Institution Green

This song seems to conflate two ideas. One is being a patient in a mental institution. The other is participating in an election, voting. It is possible that Vega is implying that being a citizen is like being a mental patient.

And it seems that what triggered this comparison is was the color on the walls of wherever it was she went to vote-- a shade of green once preferred by mental institutions because it evoked Nature and was therefore thought to be calming. The song begins by describing the walls of this color, noting that they have not been maintained-- the paint is "cracked and dim."

She is part of a "line," a queue of people "waiting for our faces to be seen." Faces, of course, meaning uniqueness. All the listener knows at this point is that the walls are this particular shade of green, and so those in the queue are assumed to be waiting for admission into some mental facility.

This notion is fostered by the next lines: "Watch the floor and count the hours." They are waiting for a long time-- with no magazines to read, no TV to watch-- and are not talking with each other while waiting. They do not even look at each other or make eye contact: "None will meet my eye/ Private people in a public space." Well, sure, what would they talk about except their mental diagnoses-- which are no one's business, thanks very much!

At the head of the line is some sort of "book" full of "names." She is expecting her own name to be in the book, and is somewhat apprehensive about that. She wants to be recognized as an individual with a "face," but it worried that the authorities and bureaucrats there will "lose [her] on the printed page" and she will become just another statistic.

The factotum-like employees will be nameless and faceless as well, leaving her not knowing "where to point the aimless rage." She is thinking that even if she rebels, she will not even know who to rebel against, since it is a whole system that is responsible (or irresponsible).

Then comes the revelation-- this is not about being admitted to a mental institution at all! This is about lining up in some bureaucratic, institutional building to vote.

"I cast my vote upon this earth," she says, meaning two things at once. Yes, she is a citizen and therefore has the right, along with others on the Earth, to make her political voice heard. Yet she is so anonymous, so one-among-many, that her vote may just as well be "cast" (or "tossed," as in "cast your bread upon the waters" or "casting a line," as in fishing) upon "the earth," right into the dirt. "I... take my place for what it's worth," she explains. "Yeah, I did it-- so?" is the implication.

What does she really want? Eye contact! "I... hunger for a pair of eyes." To what end? "To notice and to recognize." She wants to be acknowledged as an individual, and this process piles her votes in with everyone else's, anonymously.

It's the other side of the idea of a "secret ballot" that is at the core of democracy. On the one hand, no one gets to know your vote, and therefore cannot attack you for it-- you are safe to vote your preference with no repercussions. On the other hand, you said something very important, but no one heard.

Back to the line. Now we see that the "woman" who "stands behind a table" with a name-book in front of her is checking to see if you registered to vote. If you did, and were approved, you can vote. If not, no. But Vega continues to recall the mental-institution imagery here. She describes the above process thus: "She will call my name/ After that, I'll be admitted in."

Now, she has arrived at the voting booth. Today, many of these are electronic. In the past, they were mechanical. The small booth had three sides, the fourth being a curtain instead of a door. It was not unlike a shower stall in this way, although the curtain was usually only waist-long. Today, many voting devices have no curtains, but are simply oriented in the room to prevent others from seeing your votes.

Once inside, the early-model voting machine presented a series of levers-- a pull to either side indicated a vote for either candidate. Often, attendants were on hand to explain, and then once you understood, they backed away and closed the curtain to let you vote in secret. Thence these lines: "Teach me how to pull the lever/ Push the curtain closed."

Vega evidently found the whole experience humiliating and demoralizing. The song ends with her repeating: "Take what's needed, then just let me go."

In other times and places, voting was limited to few, and one's vote had to be open. The secret ballot was created to preserve the dignity of the voter. Perhaps if Vega wanted her vote to be public, she could simply wear a button declaiming her favored party or candidate.

There are many reasons to complain about the imperfections of the American electoral process-- the prevalence of money in campaigns, new voter restrictions, gerrymandering, the violent intimidation of voters, the complexity of the electoral college system (which can elect someone who has lost the popular vote), the ease with which computer-voting systems can be rigged or hacked, the low voter rates, even the dampening effect on new ideas caused by an only-two-party system.

