Just wanted to make sure this topic was started with the right title ;)

Yay for my favorite sort of prose poetry...!!! So this secret burning thread... Speaking of which, what is that??? I mean... I think I understand that it's her desire or something but...uh...a thread? burning? Hmmm...still, my favorite

you know what i've always wondered about TQ&TS? The indigo girls have a song called "Pushing The Needle Too Far." One part of the lyrics go:

"Now, I met the Queen and I understand
why she closed the door
I'm not making excuses,
But I've been there a few times,
I was knocking on her door."

I've always wondered if they were referring to the queen in TQ&TS? Find entire lyrics @ http://www.indigogirls.com/disco.html (the song is on their album "Nomads, Indians, Saints")

Christie wrote,

"So this secret burning thread... Speaking of which, what is that??? I mean... I think I understand that it's her desire or something but...uh...a thread? burning?"

Suzanne was asked this question in a 1994 Performing Songwriter interview:

Where did the line about swallowing "the secret burning thread" come from?

Suzanne: That's the line that means a lot of different things to me, because it's the one line that doesn't make logical sense. People don't swallow threads. That comes from a lot of different sources. One source was that I had a cat who would chew the bottom off the curtains. She did in fact swallow a thread and she had to be put to sleep around that time. The other thing is that, sometimes in your life, I think, you may have a secret; and if you swallow it, if you keep it to yourself, that's what it feels like. Or I used to think of relationships between people as threads, so if there's one that's secret and has a certain poisonous character to it, then you keep it to yourself, you swallow it. I think that's really the deeper meaning of what I meant. She swallowed something that was hurting her. And I had something like that in my own life.

Thanks so much..... I thought that it would be similar to that.

I always noticed the similiarity between "secret burning thread" in this song and "this line is burning" that comes later, on Days of Open Hand... and then again on 9 objects; "Time is burning burning burning... till it burns away". Of course, time can also be thought of as a line or thread. I always assumed that "burning" was just Suzannes favorite metaphore for lamenting the passage of time. With the queen... I took it to mean "a secret life"... like a passion or vision living inside you, which stays hidden because nobody else will understand it.

"the queen and the soldier" is my favorite suzy song!! i used to be a LOT like the queen, always hiding from people because i was scared etc. i am not like that anymore (i think, lol) but i still think it is one of the best songs ever written!

Maybe this secret burning thread is woolen thread from her red tapestries, that she had accidently swallowed.

Or not.

Rutger said: "Maybe this secret burning thread is woolen thread from her red tapestries, that she had accidently swallowed."

hee hee, if so then the tapestries were also on fire at the time.


I caught some more thread/line symbology today.

I noticed that it comes up in "rock in this pocket" where she says, "that thin thread I call my horizon" and then again on SIRAG in widow's walk, "that line is the horizon" and later in "If I were a weapon" she says "I feel more like a needle always pulling on the thread".

So, there's kind of a thread of "thread" references throughout her career.

> In that L. Cohen interview in TPE she explains herself... (you know, the thread dealies) SV says something about how she sees/saw threads as her relationships with others and her link to them... (something along those lines) correct me if I am wrong....... Anyway, it is there. But that interview was around the release of 99.9 so I am wondering if the threads in later works have the same definition... or maybe sv just likes the word "thread" my my my... happy trails...

Yes, Cohen was desperately trying to figure out what the secret of 99.9FDegrees was...

"Cohen was desperately trying to figure out what the secret of 99.9FDegrees was"

He's one of the few who ever picked up on that album as being more of a "concept" album with a kind of overarching mysterious message to it.

Me, I figured out the secret but I'll never tell

I was trying to translate this song into a Chinese peom sometime ago, it took me quite some time - almost 2 weeks - trying to fit the translation into the traditional Chinese literature style, with all the ryhems. I kinda figure out why she said a "burning thread", and since in Chinese it's hard to express the sharpness with the tender word -thread in CHinese- I used the phrase with the similar meaning to that of "carrying boiling iron inside her chest", and I'd really like to hear from SV about this translation. It's never easy to translate a poem, as one of the Chinese writer said 60 years ago, peoms are things that won't exist after translated. But I just want to do this mission impossible as good as I can.

>"...People don't swallow threads."


Not necessarily people, but it's been known to happen. A few years ago, my sister's cat got into my mother's sewing kit while we were away. Hours later, when we got back, the cat was dragging "something" on the end of a line trailing out from behind him. The cat was kind of freaking out because this little nugget was following him all around the house wherever he went. My sister's husband quickly devised a solution to this problem - which was to stomp on the thread. The cat immediately took off running, and things sort of worked themselves out in the end.

My strange interpretation of this is that I believe that the secret burning thread could be the young queens coming of age?? Don't know how to express this with out sounding looney or disgusting, but could it be that she is talking of Menstruation?? In that she has met this young man that has awoken in her sexual desire!! After all he does "bow her down to the ground....".

What do you all think?? Suzanne would probably bar me from her next Dublin gig if she read this but there you go..........