Hello all!

I'm new here.

Noticed no-one has commented on 'Neighbourhood Girls' from Suzanne's first album (or perhaps somebody has and I've missed it...)

I always thought that was a weird (in a good way), enigmatic song. For some reason, it had supernatural connotations for me (when I first heard it). Forget where she's 'gone, gone, gone'. Was she ever there in the first place? The story was very smokey and vague.

I love the line about a backbone being gone and having to get it back 'before going on'.

I wonder if the 'Neighbourhood Girl' was based on Suzanne herself (at a time in her life when things were cloudy and uncertain?) Or maybe it was about someone she knew. Certainly I think there's something quite mysterious and slightly ominous about the lyrics. But then it's the aspect of mystique in Suzanne Vega's music that I find most appealing.

Just a thought or two.

Angela

I think I read somewhere that this song was based on a conversation Suzanne overheard in a subway...

Spikey

Makes me wonder how easy it would be to sort of...vanish from your own life. I wonder if all that would be left of that end of your life would be a small conversation or two, "where's she gone?" I'm assuming, though, that it would not be that easy. But I allow myself to think, "maybe"

I think it will be like that for many people around you when you die, Christie. You know, the relative you just don't know well enough, the neighbour you almost know, the customers that visit your work, the friend you lost contact with, the boy who sits in front of you every tuesdaymorning in the subway...

That's quite morbid and quite true. But I hope you didn't mean it literally, Christie. Take a tip from the song - which is more optimistic. In it, the girl says she'll 'be back in a bit' and that she's 'just walking through the smoke, finding out if this is it.' I guess she's undergoing some self-analysis and confusion but she doesn't say she's going for good...I don't think her life is ending.

Good vibes,

Angela

That's quite morbid and quite true. But I hope you didn't mean it literally, Christie. Take a tip from the song - which is more optimistic. In it, the girl says she'll 'be back in a bit' and that she's 'just walking through the smoke, finding out if this is it.' I guess she's undergoing some self-analysis and confusion but she doesn't say she's going for good...I don't think her life is ending.

Good vibes,

Angela

Here's a link to a video clip from a live performance of Neighborhood Girls - December, 2002 at Here Gallery in NYC...

http://homepage.mac.com/mooncusser/Vega/iMovieThea ter49.html

Two thoughts on this thread:
1) I've often had the feeling of one's own life taking place without one actually in it, like for example if your life is going on as normal, then you learn that people (who perhaps you haven't seen in a while, or don't know very well) have been discussing you - not in a bad way, just in a way to make you feel odd and somewhat displaced from your own life - perhaps your "shadow" life is more interesting than the one you're actually living, or you haven't viewed your own life in the same light that others have.
2. A recurring dream of mine is that situations from my past, places I have lived or worked or gone to school that I have long since left, are still existing as I remember them, just waiting for me to step back into them. I'll have this dream that I stop back by an old workplace and resume my job as if I've never left it, except some of the details have changed in my absence, or I won't remember how to do something. Or I waltz into an old classroom of mine, as an adult years later, class is still in progress, we have a test and I dont' remember a thing.
Perhaps these musings don't have much to do with the song but they may be interesting nonetheless.

Brady

I don't want to write a typically long (of me) post, and right now I am sort of depressed, so I don't have the energy to do so anyway.

Anyway, "Neighborhood Girls" is easily one of my top 10 or maybe top 5 Suzanne songs.

For anybody familiar with literary terminology, "Neighborhood Girls" achieves wondrous "aesthetic distance". Through Suzanne's narrative structure, she achieves this "aesthetic distance" and delicately balances the speaker's curiosity of and sympathy for her subject and the vague sense of awareness that maybe her curiosity and sympathy are somewhat futile. The latter was just a guess.

Anyway, she has said before, I think, that this song is about prostitutes and/or prostitution. I was wondering if this song is supposed to be a statement on how they often move around as faceless women who are often detached from society at large (and often end up as victims of serial killers and the like), but a statement that is intentionally lost in a sort of drunken haze (the different speakers in the song don't seem to be communicating too well, and alcohol and bars are part of the song).

Is the tone of the song sort of like a mirroring of the, at best, halfway acknowledged impermanent, transitory (to euphemize here) status and existence of prostitutes, I wonder?

In any event, I think it's a beautiful song, in a non-beautiful sort of way. It's really such a work of genius with the narrative structure and aesthetic distance it achieves because I really feel that it touches the listener in just the right way, and that it is also really open to interpretation. A true mark of genius.

-Will

Hi Will, nice to see you back!

I have a question about one of your sentences:

"...delicately balances the speaker's curiosity of and sympathy for her subject and the vague sense of awareness that maybe her curiosity and sympathy are somewhat futile."