All of these issues and more can-- and do-- earn the voting process fair comparison to a mental institution.

But the secret ballot seems an odd target. Again, if Vega did want her voting preferences known, that would be easy enough. Candidates' campaigns are more than happy to provide everyone with stickers, pins, hats, flags, signs and more to let everyone know who you voted for. They are also usually glad for public figures such as herself to publicly align themselves with their candidate.

Although she'd have to write them a new song. Most of her work is... less than anthemic.


Next Song: Those Whole Girls

Book of Dreams

As befits a song about dreams, this song is surreal, full of non-sequiturs, and stream of conscious-- or, more accurately, subconscious-- imagery and sound.

It is constructed to feel unconstructed, yet to deconstruct it is our task.

The song begins with the repeated line that contains the title: "In my book of dreams." This repetition serves to flash a warning: dream-imagery ahead! It also mimics the rhythm of someone drifting off, or the repetitious movements made to induce hypnotic slumber.

The wind that pushes us into the waters of the subconscious is an "urgent whisper." This is not given, but taken for this purpose, and from the "you," perhaps the listener (whom we shall consider a man for clarity's sake alone, to be able to use a different pronoun).

We know these are waters we travel because of the next series of images. The "arc of a white wing," which was not just taken this time but stolen, could be that of a seagull, or perhaps a sail looks like a white wing . Then she "rode like foam on the river... turned its tide..." So yes, the dreamworld is more an waterway, in which there are no roads, barriers or borders, than a land-bound place.

However, this is not a river of water. It is a "river of pity." She does not sink into it, but rides like foam on its surface. This recalls the expression "to wallow in pity," which this speaker decidedly does not do. Instead, she turns pity's tide to "strength." In doing so, she "heals" a "hole" than had been "ripped" in... not the sailcloth, but in "living."

So the dreamer has undergone some recent trauma, a hole that was ripped in her life. But rather than succumb to pity, she responded with fortitude. This is reflected in the active, forceful verbs that start each line: "took," "stole," "turned" "healed."

Even "rode" is not passive here. We car passengers think to "ride" is passive while to "drive" is active, but here she "rode the foam," like a horse or bicycle, so the verb reflects an actor, not one acted upon or along for the ride.

Evidently, she records her dreams in a journal or book, and a hardy one, too: "The spine is bound to last for life/ Tough enough to take the pounding." This could also refer to her own backbone, which we have just seen is formidable.

The pages of the book are "made of days of open hand" (whence the album's title). This expression implies that her days are spent in opening her hand, a gesture of both generosity and acceptance, as well as honesty.

Further, we see that the book is considered important, as the pages are numbered in "silver." This could also be a reference to money; this book also has elements of a ledger of accounts.

Yet, the book is also mundane, as the highlights are not done in gold or diamonds, say, but in ho-hum "magic marker"-- which sounds "magical" but which everyone knows is not.

We have been working, to this point, under the assumption that the book is a record of her dreams. Yet, we now she she uses it to "take the name of every prisoner." This is a somewhat shocking revelation! Does she really feel that those who have relationships with her are trapped by her, captured and kept, with no freedom to leave? Or is it that this idea applies to those in her dreams?

Perhaps he is not the victim... but she is. She may want to let people, thoughts, images, go-- but cannot. They are trapped in her memory, and they stalk the prison yards and dungeon passages of her dreams. Therefore, their names are in her book.

She promises that "yours is there," meaning the name of whomever is being addressed. He hopes that he is trapped only in her memory and subconscious, not her clutches...

The first verse was about active dreaming. She says she "stole [his] urgent whisper," and then proceeds to ignore it, and the pity that came with it. Instead, she actively turns the tide and heals the hole in her life. Then she describes her dream journal as being strong as well, and both special and approachable.

She concludes by telling the listener-- the ones that whispered pity before-- that he is part of her dreams, even though she rejected his sympathy. She still recalls the fact of it, and seems to even use it as a pushing-off point. Her rejection of the pity is part of what drives her to heal herself.

