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From: Tiltmag@xs4all.nl (Bas)
To: veganet@aol.com
Date: 95-07-18 14:40:12 EDT

This may sound silly, but I do not quite uderstand the lyrics of the song `The queen and the soldier' Sometimes I suspect a second layer in this song. For example "she knew she had seen his face before..". Did they know each other? And (correct me if I misquote) "...and to love a young woman who I don't understand". Perhaps the purpose of this song is to create doubt, or isn't it?

I'm looking forward to hearing from you.

Subj: Re: The queen and the soldier
Date: 95-07-24 17:16:53 EDT
From: C.J.Scarborough@durham.ac.uk (Christian Scarborough)
To: Undertow@law.lawlib.emory.edu

I've always felt this song could be interpreted on two levels. The first is just conjecture, but I think that it's supposed to represent a relationship of Suzanne's that she feels she handled badly due to fear. I've no idea how true that is. It may not be Suzanne herself, but as someone pointed out the "secret burning thread" could represent Suzanne's desire to be a writer like her father, so the queen would appear to represent Suzanne on some level.

The second level is about the relationship between the sexes, and how it can be seen as a battle, and when it is there are no winners. This comes from reading a double meaning into "woman for whom we all kill", and also from lines like "I've seen more battles lost, than I have battles won".

Does any of this make any sense?

Christian

Christian Scarborough
"Mom warned me there'd be days like this." - Laverne, Day of the Tentacle

Subj: Re: The queen and the soldier
Date: 95-07-24 17:22:50 EDT
From: WChapwomyn@aol.com
To: Undertow@law.lawlib.emory.edu

To me, this song has always been an allusion to Queen Elizabeth I. I have a friend who is an expert on British Royalty and he has confimed that it's basically true:

QEI never married and only had affairs with these sort of commoners and would elevate them to a high ranking position and then, when they got to big for their britches, she'd either demote them or kill them or whatever.

I think, that that is what is going on in this song. These two definately have something going on. And he thinks he can persuade her because of their affair--what he finds out is that she is always queen and not so easily moved.

Wendy!

Subj: Re: The queen and the soldier
Date: 95-07-24 21:36:39 EDT
From: Tanita@radfem.demon.co.uk (Tanita Plaskow)
To: undertow@law.lawlib.emory.edu

Hiya, Wendy!

> QEI never married and only had affairs with these sort of commoners and would
> elevate them to a high ranking position and then, when they got to big for
> their britches, she'd either demote them or kill them or whatever.

> I think, that that is what is going on in this song. These two definately
> have something going on. And he thinks he can persuade her because of their
> affair--what he finds out is that she is always queen and not so easily > moved.

Wow ... all the time I have wondered about this song, and even written about it in an essay once, without ever guessing that the references were *this* precise!! The things that struck me most about it were the literary images of "female" inner space (down the long narrow hall he was led...), the way that the soldier was trying to penetrate, though (she never once took the crown off her head). This might also have to do with the cliche of Elizabeth I as "The Virgin Queen", and that bit from (I want to live as an honest man) to (Your Highness, your ways are very strange) has always seemed to me like a coded marriage proposal. I also think the song is paired with "Knight Moves", which puts the Queen in a less negative light by hinting that her power is tenuous in "male" society. So the devious action of TQATS is not to do with women being naturally false, but more to do with hanging on to one`s own autonomy by any means necessary at that time...

Thanx for shedding new light :)

Best wishes,

Tanita

Subj: Re: Fwd: The queen and the soldier
Date: 95-07-24 23:47:44 EDT
From: bobking@gate.net (Robert King)
To: VegaNet@aol.com
CC: undertow@law.lawlib.emory.edu

I always thought "she knew she had seen his face someplace before" just meant that the queen had noticed the soldier, maybe admiring him, perhaps out on the battlefield. that is, maybe she was already attracted to him but didn't want to admit it.

the other lines you asked about are among my favorites in vega-dom:

.. and to love a young woman
who I don't understand.
Your Highness, your ways are very strange.

I always thought that was a wonderfully roundabout way of saying "I love you." I want to love a young woman I don't understand, and I don't understand you -- so therefore ... you fill in the blanks. (It's basically a syllogism, with the third part being unfinished. It's sort of similar to the ad slogan Arby's has been using: Arby's is Different, Different is Good ...)

Not to get too personal here or anything, but the first time I really, really fell in love I wrote those lines in this occasional journal I was keeping. Um, not the Arby's lines, the Suzanne ones. That was in my sloppy romantic days, before I became the bitter, cynical bastard I am now.

-- Bob, who bowled a 130 tonight

Subj: Re: The queen and the soldier
Date: 95-07-25 01:05:06 EDT
From: bobking@gate.net (Robert King)
To: C.J.Scarborough@durham.ac.uk (Christian Scarborough)
CC: Undertow@law.lawlib.emory.edu

On Mon, 24 Jul 1995, Christian Scarborough wrote:

> It may not be Suzanne herself, but as
> someone pointed out the "secret burning thread" could represent Suzanne's
> desire to be a writer like her father, so the queen would appear to
> represent Suzanne on some level.

My initial reaction was that the "secret burning thread" lines refer to menstruation. The biological process, for one thing, sets the queen apart as a woman from all the male soldiers killing on her behalf, just as she has separated herself generally from the world and people around her. It's something many women (at least of my acquaintance) aren't all that comfortable discussing, even with other women. And it's also something she apparently understands only dimly; she has no idea why she bleeds, so she imagines that she has swallowed something that is cutting her internally, sort of the way people once believed that a chariot carried the sun across the sky. Sex education apparently is not all that strong in her kingdom.

