prison cot to a president's chair? "He dreamed of a line/ That we call the Divine." The line being, as we now know, the horizon itself.

How do these rulers tend to lead their countries? "He taught the way of love/ And he lived in that way, too/ Love pulled him on to that distant horizon so true."

What makes us go forward, onto the next path, and the next after that? What allows us to enter the realm beyond the horizon of this life? Love.

Love of country, of self, of principles and values, of one's fellow humans. Love, even, of love itself.

Next Song: Carson's Blues

Laying on of Hands/ Stoic 2

The "laying on of hands" is the idea that touch, all by itself, has healing properties. It is often used in religious contexts.

Mother Theresa was a Nobel Prize-winning nun who dedicated her life to treating and healing the poorest of the poor in India's slums; her name is fairly synonymous with altruism.

The speaker wonders how someone so in tune with the power of touch was never curious about more... intimate touches, from which a nun by definition abstains. Most of us cannot help but heed "Love's demands," and the body's "earthly commands."

The speaker then addresses the listener: "Touch is a language," she says, and it's true. Touch can convey everything from "brutality" to "tenderness."

Well, if that's the case, "What is it you have to say to me?/ Come and talk about it." Now, of course, if "touch is a language," and the language we will be "speaking," then the "conversation" could become very personal indeed.

In fact, "our bodies are exchanged in all eternity," which sounds like re-incarnation, in which case the same soul would necessarily touch multiple bodies through the eons.

Getting back to the idea of touch being equally capable of wounding or caressing, we must ask ourselves, "In this wilderness, do we hurt or heal within our daily plans?" It's a constant choice.

The ancient Roman named Epicetus was no Mother Theresa. He was a Stoic, like the emotionless person in the previous song. The speaker opines that he was probably sexless, "slept with his hands above the covers" (and away from his "private parts").

Since he, like Theresa, was celibate, he also had no "ex-lovers" to lose sleep over. However, she did not deny herself human contact altogether.

So we have three levels of "touchers," then: those like Epicetus who don't touch anyone else at all, those like Theresa who touches others to help them but not to receive any benefit herself...

And most of us, who like to touch others and to be touched in return, in nonverbal conversation. The speaker's conclusion? Such non-touching "virtue is overrated."

She much prefers "happiness." And happiness, as Charlie Brown, taught us, is a "warm puppy." And, well, other kinds of hugs.

While this is a short song, it says a great deal about our underappreciated sense of touch. Songs often explore the sensual aspect of touch, but ignore the simple relief that being warmly touched by another person can bring. This one manages to encompass both.

Next Song: Horizon (There Is a Road)

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