After reading Fátima's linking "Language", "Rusted Pipe" and "Big Space" in another thread, I remembered it has been years since I wanted to talk about how I link "Song In Red And Gray" and my all time Suzanne's favourite song "The Queen And The Soldier".

Though I'm a zero in music, I start with that part. Both songs seem to have something in common to me: the structure is somehow similar, the long verses that evolve within a theme, but never arrive to the dead end of a chorus. Both can anyway be split into 2 parts, with Suzanne's weeping voice, and not a chorus, making a break. Musically one seems the answer to the other.

I find that paralel in the symbology as well. Just one example: "Song In Red And Gray" plays with colour symbols, gray for rationality, red for passion. That's shown in the descriptions along the song. But didn't "The Queen And The Soldier" do that too? To me "Into her rooms with her tapestries red" at the beginning marks that same passion in the soldier's chest, later to be denied by the queen's coldness represented by "though the sky, it was gray".

Finally there's the whole theme behind the songs.

To me "The Queen And The Soldier" shows a battle for the future of a relationship, a battle of wills, if you wish, but also a battle between different ways of living emotions. The soldier is a fighter, risking his feelings, commiting himself with loyalty to what he believes, but only while he believes in it.

The queen, is the one with the power of choice in her hands, the decision to open up and accepting to be wholeheartedly in that relationship, or killing it, due to her fears, to her incomprehension, or to her inability to expose herself in a way that makes her lose her supposedly superior position.

In "Song In Red And Gray" we have two characters again, that now have a past in common. A past they couldn't yet cope with. There's something that looks unresolved, a lot that could have been different in the their minds. At least in the female characther's mind. It's a song questioning "what might have been", and wondering (even if just for a glimpse) "how much could the past be picked up again".


Now, if you followed me this far, I ask you to make a little exercise. Please step out of the the characters skin, and imagine a more general story.

This man (let's call him the soldier) is in love with a woman (the queen), who, for some reason, can't deal with this realtionship. She hides herself behind the idea that it's all just a game (Freeze Tag). She's not really there for the soldier, she can't give as much of herself as he can (I leave it to you to imagine why: a communication problem (Language)? unsolved external barriers? a need for something else she can't even explain (Undertow)? her difficulty to deal with her inner self and open out to the outside (Cracking)? you name it). The relationship comes to a crucial point where the soldier needs to make it clear that things must change. They end up breaking up. The queen chooses to be alone (Solitude Standing), while the soldier feels that decision as his own emotional death.

Years have passed (19, she says). The 2 characters meet again. He had the life he sought for, marrying another woman, raising a daughter, but recently becoming a widower. She sees all this, and can't help to think of what it could have been if that was her daughter and he was her husband. She had her share of relationships. Men coming in and out of her life (Marlene On The Wall), but were they meaningful? Hasn't she somewhow always felt alone, lost in a sea of people (Calypso). Didn't she waste so much time emotionally sleeping (Tired Of Sleeping). She wonders how much she has missed, and for a moment she dreams they're 19 years younger, and they have a second chance. Would her answer be different? Would it work out? She looks around her, trying to read the signs in the objects she still remembers. She always acted by instinct, by dreams, by the features, by letters (Predictions). But time doesn't come back. In her mind there's still one question torturing her: after so many years is she just a faded memory in the soldier's mind, or does he look back in time with the same passion she now does?

Maybe we need a third song to know the answer...

j.c.

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i like your interpretation, jc, since it focus on the role of the past in these characters' lives. the 2001 album is an examination and a questioning of a past, with "song in red and gray" as its core point, and presenting it as the only way to walk through a present and pave a future.

you say "we need a third song to know the answer". to me, the answer is in "penitent", in all its questions and spiritual search. it's an open answer, of course, an unresolved one, but an answer anyway.

these two songs are also connected in my mind since they look like paintings to me. and here's what i originally wrote on the old undertow after listening to "song in red and gray" for the first time as an acoustic rendition before the album was out (i posted a version #2 of this on the tow lounge somewhere, but the place of version #1 is here):

"oh my goodness...

