All of this discussion brought to mind one of the greatest non-human characters, HAL9000. HAL had a conflict. A secret burning thread. This comes out much more clearly in the book than the movie. (As great as 2001, the movie is/was, the book is better because it can explain things that would be nearly impossible to do in the movie.)

HAL is conflicted and this internal conflict that cause problems.

Those that have not seen the movie or read the book and don't want it spoiled for them should stop reading now! I am about to talk about a major plot complication.

With that out of the way...
HAL has the knowledge of the real purpose of the mission out to Jupiter. HAL must not reveal this to the crew until they arrive. But, since HAL is a computer and computers always tell the truth, there is a conflict, like the Queen's. The "secret burning thread", is secret, it can't be told, it is burning, it stings the computer's conscience, and it is a thread, computer code runs in threads. HAL like the Queen has great fondness for Dave (the soldier), but because of the stress turns to homocide to keep the secret intact. The keeping of the secret becomes more important than the fulfillment of it's purpose.

Anyone else see it like this?

Uncwilly
Song: Blue Danube
Cheese: Haloumi-Style

yes, william, i can understand your interpretation, but keeping in mind, as you point out, that HAL is a computer, a non-human character. but the conflict is still about the private (the secret held within) and the public (the inability to share it). actually stanley kubrick's characters very often have "secret burning threads" eating them up inside. see, for example, the ones in "eyes wide shut", a title and an expression that i love, because a conflict such as this one can only be solved by looking intently at our inner self and (re)connecting all its parts, so that the gap between our private world and its public expression can be bridged.

and, william, don't you think that in "2001" (the movie, and in its long final sequence) the mystery of who we are, with our complex inner battles, is so beautifully shown and hidden at the same time? and yet, the urgent need to also connect with something higher and bigger than us, the cosmic inside us, the "You" (as in "penitent") within us, is there in those gorgeous final images.

love,
fátima

yummy thought provoking stuff everybody! this whole thread reminds me of when i was a teenager and the ideas that i held with so much passion that i nearly lost myself in them.

we may meet people like the soldier througout our lives who challenge us to reveal ourselves in a truly honest manner. the day that we reveal our secret burning thread to ourselves is what psychoanalysts refer to as self actualisation.

i'm seeing more and more in my life that people keep their 'thread' a secret for fear of ridicule or estrangement and yet the underlying fears that keep it hidden are what we all have in common. strange then that our fear of estrangement is what keeps us isolated from each other. ironic too that we are surrounded by symbols that can act as a mirror for us in our slumber. the songs that we hear, the films that we see and the suffering that we observe in each other are all opportunities to forgive and heal our own secrets and in so reveal ourselves to each other...

there is so much humour in life once we wake up from it and actually start living!

much love to you all
m

Fatima,
Yes, characters in the SK films that I have seen do have internal secrets that are used with great skill in the stories.

However, I read the Arthur C. Clarke book (the basis for the movie) before I had seen the movie. So the long shots after the passage through the monolith out near Jupiter, seem long and (dare I say it?) tedious. Some of this is the judgement against the film that was shot 20+ years before I saw it. For me to erase the memory of the book and to set myself back in the time that the movie is shot, are obsticles to great to achieve. I -do- think that the visual depictions are quite wonderful. The pacing of the movie at that point seems to go from 160 km/h to about 40 km/h in a short period. The book does not have that problem.
{br}I hope that you do not feel that I am dismissing your point, just that from where I am, it is a journey that I can't at present make.

Uncwilly
Song of the day: Puff the Magic Dragon, Peter Paul, & Mary
Cheese: Toma

no, william, i don't feel that you're dismissing my point at all. let me just add the following idea and make it go full circle into suzanne's universe: the pacing of the movie does slow down abruptly in that last long sequence and, in doing so, overtly exposes what had been implicit until then, and that is its existential undercurrent.

and this leads me to suzanne's "tom's diner", a song about a specific moment in daily life with a strong existential undercurrent as well. and what is the meaning of those silences in between verses? i'd say they achieve several, but, to me, they slow down the pacing of the song, they make it pause for just the right time, during which you are left to wonder beyond, beneath, or straight through the actions described in the verses into their existential layer or undertone.

love,
fátima

Hi everyone: Regarding the films of Stanley Kubrick, I would say that one of the reasons the design and feel of his films, and the sound and feel of Suzanne's music, both appeal to me is that there is indeed a common aesthetic at work.

Primarily, I hear/see several recurring elements:

1. A fondness for unusual and eccentric characters. Kubrick has always tried less for "realism" and much more for the performance and characterization that was odd and ecentric (e.g. Jack Nicolson's performance in "The Shining," Alan Cummings' over-the-top gay hotel clerak in "Eyes Wide Shut" etc.)

2. A sense of a authoritative "off screen" presence. Both Kubrick and Vega inhabit their work so completely that you are totally dominated by their personalities -- there is no mistaking the look of a Stanley Kubrick film just as there is no mistaking a Suzanne Vega song. But beyond their stylistic consistency, it is simply that for both artists we get the feeling that we are inhabiting there worlds, their subconscious.

3. Stylistic simplicity. Both exhibit an almost pathological fondness for symmetry, starkness and stripped-down simplicity. Theirs is an aesthetic of every extraneous flourish sanded-off so that one can admire the sheer architectural beauty of their constructions. "2001", "Barry Lyndon," and "The Shining" are beautifully composed; they have an almost fascist look about them, a sort of anal-retentive obsessiveness to detail. This same starkness I hear most particularly in "Suzanne Vega" (especially "Cracking," "Straight Lines," "Undertow") as well as "days of Open Hand" perhaps the most glorious example of geometry applied to pop music I have heard (especially "Big Space").

