step 11

 >> red and gray. where do songs go once they’re written, recorded and performed live? i could be asking this question in general, and in a way i am, but of course i’m referring specifically to suzanne’s songs. apart from becoming an essential part of the soundtrack of so many lives, they do “have a life” of their own, as i’ve written here before.

 >> my feeling is that suzanne’s songs, each and every one of them, are songs on an endless journey, but a journey with an aim, nonetheless. to me, their goal is to create a tide of awareness and assertion regarding life and the worlds around and within us. in an immense sea of sound waves, suzanne’s songs convey a very distinctive melody - they are that “stinging tune” that “could split this endless noon/and make the sky swell with rain”. they all have that power and that magical quality about them, which, to me, comes from something really vital they harbor, “somewhere deep within”. to me, that essence is touched in the most mysterious of suzanne’s images and metaphors, that of the “secret burning thread”.

>> these elusive words are one of the queen’s replies to the soldier in the song “the queen and the soldier”- “i’ve swallowed a secret burning thread / it cuts me inside, and often i’ve bled”. to try and grasp its meaning i’ll revisit another of her songs, “night vision”, because i sense this particular song can shed some light into my query. like so many others in suzanne’s rich songbook, “night vision” can stay with you always, in the most secret and inner place. in a symbolic way, you’ve ‘swallowed’ it, you’ve ‘blended’ it into you and it now runs “through everything you are”. and then, by just the will of a thought or the power of a feeling, the song surfaces and warms you up, right there, just beneath the skin. “night vision” is a tactile song, so to speak, because, among other things, it deals with how things touch, blend and connect. it’s about opposites - day (“give thanks”) and night (“beware”), sweetness and fear, light and dark - really touching each other by the help of something that lives in between and that can turn everything into an endless continuum, the circle of life.

>> at their very essence, to me, suzanne’s songs are about how to bridge the opposites both the interior and exterior worlds seem to be made of - the red (passion) and the gray (intellect), the flower (the almost perfect but removed allureness of solitude) and the flame (the warmth and togetherness of “the crowd as they’re watching”), the private and the public, the body and the spirit, remembrance and forgetfulness, love and loss. suzanne keeps telling us that, to some degree, and if we have “the Will”, every hiatus can be gapped by that “secret burning thread”.

>>  it’s because of the secrecy it holds, like a forbidden tale, that it “cuts inside” and makes you bleed often. and this secrecy burns deep and resists all telling - it’s like an open wound. to the queen in “the queen and the soldier” the thread that cuts her inside is freedom, because although she wanted it feverishly - “she wanted more than she ever could say” - she “closed herself up like a fan” - denying her desire and her hunger - “she would rather be a riddle” - thus keeping her secrecy untouched, unrevealed, untold.

>> in a way, every character in a suzanne vega song has some sort of secret or of burden that they carry. they all have a “secret burning thread” within, and, to some extent, they all show an element of restraint about sharing their secret. in a metaphorical way, though, each song is the vehicle of that secret, but still there’s an emotional struggle always at the root of it.

>> “songs in red and gray” takes the struggle to a spiritual level, especially through the song “penitent”. but all through this album, nevertheless, runs the undisputed need, however defiant and ambivalent one might be towards it - and all this is beautifully hinted at in suzanne’s cover picture - that one has to look back sometimes in order to be able to move forward . one needs to be able to tell about the wound, so to speak, in order for it to heal. that’s also the premise behind “vigil”, the cd with “n.y. songs since 9/11”, which suzanne has nurtured and helped come to fruition.

>> so, the “secret burning thread” can cause pain but it can also be the source of healing. in a way, this metaphor contains in itself its opposite - instead of acting like a razor, the thread sews things together, connects the edges - and in another level of meaning unriddles the secrecy - and the fire cauterizes the wound. “we could be fixing what is broken”.

>> through “avenues of angles”, a barefoot journey begins, “looking for a center”, “toward a source”.

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