She doesn't thank him for this. But she doesn't forget him, either.

Next Song: Institution Green

Rusted Pipe

Another song about illness. It seems that the patient was able to speak and move once, but has since lost those abilities due to, perhaps, a head trauma or stroke. Now, they are beginning to regain these abilities, slowly and haltingly...

Through speech therapy of some sort, which has just begun: "Now the time has come to speak."

The speaker compares her ability to make sounds to "water through a rusted pipe." The sounds are sometimes human, like a "stutter," "moan," or a "mutter," sometimes animalistic, like a "hiss" (which could also be made by steam). Mostly, they are water-like, as she said to begin with: "gurgle," "rush," "foam."

The overall impression is that the words are halting, staccato, and intermittent. Above all, unintelligible.

The passage, from a literary standpoint, is a small masterwork of onomatopoeia. But not alliteration! There is the opposite of that-- competing sounds, a cacophony.

Then there is the bridge, which indicates that there was a long "winter" of no sound or movement-- a coma?-- before even this level of progress. The idea of a dormant period being compared to this season as is least as old as Shakespeare's line about a "winter of our discontent."

How is the progress? Speaking is but a "croak," followed by a frustrated, resigned "sigh."

Yet... even this "creak" from "somewhere deep within" her body and psyche "lets the tale begin." There is hope. A tale has a beginning, but then keeps progressing.

Then, in comes the physical therapist, who says, "Now the time has come to move." Similarly, progress is slow and long in coming. But, as before this shambling movement is a step past her earlier status, when she "was not able" to "move" at all.

Again, she compares her movements to water's: "trickle," "freeze." She falls a lot, too: "stumble," "trip," "fumble."

But still-- even though it is a mere "stagger" or "creep"-- there is forward movement. And when her legs fail, her hands can react to help; she is able to "grip."

Most importantly, she has not lost her sense of humor. The last two movements she says she can made are "slip and slide." While this may be a nod to the Paul Simon song "Slip-Slidin' Away," more likely it is an allusion to the childhood toy called a "slip 'n' slide."

This device, introduced in 1961 and an immediate success, is a plastic sheet, at one end of which is a perforated tube running its width. When a hose is connected to the tube, water seeps out of the perforations, rendering the entire sheet almost frictionless. Children then slide on the sheet on their bellies or backs, as if sledding.

That the speaker, in her almost-immobile and exceedingly frustrated state, can still joke is an excellent sign. That she can remember a happy childhood when movement was taken for granted is strong motivation for her to be able to endure the work needed to return to that state.

The "water" of her life-force is still flowing. It is only the "pipe"--its container, her physical body-- that is "rusted." With enough effort, the rust can be scrubbed off and the pipe should return to its healthier, more vigorous function.

Next Song: Book of Dreams

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

Tired of Sleeping

This seems to be a song about illness, told from the point of view of the ailing one.

If the idea of "sleeping" is literal, then this person has intense lethargy, such as with chronic fatigue syndrome, or is perhaps in an actual coma. If it is metaphoric, it can be seen as a state of severe depression, in the psychological, clinical sense.

In either case, the person is aware that she is sick and longs for her wakeful energy to return: "I'm tired of sleeping."

Why? She is not having nightmares, at least not insufferable ones: "The dreams are not so bad." Rather, she feels guilty as her lack of productivity, as if she is aware that others are doing everything for her she is usually capable of doing herself: "There's so much to do."

One of the people, perhaps the main person, caring for her is her mother. It is bad enough to have some paid nurse or orderly checking up on you. But to have your own mother continue to have to mother you as adult is heartbreaking.

Next, she becomes aware of an "old man." She realizes that he is trying to communicate with her. However, she "just can't hear what he's saying," either because he is speaking too quietly, or-- since she feels she just can't hear him-- that the fault is her illness'.

Who is he? Her doctor? A priest? We meet him again later for more clues.

First, we switch from an old man to "kids." They are "playing in pennies," that is, gambling with pennies as the stakes. They seem to have plenty to play with, as they are "up to their knees in money."