Coincidentally, both artists also invest a great deal of energy and time into each piece of work, as opposed to grinding out material like clockwork.

So I think I am fascinated by both because they are mining the same aesthetic veins.

Bruce (Miyashita)

Hi Bruce,

Once again you managed to throw a new discussion guideline an old subject.

Anyway I'd like to disagree on your point 1.

Unlike what happens with Stanley Kubrick, Suzanne's characters are, to me, people we can all identify with. There's a kind of abstraction that leaves room to feelings and attitudes to overcome the character itself, granting them an universal status we can all identify with. From the silent suffering of "Cracking" to the feeling lost of "Widow's Walk". I'd say we're stunned by their "normality", by how familiar they look to us. They are like faceless characters we can just put our name under.

Well, just my idea...

José Carlos

---

http://www.vega.net
http://setlists.vega.net
http://rustedpipe.vega.net

hi bruce and jc,

bruce, i agree with your vision of both stanley kubrick's and suzanne's work, especially on your points 2 and 3. i understand what you're saying in point 1 and i also can understand jc's view on this particular point. it might seem you are in extreme opposites about this, while in fact i don't think you are, so allow me to try to bridge your two ideas by adding this one of mine.

i think that while there may be a "fondness for unusual and eccentric characthers" (and remember that kubrick's films got into this discussion through HAL, the computer in "2001") in their works, both suzanne and kubrick are in fact primarily interested in showing their characters' humanity or their desire to be seen as human: see HAL again, the central characters in both "A.I." or "the clockwork orange", and suzanne's caspar hauser and calypso, the characters in "cracking" or "straight lines" or "institution green", or luka or the queen or even the neighborhood girl in her little speach in the song "neighborhood girls".

"there's a backbone gone, and i've got to get it back, before going on..." to me, the "backbone" is that feeling of humanity, and while she can't get it back, she desires for it to be acknowledged or somehow given to her: "because i've got this feeling, that things are going grey, and i'd like to hear a straight line, to help me find my way..." it is this "straight line" that both suzanne and kubrick whisper to their characters, loud enough for us to hear and feel a deep connection with.

love,
fátima

for the record: i've only just realized i didn't mention that the film "A.I." wasn't directed by stanley kubrick. but, as i'm sure you know, it was a project very dear to him and which he passed on to steven spielberg to direct.

love,
fátima

Hi all!
I've wanted to reply to this thread for ages....here I am. I **LOVED** the comparison with Space Odissey, and HAL9000 having a secret burning thread too!!! That is so correct, in my opinion!!!
I did see the film first. And loved it (both of them). Then I read the novels (all three of them...or four?). And loved them too. I was lucky in that I saw the movie ages ago and its special effects and all were just great to me. The novels added the missing (inner) parts. I'm used to novels being better than movies (that's why I go for the novel after liking a film).
I don't think it's so relevant that HAL900 is a computer. It's first of all a character in a story. Like the queen and the soldier are characters in another story. (And then who knows, the soldier might be a robot, or the queen, for that matter....)
Weird and still not surprising (it just confirms the parallel) how both the queen and HAL9000 resolve their conflict with the soldier/Dave leading him outside and letting him die there. Not really killing him by their own "hands". Not telling him "I have to kill you". Not letting him know why.

And I liked Bruce's comparison of SUzanne & Stanley Kubrick. I can't add much to it, I didn't see all of SK films. But I agree for the little I know and have seen.
It's really impressive how some of Suzanne's characters are actually unusual and eccentric, but still you (anyone) can identify so much with them. How she can catch the common factors, the humanity, as Fatima said, the common secret burning thread probably. We all have one I guess. Even computers apparently!

Till soon. Thanks to all the others who gave interpretations of this song...there would be so much to say about it!

Miki

After a very long time pondering this song, as to the way that the Queen dispenses with this soldier. What I want to know is, what if he had been Columbus? Huh? Where would we be now?

Several albums later, we find out that the world before Columbus was a flat, dreary, colorless place. Who do we have to thank for getting us to this round, colorful globe? The Queen of Spain, that's who - the nice queen.

Pat, if you're looking for connections, some years ago I suggested the 1939 movie "The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex" with Bette Davies and Errol Flynn.

I think there are remarkable resemblances between the movie and the song. Some lines of the song fit perfectly some of the dialogues. As for the ending... nothing could make a more perfect match.

Does anyone else have the same opinion?

José Carlos

---

http://www.vega.net
http://setlists.vega.net
http://rustedpipe.vega.net

I`ve always thought, till today, that the song is actually metaphor about Margaret Tahtcher and the Falkland war.

Oh Jose?
Now I'm gonna have to go and search out the movie!!!
will let you know!

There is something truly mythical and magical about this song. My dad used to sing it to me and play the guitar when i was a child. The moment he sang the words about the queen swallowing a burning thread and it cutting her inside i would fill with emotion and cry but i would still ask my dad to sing it time after time. At the time i was six and my parents were having a bad break up and looking at it now hearing the song was like a massive release. I find it incredible that the mixture of words and music can bring up such raw emotion. Anyway what a beautiful song and what a great discussion board xx