In the beginning there was... Cracking

I’ve been asked a couple of times “but why do you like Suzanne Vega, what do you see in her songs”. Usually if the conversation starts like this, I’ll answer with some joke, as I see the other person is not aiming at getting a serious explanation. An explanation that would start more or less with “it’s not exactly what I see in her songs, it’s more what I see in myself when I hear them”.

Nothing better than to start from the beginning: Suzanne’s first song, from her solo discography point of view: “Cracking”.

If there’s a Suzanne related memory I treasure above all, it’s the moment I put that vinyl in the record player for the first time, and heard the first notes of “Cracking”. I already had Solitude Standing, I also knew “Left Of Center”, but from the debut album only “Marlene On The Wall”, and now I had just bought this difficult to find (at least in Portugal in 1988) LP.

I buried myself in the sofa beside the hi-fi, and pressed play. The first notes told me I had bought one of the albums of my life. I don’t remember feeling something so strong with only a few seconds of any other album I had never heard before.

I see “Cracking” as the ultimate Suzanne song. A one time thing of perfection that it happens a lot with Suzanne.

It was with Cracking that I realized Suzanne’s work had a place in my life. In a certain way I can say my life would never be the same, counting the changes Suzanne-related episodes brought me.

Cracking means everything that attracts me in Suzanne’s poetry. The search, the wondering, the questions, the looking inside dressed up as a walking on the outside. The frailty, the introspection. The perseverance.

Starting from the beginning, its first line became one of my favourite ones. “It’s a one time thing, it just happens a lot”, it’s a philosophy to me, the individuality of the moments (for good or for bad) and the preciousness I religiously seek in every little emotion and event. They were never better described than in this line.

Then comes the appeal “walk with me, and you will see what we have got”, to me one of the most beautiful requests ever made.

With this line I imagined myself being Suzanne’s friend. Because I read the most beautiful friendship proposal in that line. Someone saying, I have questions. I have doubts, I have problems, but I want to keep on, walking and finding my way through my steps. I cannot guide you, I cannot be guided by you, but if we walk together maybe along the way we’ll be happy to look back and see what we have done together.

Do I need to say this is my favourite definition of friendship?

Then there is the attitude, when the suffering shown throughout the song is shockingly sung with coldness. The attempt to describe rationally a situation that seems impossible to understand contrasts with the shyness, the frailty shown on the ticking of the footsteps, the dripping of the water, the stepping very carefully.

The addressing of the pain is the most beautiful one I know. There are no worn out clichés, no torrents of tears, or exposed bleeding hearts. There is neither the intention of attracting pity, nor the selling-out of feelings. Just something that is cracking, and we don’t even know where. However it stings me as no other song does. If this wouldn’t make me have empathy for the narrator of the song, nothing in the world would have.

Then there are the colours, I’ve never seen a song so well painted, even if with only a few Spartan words. How many times did I feel those exact colours also filling and disturbing my days? How many times have I cursed the coldness of the sunlight, or welcomed its warmth. On its changes I see the outside as a scattered reflection of what I am inside?

Finally there is the voice. Suzanne’s cold and distant tone makes me imagine someone watching her life from outside, like in a movie. Not able to interfere, just witnessing. But each time we get used to this, we are interrupted by a long note, sang like a lament, or a calling. The remaining part of a soul calling the part that for some reason is leaving, floating distant. Painfully, as no words can express. Until the reunion of the final verses.

I never said Cracking was my favourite Suzanne song, but in a sense, I feel like saying Cracking is “my” song.

In Suzanne’s voice I see her staring. The tones of her voice are reflected in my mind as the looks in her eyes, the perfect gateway to a soul that had never found a more appropriated voice.

With it I see myself fighting to gather inside me all particles of my soul, in the moments they try to abandon me. In the moments something is silently cracking. Just like now.

With it I imagine Suzanne, not singing it, but thinking it. Loud. Unnoticed, I also walk through the park in the afternoon (don’t we all?).

Or maybe it is I who sing it in my head, reaching out within each verse and telling you (whoever you are!) “walk with me, and you will see what we have got”?

Hope still has a place, even if something is cracking.

In two words: Thanks Suzanne!

José Carlos
(wondering where the hell I have been)

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

Hiyah,

uhm, well...cracking is the first Suzanne song I ever heard... I was still at school then and we had a course party and one classmate brought hist taped version of Suzanne's first album along (which had just been released)....
he put it in the player... and zooommm... man, was I hooked....
It really was awesome....the voice, the music, the words...
Well, we listened to the tape the whole evening, a small group of the course with growing attention..

and the next day I couldn't think of anything else but buying the record, the album.... and I probably tortured my family for weeks with it...

... the wirst thing was, I wanted more.... and it took so long before Solitude was released......

so, I can kind of share your experience in a way...

Cheers,
ROLF

.... and SUZANNE, once again, thanks for the music and the words of every song...