Could you elaborate on the "sympathy". I always thought the opposite, the distance that you mention could also be seen in the lack of sympathy. The characters talk with curiousity, yes, but an arrogant one, like two scientists talking about a dissected animal, at least that's what it feels to me. I can guess some implicit sympathy from Suzanne towards the prostitute(s), through the arrogant way the two characters seem to have, but I can't see any sympathy on the two characters' words.

I'm waiting for your view

José Carlos

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Hi Jose and Will =)

I think the general tone in the song conveys that sympathy with the curiosity. There are words as well, like, "I always thought that she/ looked kind of nice." Just the way the "neighborhood girl" is quoted, to me, seems to show a concern and an empathy for her life, as :
"There's a back-bone gone
And I've got to get it back
Before going on..."
and
"There's a razor's edge
that I have lost somewhere,
and I'd like to get it back..."

The speaker seems concerned about the Girl, and I think, I read, that Suzanne is using this as a way to voice the futility felt in life sometimes felt: "I'm just sifting through the smoke, finding out if this is it..." existentialism voiced through a "ho'"! How cool is that!!!

Just my perception,
Miriam K

Hello,

Can I join discussion? Thanks, you have no choice, I write anyway.........

I take for granted that this song is based on conversation between two anonymous people - it seems women.

When I am listening to this song I don't care about prostitutes, but about opinion of other people about them and, in general, what strange topics choose people to talk about for, I can say, entertaining. I see this song as a criticism over people for whom prostitutes are something interesting in negative way, not exactly about sympathy for prostitutes. The next ironic song by Suzanne?.....

I know one character in that song is defending prostitute, pointing out that she (the prostitute as character easily judges, sticking label maybe to a usual girl) is not happy with her life and she is lost and looking for a way to quit her life style, what shows a kind of sympathy and but maybe is only a try to justify why she is gone. The other character is only wondering why prostitute is gone, how she could do that, while it was interesting (in malicious way) to observe life of prostitute and her clientele. The most shocking for me is, that two characters are talking about two different girls, but they stick the same label to them, as if prostitution is something common (and nice topic for conversation - maybe just for looking for a sensation?). I don't dare to say that they are talking out of the curiosity - what has a positive meaning for me, but from point of view of interest in negative way. This is the difference for me.

be well

Anna Maria K.

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

Sorry it has taken me soooooo long to get around to posting my reply to your reply to my initial post, Jose'.

Miriam K basically answered my question in about the same way I'd answer it. Remember, that the writer of a piece can put characters into a narrated work to perhaps illustrate what the writer does NOT like, but recognizes that other people think, say, or feel, and can/will actually contrast those characters' words against the writer's words.

One of the great things about this song is the layered narration. You have Suzanne, the writer, who is not in the song AT ALL, directly. Then you have the two main speakers, one of them quoting directly from the girl they met, which adds another level of narration. I think, also, that the way Suzanne sings certain parts of the song sort of gives off clues:

*when the quoted girl says "backbone gone", Suzanne really emphasises the initial 'b' in backbone, giving it emphasis

*when the same quoted girl says "I've got this feeling that things are going gray...", the beginning of that line is also emphasized

and actually, at least one of the speakers (from what I remember, I haven't listened to this song in a long time as I haven't been able to, but don't make me explain this b/c it's a looooong story) seemed to me at least a little sympathetic as is, I think, evidenced by Suzanne's singing "I did not knooooooooooowww what to say".

It's actually a fairly complex little song, and it can generate a good bit of discussion, as is evidenced by this thread. And the discussion goes on and on...

And between what I said earlier and what Miriam said, I think it's all been discussed as far as the thoughts I processed then and have processed now.

-M

Hi Will,

You say:

"Remember, that the writer of a piece can put characters into a narrated work to perhaps illustrate what the writer does NOT like, but recognizes that other people think, say, or feel, and can/will actually contrast those characters' words against the writer's words."

This is completely right, and it was what I (with my broken English) was trying to say when I said I guessed "some implicit sympathy from Suzanne towards the prostitute(s), through the arrogant way the two characters seem to have".

And you're also right in something else. It's a layered structure of narration that is making me think more now than what I've done before.

Finally, you're also right in a third thing. Suzanne's way of singing reveals a lot about the songs' meanings, as I've already suggested about "Cracking", I must listen again to "Neighborbood Girls" with this in mind.

José Carlos

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

When I was about 10 a brothel was opened on my street. I used to live in a working class neighbourhood with nothing much to do. Of course my friends and I were soon interested in these new neighbourhood girls and their clientele, who usually arrived in very nice cars that we had never seen before.
I always think that the conversation in Neighbourhood Girls takes place between two kids, or most likely teenagers because of the party bit.