Song in Red and Gray must be one of my fav songs that Ms Vega has written. I simply love it !!!

I am wondering where the inspiration for this song came?? Was this based on a personal experience or simply one that was dreamed up???

Thanks so so much Ms Vega

Tammy

Suffice it to say that many of Suzanne's songs start off with a kernel of truth or a bit of fantasy, then she wraps in a tapestry where threads of reality and the unreal are woven in a seamless blend. Few, if any, of her songs have no element of the real world. And not many, are there some?, are completely factual.


This song is in that middle ground, an area we call "The Twilight Zone".


Uncwilly
Song of the day: Twilight Zone theme
Cheese for a Sat afternoon: Swaledale

I love this song-and I think it has a very intruiging line-"I must have left all these feelings inside/'cause that year I had no courage to show"...I think its beautifully subtle. The way I read is that the singer did not have much confidence in the time she is reffering too. She is hiding her feelings. Also in the song..'I feel that she peeled back my guilty disguise"...its a beutiful song. One of my faves from this CD. Not usually like me to share my thoughts on song lyrics but I'd love to hear someone ele's input. Have I got it "right"??

Hi David,

I don't think anybody can be "right" about a song. It's always nice to know what was really meant by the artist, on the other hand there is always your own interpretation. Most of Suzanne's songs can be interpreted in several millions of ways, I guess.

Songs in Red and Gray is a very weird song; it seems to me this is one of the most personal songs to Suzanne that she has ever put on CD. To me, this song is a riddle, or more like a puzzle, and you can almost 'feel' what it's hinting at. Something I haven't been able to put my finger on yet.

Grtz,
Spikey

Song in Red and Gray is a bittersweet song. Some conclusion:

1) There are not people who are irreplaceable
2) There is only one way and you can not return to certain point in your life
3) Sometimes loss can turn into profit, but always in different set of circumstances and you will never know what you have lost in fact.
4) Memory is a false friend, so you can feel unsatisfied with your present (and feel guilty).
5) And positive one - leaf and stone know what they mean for each other - so you are in right place and time

Anna Maria K.

---

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

Hi Anna

interesting thoughts. Unfortunately I struggle to get so indepth in regards to the 'meanings!!' I tend to take what Suzanne writes for granted, but this song is very oblique. In fact it is almost obsessing me today!!!!!!!!!! I'm not sure why, but its a good things. The whole CD is very, very good, (maybe even great), and every now and then I keep going back and 'rediscovering' songs and lines which intruige me. SV does not put a foot wrong thru the entire cd in my book.

and yep Rutger SV certainly does leave a lot of room for interpretation :-) I was just wondering if anyone else out there got the same meaning as i did from those lines...

I gather that the narrator in this one has had an affair with a married man years before, and then runs into him years later. He's with his daughter. The chance encounter calls up a lot of memories and conflicting feelings about the affair.

She feels guilty about it, yet a bit nostalgic.

The song to me feels like an examination of those feelings, and the details of image that linger... things like candlesticks and coats, pavement, etc.

It's not the only song on this album that looks back at the distant past. I really get a feeling on SIRAG that Suzanne was scanning back over her whole life for these songs. That's what makes it different from any other album by her. The rest always dealt with the future or the present.

Retrospective was a well chosen name for the collection, then.

This song does present many questions concerning suzanne's past. I wonder where the line between truth and fantasy can be drawn in this song.
I think what intrigues me most about this song is the sound... I can't really explain... there's a sense of rolling and pouring

Our lovable Christapo expressed herself eloquently thus:

"I think what intrigues me most about this song is the sound..."

I personally think that this is one of Suzanne's song that would lend itself well to a change in style. Could you imagine a country-bluesy version of this? Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Bonnie Raitt singing "Song in Red and Gray". Maybe a bluegrass sound to this with Dolly singing.

Or what about Alison Krauss singing "Widow's Walk"? Wouldn't that sound great?

Uncwilly
Cheese of the day: Filetta

its one of my fav. songs!

Hi Shira,

Welcome aboard!

"Song In Red And Gray" is definetely my favourite song in Suzanne's last album. I have no time to write about it now, but I wish Uncwilly posted here a magnificent essay he wrote in the old Tow about male and female symbology.

That would be a great starting point for a discussion...

José Carlos

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

Jose,
Sorry, I can't find the post anywhere. I rummaged all over my computer. I can't find the post that you are thinking of. The one about about the symbols in Song in Red and Gray. It seems that I never saved the post. I did find a related post in the old archives that I did write. I will grab it and post it. If so one like David Hammar has the post, please do post it.

