Argh! This thread is about Wooden Horse, not Language!!!

That's okay.

While Wooden Horse is not my favorite song of hers (top 5, probably, but definitely behind Rosemary and Pilgrimage) it has, for me personally, the greatest single musical moment of Suzanne's entire ouevre to date.

After the second verse where she says
"What was wood, became aliiiive
What was wood, became aliiiiive
Aliiiiiiiive..."
and some instrumentation comes in (not sure what the instrument is), I literally can feel two things: I can feel Kasper Houser feeling that first bit of sunlight "and I fell up under a moving piece of sun" (maybe either through a window-pane, or maybe he finally got outside), and I can also feel what I'd have to describe as (forgive the Judeo-Christian mindset) angels descending upon me and visiting divine grace upon me. With the exact notes of that instrumentation I can really FEEL "Aliiiiiiive" and ON those exact notes I can (at least at times in the right moods) FEEL the angels coming down onto me AS THE NOTES HIT!!!

This is a very powerful song, and in my opinion, a very SAVING song, and that is why I like it so much.

-M

Hiyah.

Actually, i always read the line 'I fell under a moving piece of sun' as a naive poetic way of desribing being killed by something reflecting the sunlight, e.g. a dagger or knife....
Nevertheless, along with the awesome drum-line I really love that part of Wooden Horse...
Still, my favourite songs that touch me most deeply are definitely Tired Of Sleeping and Gypsy...

Cheers,
ROLF

Rolf:

Interesting and possibly valid interpretation of that line you have.

Yes, those two songs "Tired of Sleeping" and "Gypsy" are among my favorites.

-Will

I like Wooden Horse, and I like the mystery of Kaspar Hauser, too.

Like Luka, this seems to me like a song about child abuse, too.

(I forgot to mention, Kaspar is spelled with a 'k'. Maybe Suzanne sings about a different boy, who happened to have a name very similar to Kaspar's, and by coincidence also lived in Germany and didn't know who he really was.)

Ehr, I don't think so, either.

tired of sleeping is one that i like as well as my huge liking of gypsy...
i used to have listen to that before i could sleep. hehe... such a calming, comforting song

This is such a great song. Personally, i think it should have been promoted as a hit instead of Luka.
May have proved for better record sales. but Suzanne's probably got enough money.

I totally agree...shame it didnt get airplay, record companies work in mysterious ways.......

Gypsy became one of my favorites only after I heard it live and this was somewhat recent. It was the first song I heard from the album just before it's release.

Even though I liked the song, I didn't classify it as a favorite. But when she played in Boston a couple of years ago, she did the song and her voice had an echo effect that made that song just soar. "Nighttime is the cathedral..."

That song really set me thinking about its subject!This is deep.

I wonder if deep within the lyric to Wooden Horse has something in common with the song by Melanie “What have they done to my song, ma”. Let’s make myself clearer. Somewhere between lines, I reckon, this is a song about freedom, freedom and power of creativity. Becoming public person and saying in public one’s heart is risky. But this is someone who has power, who is “wood became alive”, who “came out of the darkness”, out of his own being lost and alienation. He may be killed, by jokes, by misunderstanding, by own lack of success. But I am sure, he, before his death, had found fulfillment. And we, the witnesses of that fulfillment have duty to say that.

Anna

---

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

The first time i heard about Kaspar Hauser was listening to this song from Solitude Standing (1987, i was 16!). Then i saw the film of Werner Herzog, and i could understand better the lyrics from Suzanne. The story resulted astounding for me. Yes, as one Towi said, Drums 'r awesome. I would dare to say that the inclussion of these drums is inspired by some reminiscense of the Tin Drum of Günther Grass, and it works good for the atmosphere, but it's only my speculation. Another nice thing of this song is the choral-arrangement at the end: a mixture of the voice of Suzanne at different tones.

For those interested in knowing more about Kaspar Hauser, check:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaspar_Hauser

greetings,

Erick

kaspar-hauser:

The first time i heard about Kaspar Hauser was listening to this song from Solitude Standing (1987, i was 16!). Then i saw the film of Werner Herzog, and i could understand better the lyrics from Suzanne.

I have a similar experience with that song. I bought "Solitude Standing" some fourteen years ago and didn't know about Caspar Hauser back then. I was also much less familiar with the English language than I am now (I'm French) and there was quite a lot I didn't understand in song lyrics, and Suzanne's in particular. But I was immediately fascinated by that song. A mixture of sadness and mystery, something I could only guess at but not really explain. It's such an atmospheric song. I'm a writer and usually write with music as a kind of soundtrack, and I remember once writing to the sound of "Wooden Horse" because it fitted so perfectly the atmosphere I was trying to convey. Strangely enough, the other song of Suzanne's I once used as a "soundtrack" was "Honeymoon Suite", which surprises me now because the story I was writing was so different from the song (I love that song too, especially the lyrics).

So anyway, I remember being really excited a bit later when I saw a movie about Caspar Hauser on TV (not the one by Herzog, a different one) and suddenly understood more about the lyrics. Especially "I want to be rider like my father". And the reference to the wooden horse itself. There's a lot I still have to understand about the lyrics from "Solitude Standing", just because I much was younger when I first heard them. Somehow, it takes a while to hear them differently afterwards.

My taste in music has changed quite a lot in those fourteen years, but I'm still awed by that song as I was then.

melanie:

So anyway, I remember being really excited a bit later when I saw a movie about Caspar Hauser on TV (not the one by Herzog, a different one) and suddenly understood more about the lyrics. Especially "I want to be rider like my father". And the reference to the wooden horse itself.

I think somebody has mentioned it ages ago, but I forgot, so I ask this question again... it is known where Suzanne got her inspiration from? The Herzog movie was much later than the song, as far as I know, so this can't be her inspiration...

Nothing much (not much)

Moni.