hm, this is a little confusing: i'm not sure whether i'm posting this in the right category... i really like suzanne's "road diary" [and i'm sure mike appreciates it that everybody knows now that he has false teeth ;o)]! in her entry for "Saturday April 26 2003 Albany" she mentioned a new song called "anniversary". now, i remember that she posted a couple of lyrics from "songs in red & gray" before the album was released and i was wondering whether she was willing to share the new lyrics with us as well?

or did anybody make notes in albany and wrote them down :o) what is the song about? my first thought was that it dealt with 9/11 but then she wrote that "some people told me that their own anniversary was in September or their parents wedding anniversary was in September which was nice to hear..." which wouldn't really make sense if it was about the wtc attack.

any ideas?

remember me,
philipp
www.200lurkers.com

Sept. 21 is the birtday of LC... SV is a fan of..

best,

vlad

Philipp Hoffman wrote:
> i'm sure mike appreciates it that everybody
knows now that he has false teeth

Just to clarify, for anyone wondering, Mike V's "false teeth" to which Suzanne
referred are a set of novelty vampire fangs he picked up in Europe.
He had them on backstage after the Library of Congress show last September,
in fact, while unsuccessfully attempting to frighten my son.

(Had to set that straight, before the "Star" runs Mike's photo alongside
a lengthy feature titled, "Suzanne Vega Confesses: 'My Bassists Wear Falsies!')

-- Dave H.

Posted by David Hammar (Djhamma): >Just to clarify, for anyone wondering, Mike V's "false teeth" to which Suzanne referred are a set of novelty vampire fangs he picked up in Europe.

hm... i'm sort of, well, dissapointed now :o)

remember me philipp www.200lurkers.com

Hi Philipp & Everyone -

Here are the lyrics to Anniversary:

Anniversary
by Suzanne Vega, September 16, 2002

Fall and all attendant memories
Crowd the day with unrelated histories
Each year leaves its unresolving fantasies
Hang around each corner
Hang around each street.

Thick with ghosts, the wind whips round in circuitries
Carrying words as strangers exchange pleasantries
Do they intrude upon your private reveries
As they meet you on every corner
Meet you on each street.

Watch for daily braveries
Notice newfound courtesies
Finger sudden legacies...
As they wash down each corner
Clean up every street.

Mark the month and all its anniversaries
Put away the draft of all your eulegies
Clear the way for all your possibilities
They live upon each corner
Live on every street.
Make the time for all your future revelries.




© Copyright Waifersongs 2002
Reproduction [in print or on the web] without permission is strictly prohibited.

I like this! It feels, well, like a new year, reflections on old stuff: things we'd like to change, occurrences we wish we could change, but know we can't... But even more important than the reflections on past is the eye to the future, the hope that is relayed in this last stanza feels so fresh, like the crisp breeze of fall whipping through the streets, chasing away summer's left over heat and dust. I LIKE these lyrics! Now I guess I am left to wonder about the music... and is there a refrain? A chorus repeated?
Now left in a prickly, yet anticipitory, quandry,
Miriam k.

Hi -

Miriam wrote about "Anniversary": "Now I guess I am left to wonder about the music... and is there a refrain? A chorus repeated? Now left in a prickly, yet anticipitory, quandry.."

You can now listen to a clip of "Anniversary" and all of your questions will be answered. Or some of 'em anyway!

Here's the MP3: http://www.suzannevega.com/audio/music/Other/Solo/ Anniversary.mp3

, Eric

And here's the link to the video shot at her Here Gallery performance in December, 2002, in honor of her late brother Tim. Tim's birthday is September 14.

http://homepage.mac.com/mooncusser/Vega/iMovieTheater61.html

THanks guys! This song makes me cry, and gives me hope for the future, too... a bit of direction on where to go to know what can be changed, why we celebrate anniversaries... All this typed on the anniversary of my birthday! What syncronicity!
Thanks Again for uploading this!
Miriam K

I asked Suzanne about this song before the Madison show-- she said its been received well. However, it can be a bit of a downer. I was hoping to hear it in Madison but it really wasn't the right crowd for a sad song, so I can see why she didn't play it.

Hope if gets released sometime in teh future!

eric

Wow! Those are some really cool lyrics...among her better ones, IMHO.

When I first read "Rosemary", I had no idea how it would be sung (but then again, since I'm a poet but not a singer/songwriter, I have little intuition as to these things), but then it came out so wonderfully. I see the MP3 link, let's see how it will sound.

Go Suzanne!

"anniversary", as a song, is one of those rare cases of expressions of art to which you almost immediately apply the word "classic". i do, anyway, just like i did and do to "rosemary".

regardless of the future musical treatment of it (or it may stay exactly like it is now), it will stand the test of time, it will always be modern, of today, whenever that may be.

this song speaks of time itself, of how past, present and future leave a mark on each of us, individually, and on a collective mind: a bruise, an echo, an ache, a sorrow, a wound, a dark memory, an unresolved dream, and how it's up to us, individually and collectively, to turn them into redemptive "daily braveries", "newfound
courtesies", "sudden legacies", "anniversaries" and "all [our] possibilities".

promise is within reach. is our hand open? are we willing to move towards it? embrace some sort of rebirth and regeneration? do we dare to "make the time for all [our] future revelries"? hope and joy "live upon each corner/live on every street". every day.

together with "cracking", "rosemary" and "penitent", "anniversary" is already essential to landmark my life.

> Fatima, thanks very much for the nice email! > love, > Zoli

this is how "anniversary" makes me feel:

where is the past? days tumbling round the baseline. the mind's insistent coming back and coming back. no reason for the need but the need itself. where is the past? oh lord where is it. ruthless, kind, strange, diminished.

all without echo. the wind whips and ends. elsewhere words stop. elsewhere there is direction (oh this corner) and things go along it and stop. everything depends on the point where nothing can be said. after catastrophe the effects of the acts of obliteration.

one must come to loneliness and be lonely. that we shall never know, of each other now, more. that we should try. i think: what am i supposed to save. think: what am i supposed to remember. the living, lost and unlost.

to heal the break, the broken day. what is it has been gone a long time? everything in sunlight. from here you seem hard to make out. i shelve the long sentences. from here i can almost believe that something exists, an opening-up, a re-turning on. i bend to put my hands in the water and sing and the future is there.

with hope,
paula

Suzanne said about her last inspiration (Anniversary) here:

http://www.ascap.com/poprock/memberprofiles/suzann evega.html

---

"like a shadow, I am and I am not"