I will post a copy of the other post that I found. I will also rummage through and old back CD of my hard disk to see if I can find the post.
Uncwilly
Song of the day: Should I, Donna Lewis vs. Splattercell (Ray do you have a copy of this???)
Random cheese of the day: Rustinu

This was originally posted in June 2001 and although this is not the post the JCM refered to, it does have some of the ideas in it.:
==================================================

Bruce M. wrote about a week ago:
>Suzanne wrote:
>======
>I am, however, thinking of calling the album "Songs In Red and
>Grey", which I think is a better title. It focuses on the
>songs, and not on any particular character within them.
>======

>From what I have seen of the songs, all have either red or
grey in them, so quite appropriate. "Ocean based" songs
almost always have the specter of a grey sky, or the red
evening sky that holds promise of a better day.


>As a bonus, although the idea of "red and grey" in the song
>"Song in Red and Grey" probably has nothing to do with this,
>the line between life and death you mention in association
>with "the mother and the matador" is also mirrored (in my mind
>at least) in the colors red (passion, blood, life) and grey
>(reason, death, the past). Red is also a charged colour with
>the idea of childbirth, wounds, the blood of the lamb etc.
>
>It is a nice extension of the idea of "The Passionate Eye" or
>"99.9F" with its themes of blood and red, passion and control.

Regarding the idea of a line between life and death, etc.
Red is the colour of fire and gray the color of ashes. While
wood (which had been part of a lively tree, with birds in its
branches and children climbing on it and lovers laying in its
shade) burns the flames are red and when they touch the wood
which in turn glows a brilliant passionate color (as if
releasing all the emotion, passion, and life that has
surrounded this tree during its long staid, motionless life).
As the wood is consumed in this release of heat, light, and
fury it turns to grey ash which is dead and caustic, spent.
On occasion a little piece of this passion breaks free and
flies heavenward, only to be consumed even faster by this rush
through the sky and fall again to the earth (in which the
tree was rooted) dead, cold, and fragile to the touch. But,
this spent material, which is irritates the skin of those
that touch it, has potential. It is not all dark, it has
bits of the color of light in it. When these spent ashes
are taken up and spread over the earth, scattered about in
the garden, they feed the spring flowers and so again
this passion again comes forth in the color of flowers; the
white and yellow daisies that young girls put in their hair
as they run about, the rainbow of various flowers that
playful young boys gather for their mothers expressing a
love unencumbered by eros, and vivid red roses that couples
in love exchange to express their desire for each other.

Red can be the color of health when it is ruddy cheeks.
But, it can be the color of illness; a feverish forehead,
a bleeding wound, or a fresh bruise ("the rose tattoo of the
fingerprints on me from you"). Grey is the color of dire
illness and death: an ashen pale, the blue-gray color of the
lips of somebody with circulation problems.


>"Blue Sky and Blood on 10th Avenue,"

I always see the red blood on a grey sidewalk. Life poured
out onto the impassionate concrete.


I have been trying to find a program that allows the user
to build an index/concordance from a document. I was going
to try to build a word index for important words in
Suzanne's songs.

I revised my interpretation. My caveat: It's not biographical to Suzanne.

The character who is singing (we'll call her Thelma) is in fact singing about her own daugher, and the "you" in this song is the girls true father (We'll call him Frank). Frank is Thelma's old lover. He has no idea he empregnated Thelma. Thelma gets together with Jerry and convinces him that the girl is Jerry's child. In the opening line of the song, Thelma sings to Frank about the moment of his daughters birth, and how the infant seemed to look at her with reproach and peel back her guilty disguise. Obviously this is Thelma's projections of her own feelings of guilt. Probably Frank is a poor man with nothing to offer as a father. Thelma loved him, but abandoned him for the sake of the baby. Now the baby seems to accuse her.

As the young child comes to adolescence, Thelma wonders in her head who is really to blame for her break-up with Frank. She feels guilty about it, but hopes that they are both equally to blame. She resigns herself to the fact that it all happened too long ago to matter.

She recalls the drunken night when the child was conceived. She barely remembers the details anymore.

The "Red" and the "Grey" of things symbolises the two parents. The mother is all things red. The father is all things grey. Once upon a time, the grey vase held the red rose. Now she is the red leaf falling to the hard grey stone.

"to each other they know what they mean", she says, because in their hearts they understood one another in ways that no other could.

She hints at a future meeting with the father. Surely this is inevitable, given that the daughter will eventually learn the truth and seek him out. This, of course, is a scenario Suzanne knows all to well, having grown up without knowing her biological father.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

-Pat