Hi,

Dear Fatima,

I feel you wrote to me an important message, but sorry, I still don't know for sure what I am forgetting. From my own perspective I am forgetting many things as my emotions carry me away. But thanks. I will have in mind your words always!

Dear Jose,

I know that children disguise as pirates for fun or play that they are pirates and there is a mystery of adventurous story of lost treasue somewhere in between lines, but these are only tales for me. I can't take them seriously.

I remember how I protested on the old Undertow that Susanne is not ironic, but Last Year's Troubles is for me the most ironic song Suzanne has ever written. Suzanne points out in this song that evil is still evil and at the same time she show us that we idealize past. I know she doesn't like when people ask her about a message in her songs, but in this song there is a lesson, how people have wrong impression of past.

As for "measure for measure". I have to confess that I don't understand this. Maybe it has something in common with Gospel, maybe with the play by Shakespeare. Especially, when Suzanne talks about petticoats of virtue and sin it seems that it is emphasized that it is important not only what people do, but first of all what they think. So maybe the clue is that evil is still evil because the intentions are the same now and in past. World is changing and more and more sophisticated tools for doing harm are invented. The scale of bad deed is bigger than ever, but intention are still the same. Of course it is my guess!

be well

Anna Maria K.

---

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

dear anna,

i agree that "last year's troubles" is an ironic song. i've tried to make that point in my posts, just as you do now. in many of suzanne's songs runs a subliminal idea that things aren't or weren't exactly as they seem and that we should look at them more closely ["see(ing) within"] or with some distance. the purpose is the same: to be able to go past the cover and see the book.

i feel that same idea in this song. but once confronted with the book the task isn't over, we must continue with the same caution as we read its pages. and this is something we *all* forget sometimes so we misread the book. we forget things aren't, or weren't, just black or just white. so even if "evil is still evil", good is still good, and the same applies to all that lives in between the two: this is what i hear suzanne saying in this song. i hope i clarified my point, but maybe i didn't.

love,
fatima

As far as I'm concerned, this is Suzanne, very blatantly eqivocating the past. Back in the days of 99.9F, when heroes went down, there was simply no excuse for this kind of thing, but now, all these years later, she's more than happy to look at old conflicts through rose colored glasses.

I have that kind of chin.

It's pretty big, anyway.

---

The wind kicks up with the smell of rain
The kids are gone but the souls remain

No one seems to doubt this

---

The wind kicks up with the smell of rain
The kids are gone but the souls remain