....such evocative and detailed lyrics laid in a canvas of broken threads...
....an acoustic and bass guitars which are like brushes, drawing the rhythm and the melody...
....such a poignant line of bass, lighting the core of the frame as in a solo...
....and a breathtaking voice, "in red and gray", in passion and lament...
....as in a painting by vermeer...

....oh my goodness... such beauty."

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chance is the only thing that doesn't happen by chance

Fátima, I liked your painting associations. Let me make movie associations now, something you won't be indiferent to.

I forgot this before, but it was fortunately remembered by something that will be on tv tonight. I hope my sms still catches you on time.

TQATS - Scenes from a Marriage
SIRAG - Saraband

Both for the key elements in the plots, and the present/past looks on the relationship I talked about before.

j.c.

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i'll join in on your movie associations, jc, definitely so. ;) and thank you.

TQATS - "the mystery of oberwald" (i'm translating directly from the italian title) by michelangelo antonioni, shot in video.

SIRAG - "saraband" by ingmar bergman, shot in digital video.

i'm completely with you on the last one, and my reasons for choosing them are exactly like yours. there's just another reason that ties my choice: the use of color in both these films (just like in the songs) which turns certain scenes in them into some sort of living paintings. antonioni clearly wanted to play with colors and emotions, changing a color to match an emotion, and that's why he used video. i feel bergman chose to shoot in digital video for the opposite reason: to be able to maintain a crisp autumnal tone throughout his film. but, in both of them, just like in the songs, there's a meaning to every color chosen.

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chance is the only thing that doesn't happen by chance

Fátima, just to clarify one thing. I didn't choose those movies for independently being associated with each of the songs, but for, as two pieces by the same author, conveying the idea of a story in two parts, with the same emphasis on present and break up (the first) and look over the past (the second) of a relationship. Just like I described for the 2 songs.

If I wanted to really associate a movie to each song I wouldn't really find one for now. Well, as you say "Saraband" could be a good choice for SIRAG. I still must see "The Mystery Of Oberwald" to know if I agree with you.

As a sidenote (I wrote this here years ago), there's a movie with a very literal link to TQATS, as it deals with the love story between a Queen and a Soldier, and ends with her decreeting his death. I mean "The Private Lives Of Elizabeth And Essex" (Michael Curtiz, 1939). Do you know it?

Love,
j.c.

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jc, i understood your choice since i know the two films you picked. i just happen to have this association between TQATS and antonioni's film for years in my head (and they came out at about the same time).

i do know the curtiz film you mention and i remember your reference to it. as you say it has a very direct link with the story in the song but it lacks its understatements, its metaphors and its silences. it's a typical studio film of the late 30's, telling the story in a straightforward way and i can only find some subtlety in it in bette davis' performance.

"the mystery of oberwarld" actually also has a queen and a soldier as its lead characters (and a somewhat similar story as TQATS) but all the subtext and the experiments with silence and color antonioni did in it are what truly always made me associate this film with the song. and, on the old undertow, i also made an association with godard's "breathless" which is also filled with things unsaid or understated in a story that resonates with the one in the song.

so you linked the films through the same author and the way he looked at a particular story. i understood it. i linked them through the way the story is told and there's a connection, in my head at least, between the antonioni (or godard's) film and bergman's. it's how they unfold the story that really does it, for me.

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chance is the only thing that doesn't happen by chance

Brilliant and haunting. This whole cd is such a gem.

I'd like to voice my opinnion if I may. has anyone ever thought of the idea that this song is about Suzanne's husbands afair? and that the daughter might be Ruby?

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If language were a liquid, it would be rushing in!

Pat and all that:

I revised my interpretation. My caveat: It's not biographical to Suzanne.
..........
That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Knowing what I know about the truth of this song, your new interpretation is afield of reality.

suzanne_vega11:

I'd like to voice my opinnion if I may. has anyone ever thought of the idea that this song is about Suzanne's husbands afair? and that the daughter might be Ruby?

That is not it either.  If you check some of the older posts in this thread, you may get clues.....

Uncwilly
Song of the day: Country Roads, John Denver & Johnny Cash
Cheese of the day: Laguiole