But they are also up to their knees in "dirt," perhaps the speaker's opinion of what money is worth. "All your money won't another minute buy," sings the rock group Kansas in "Dust in the Wind." So someone near death might see this quest for money as useful as a quest for dirt.

Now, where is this dirt? At the "churchyard steps." This brings religion into the mix. Combined with the pennies, these images together recall the imagery of moneychangers outside the Temple. And we all know how Jesus felt about that.

Further, the kids are at the "steps" of the church, or more at the steps of the "yard" before the "church." Near enough physically to see it. But while gambling, spiritually distant indeed. For the sake of pennies, they forgo the desire to enter the church and find true "riches."

Now, we return to the man. He "ripped out his lining." We are not sure yet why he would do so, but at this point we assume that she means the lining of a coat or suit jacket.

No. He somehow ripped out the lining of his "body"! Yes, "He tore out a piece of his body." Dare we ask which piece? He wanted to show "us"-- the speaker and her mother-- his "clean quilted heart."

This is quite graphic. And also quite impossible. Aside from the anatomical issues, hearts are made of muscle and are not "quilted." We are left to believe this is an hallucination or dream image.

But of what? The most common image of a person holding his own heart is Jesus, with his hands holding the Sacred Heart.

On the other hand... Jesus was not "old." He was only 33 at the time of his death. So this could be a conflation of Jesus and the Father...?

If the old man is a doctor, perhaps she sees him open his lab coat and show her the donor heart she is to receive, but in her illness-addled state, she sees the images she describes.

What is clear is that the image is a subconscious-based one, a dream image or hallucination. Her condition is medical, so it makes sense that her subconscious is showing her anatomical imagery.

The last image is of a "bird" that has been snared. It is "on" a string, but has not landed to perch there, as if on a branch or telephone wire. Rather, it is "hanging" from it. Further, she cannot leave the string, as she would of course be able to if she has simply lighted there. No, she is "twisting," "dancing," and "fighting" to be loose. She knows that "her small life" depends on her breaking free.

This is an apt metaphor for someone in a coma or other such state. The person-- the consciousness that is a person, the self-- is confined in the uncooperative body, like a trapped animal.

She wants to hear what the old man is saying. She wants to do things for herself, and have her mother stop tending her. She is spending all her psychic energy to re-enter the world of interaction and communication, but she is emotionally exhausted. She just wants to be well already!

The lyrics offer no resolution, and leave us with the frustrated invalid. But the music, which repeats the chorus several times, ends with an upward modulation. The entire time, the song has been sung in a low register. The final time, the melody line is noticeably higher, with a shade of echo.

This may be the singer's way of indicating that the soul has left the body and it, at least, is free.


IMPACT:
The song is the first on the album Days of Open Hand. Which won a Grammy. For Best Album Package.

Well, better than nothing.


Next Song: Men in a War

Wooden Horse

Here, Suzanne Vega treats the mystery of Caspar Hauser. This person appeared one day in 1800s Germany. He, then a teen (possibly 16), made several claims: that he had been held in captivity all his life until then, that his father was a now-deceased cavalryman, and, later, that people were trying to kill him. Over the course of his short life, many kindly people took Hauser in, some of whom later denounced him as a congenital liar; it may have been that he was simply a person with mental issues that included a loose grasp of the truth.

He has been the subject of endless speculation, including that he was of noble blood; this claim has since been weakened by DNA evidence. Whole books have been written on the case of Caspar (or Kaspar, or Gaspard, depending on the language of the author), and much "information" is available online.

Vega's haunting song starts with a line that explains, from Hauser's point of view that he "came out of the darkness" of solitary confinement. He brought one artifact of that time in his life-- one of his toys, a "small, white wooden horse."

Then he makes a claim about this toy: "What was wood became alive." It entirely possible that a person kept in confinement, not even able to see his jailer, would impute life to an inanimate object, if only to keep from deeper insanity. We witnessed this phenomenon in the film Castaway, in which a man (played by Tom Hanks) maintains his sanity on an otherwise uninhabited island by befriending a volleyball on which he draws a face (The brand of the ball is Wilson, and thus he names it; it has been noted that Hank's wife is one Rita Wilson).