Hi JC (at another place)

That LP is hard to get in Portugal? It's still scattered throughout Holland, and I have 4 of them!

how incomplete i make myself, how tenuous,
driving to make it to the present, leaning into
the here: what of the possible, the transparent
knowing of what you should do?
the watching-eye to the hat trick.

the momentarily unbreaking line. the small hush
of winter. the heart that is love is forced from
me as in retreat from love.
i am cracking. and if i write my name.
blown-out where it's all sun.

Jose_carlos wrote:
"In the beginning there was... Cracking
....
I see 'Cracking' as the ultimate Suzanne song. A one time thing of
perfection that it happens a lot with Suzanne.
....
I never said Cracking was my favourite Suzanne song, but in a sense,
I feel like saying Cracking is 'my' song."
Thanks so much for this, it is great to hear. This passion that you feel for Cracking and your expression allows us to feel, at least a little, that we know you better.
Uncwilly
Song of the day: The Rent Song, Philipp Hofmann
Cheese for the day: Anneau du Vic-Bilh

paula -

i put your book of poetry into the library shelf of the university today. and it looked like it belonged there.

remember me, philipp

www.200lurkers.com

I don't enjoy the song in the way you described, but I share the same feeling of being able to watch a soul that is so retrospective and carrying the most voilent serenity ever expressed.
Thank you, JC.

"Cracking" indeed was the first and formemost song that got me hooked into the secret world of Suzanne Vega. At the time, there were very few singer-songwriters that were so intimate, so personal. And in Suzanne's case---very evidently--so keenly observant. And "Cracking" was very much that. The only other artist's song of that time that came close was Jane Sibbery's "The Waitress." As in my other post, Suzanne's debut, namely this lead-in song, set up shop in my psyche in that otherwise hot Los Angeles summer. And for those of you living in L.A., you know how excrutiating those summers can be. "Cracking" along with the rest of this record, made for that sense of quietude, a longing for those walks with "ice on the sidewalk, brittle branches in the air" that you certainly could only wish for living in the large and alienating expanse of a city such as L.A.}

"... You can imagine that you're in a park after it's just snowed, and it's January, and it's Sunday, and it's about 2 o'clock in the afternoon, and the sun is out. So when the sun is out in a day like one of those days, it's not usually a very cheery, happy, golden sunlight that comes out on a day like that - usually, this has been my experience. Usually it tends to be a very pale, white kind of watery kind of sun. So let's say it's a day like that and you're feeling a little... peculiar, you might sing a song like this one..."

These were the words Suzanne used to present Cracking in a concert in 1984. I listened to them yesterday and I was striken by them.

One year ago, exactly in January I wrote an email in the Undertow with the sole purpose of cursing a sunlight that felt to me as the one described by Suzanne. Later in the year, in this thread, I complimented Cracking by, among other things, making so much sense to me for how it described that same light...

Now I hear Suzanne's words, and everything falls into place... where it was already, anyway...

I have no more words...

José Carlos

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

You are crackers, JC.

'Cracking' shows a really lovely guitar work!I guess Suzanne is a pretty good acoustic guitar player!I've always admired artists playing both the guitar and singing together!I've never been able to do so...

...must be much more difficult than driving...

Cracking was the first SV song I heard and was hooked...inspired me to pick up guitar again and write and sing. I live in Puerto Rico and teach music...Suzanne does not visit here! what can i do to organize a towie (now that i am one) movement to get her here and we all go camp on mona island??? any ideas folks?

Maybe some consider it a kind of sad song.
but for me it is THE song of hope, because as Leonard Cohen sings/tells-"There is a crack in everything, that's how the light get's in.."-.
Corina

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mi lang fi di marvelous miracle a hurricane,
fi carry mi goh a meetin stream agen

Linton Kwesi Johnson

CRACKING is my favorite song. It describes my life in many ways during my three decades of undiagnosed Bi-Polar Manic Depression, including homelessness and institutionaliization. With the help of medicine and therapy I am now the President of The Hemmerling Foundation, underwriting and appearing in films worldwide with my music and acting. We partially underwrote Bill Lichtenstein's WEST 47TH ST on PBS-MUST SEE TV-NEWSWEEK/EDITOR'S CHOICE-TV GUIDE/REMARKABLE-THE WASHINGTON POST. I appeared in ATTITUDE worldwide-FRONT PAGE NEW YORK TIMES, with my acting and music. In my life CRACKING has given me the strength to survive in many ways. Thank you.
Keith Hemmerling, Esq.
President
The Hemmerling Foundation

I listened to CRACKING during my whole 2004 WORLD TOUR in which five of my films with ALLIANCE INTERNATIONAL PICTURES appeared in CANNES/MILAN/BACK TO PARIS/AND THROUGHOUT THE UNITED STATES. The guitar and vocal are utterly hypnotic. I rescue children from street prostitution and The Hemmerling Foundation is the 2003 and 2004 Recipient of The Heroes of The Heart Award from THE CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT. We had a tremendous discussion about CRACKING and the children love the song.
Keith Hemmerling, Esq.
President
The Hemmerling Foundation