"In the night, the walls disappeared/ In the day they returned," Hauser continues, describing the idea that, while dreaming, his thoughts were unconfined. But when he awoke, he was again limited by his reality.

On the day he first became known to the public, he did so by handing a note to a soldier, telling him, "I want to be a cavalryman like my father." This seems to be all he was able to say, at first, aside from "horse." The song repeats that part of Hauser's story.

Barely audibly, Vega sings "And I fell under/ A moving piece of Sun/ Freedom." This may be the reaction of someone who has only recently become aware of the seeming movement of the Sun across the sky after lifelong imprisonment.

Taken into various people's homes, he was occasionally left alone. In several cases, he emerged with unexplained wounds. He began to feel, as the song relates, "afraid [he] may be killed." Since someone was bothering to harm him, he concluded "I know I have a power" that his attacker wanted to extinguish.

As it happened, ive years after he emerged, Hauser was dead, killed by a stab wound. Doctors could only conclude that it may have been self-inflicted. As little is known of Hauser's death as of his childhood and life.

The song, like Hauser's story, and the stories he told about himself, lacks rhyme. And-- given that so many aspects of his life are either unknown, fabricated (by Hauser himself as well as by his supporters and detractors), or the subject of Hauser's being brainwashed by his early jailers-- there is not much reason, either.  

There are monuments in Germany to Hauser, one at his grave and one at the spot at which he was stabbed. A library's worth of books, as well as films and other songs, have treated the subject of this mysterious man and his enigmatic existence.

Vega's conclusion seems to be that, from a few shabby threads, one can weave an identity, a life, and a legacy. This may also be due to the human penchant for seeing patterns where there are none-- we abhor a vacuum as much as Nature itself, and fill it with ourselves.


Next Song: Tired of Sleeping

Gypsy

This is one of Vega's loveliest songs altogether. It is a love song-- technically a break-up song, but not the acrimonious kind. The Japanese farewell, "sayonara," means "since it must be so," and that is the sighing, bittersweet sort of farewell this song evokes.

The song begins with a recognition that the two lovers are from different worlds. "You come from far away," it begins, and refers to the couple as a pair of "strangers."

He comes from a land of "sunrise," but they meet and form their relationship at "night." This is "where" they come to "know each other now," by dint of having recognized "the sign" of their mutual attraction.

The chorus is at once tender-- "hold me like a baby/ That will not fall asleep"-- and passionate: "Let me hear you through the heat." Not many relationships manage to encompass both sorts of affection.

The next verse refers to the foreign lover as being a "jester." The verse unfolds with more words that evoke a Medieval or Renaissance setting: "courtyard," "women/ With the dimples and the curls," "mischievous," "blowing skirts."

There is a hint of playful jealousy here-- all sorts of women "distract" the fellow, that rogue... but he remains hers.

More old-timey imagery in the next verse: an "earring," a "potter," a "tale." She describes his features and traits colorfully. His hands are like "water," his young face belies his accumulated "wisdom," he can tell a story as well as a "fool" (here a synonym for the above "jester"). Yet, while a fool causes chaos, this fellow is an "arranger of disorder."

As much as she loves this man, she knows it has to end. Yet, he has influenced her future choices. She describes to him her new beau-- not to cause him envy, but to to compliment him by saying: "See how much you affected my life! I can now only date men like you. And since I can't have you..."

And who is her new swain? He is also a storyteller, "a spinner/ Of strange and gauzy threads." He also has hands she admires, that are "sweetest" and "softest."

And he also is a traveler... but now someone she can travel with. "We'll blow away forever," she says, "and go on to different lands." Remember the first word in the song was "you," which now switches to "we," meaning her and... not him.

She now bids farewell to the first man, saying that he is not to seek her now that she has "another." Still, he should be gratified in knowing that he is with her in any case, in her heart: "with me you will stay."

How will he know that she still misses him and cherishes their time together? "You will hear yourself in song." Namely, this one.


Next Song: Wooden Horse