Symbolically, I think the thread is also her picture of the secret source of her pain, which she conceals from the world for the sake of not losing the grip on her power. "She never once took the crown from her head." It's the same way people often starve themselves spiritually by focusing only on their material status, not on their needs for love or meaning or connectedness. The sudden presence of the soldier unbalances the queen by awakening these desires within her -- "she wanted more than she ever could say." But instead of satisfying those desires, she chooses to bury them and remove the immediate source of her anxiety by having the soldier killed. It's sort of the ultimate example of panicking and sabotaging a relationship that becomes too intense.

Does anyone else think that that long "ooooooooo" after "He bowed her down to the ground" refers to the queen and soldier having sex? In concert Suzanne has implied that the two never consummated their relationship, but I think it's also true that the black widow kills the male _after_ they've mated.

Anyway, I guess we could get into a big thread on the use of blood imagery in songs. In certain contexts, I think (for sort of obvious reasons) that it's a very "female" concept that wouldn't occur to a lot of male songwriters. Two examples I can think of right off the bat are PJ Harvey's song "Happy and Bleeding" and a really beautiful song by the Seattle band Tattletale called "Fly Away": "I've seen the blood that the earth is losing/and it's falling over me."

In other contexts it can be sort of male and aggressive, as in "(Don't Go Back to) Rockville" by R.E.M.: "If you were here I'd only bleed you."

Two other thoughts on the song:

1) Aside from being a battle of the sexes, you can also view the song as similar to Edgar Allan Poe's "Fall of the House of Usher": as a struggle between two opposing sides of the same mind. The "room with her tapestries red" could be the heart (or maybe the womb, using the menstrual theory).

2) It's kind of depressing that Suzanne's alternate ending to this confrontation, "Knight Moves," turns the queen needy and passive while the knight flits from woman to woman, playing one against the other. Basically you can either deny your inmost needs or set yourself up to be a chump. (Of course that is how it seems some days ...). If this did reflect Suzanne's worldview at the time, I'd sort of wager that that has changed.

Anyone else?

-- Bob

Subj: Re: The queen and the soldier
Date: 95-07-25 01:06:32 EDT
From: bobking@gate.net (Robert King)
To: Tanita@radfem.demon.co.uk (Tanita Plaskow)
CC: undertow@law.lawlib.emory.edu

On Tue, 25 Jul 1995, Tanita Plaskow wrote:

> The things that struck me most about it were the
> literary images of "female" inner space

Yes! Yes!

> I also think the song is paired with "Knight Moves", which
> puts the Queen in a less negative light by hinting that her power is
> tenuous in "male" society. So the devious action of TQATS is not to
> do with women being naturally false, but more to do with hanging on
> to one`s own autonomy by any means necessary at that time...
>

One thing I found interesting about TQATS is that, though the song is written from an intensely female viewpoint, it's the soldier who comes across as a basically good, decent person: courageous (he just walks up and knocks on the queen's door to turn in his resignation), perceptive, straightforward about what he wants and willing to speak frankly. These have often been stereotypically cast as "masculine" traits (as in that My Fair Lady song, "Why Can't a Woman Be More Like a Man?") and contrast with the queen's habit of hiding in labyrinths, denying herself and concealing her deepest needs. The soldier doesn't come across as macho by any stretch of the imagination, but he's secure in his own self. Based on Suzanne's comments about androgyny, I'd sort of like to think she's writing about the "masculine" part of her own personality -- some of the traits she may admire in people of both genders.

In "Knight Moves" it all gets turned around and the soldier becomes an insensitive, macho jerk, apparently unconcerned with his "woman who is crying in the hall." The sensitive "female" self, having let down her guard and given her heart to this guy, finds out she's been duped, contemplates suicide ("it's like drinking gasoline to quench your thirst until there's nothing there left at all") and practically begs him to say he loves her, receiving no reply.

Not a pretty view of human nature, is it?

I'm intrigued, Tanita, by your raising the possibility that Suzanne may view the queen's tactics in the first song as unpleasant but necessary. It does seem that the characters in the first album spend a lot of time cutting connections with the world to keep from being hurt.

Hmmm. Do I have anything else to say about this song?

-- Bob

Subj: Re: Fwd: The queen and the soldier
Date: 95-07-25 06:37:05 EDT
From: Hugo.Westerlund@ipm.ki.se (Hugo Westerlund ipm)
To: undertow@law.lawlib.emory.edu (Undertow)

Bob--

> I always thought "she knew she had seen his face someplace before" just
> meant that the queen had noticed the soldier, maybe admiring him, perhaps
> out on the battlefield. that is, maybe she was already attracted to him
> but didn't want to admit it.

I think she has this intuition of seeing his face before because, at least in a certain sense, the soldier is a part of herself, as you've suggested in your other posts.

In Jungian terms, the Soldier is most definitely an Animus figure, a symbolic representation of the contrasexual element in the Queen's psyche. There may, of course, be a real soldier, but the reason he makes such an impact on the Queen is that he corresponds to something within herself. Being a very one-sided person, rigidly identified with her role as a queen -- her Persona symbolised, perhaps, by the crown she refuses to take from her head -- her other qualities are undifferentiated and unconscious. They are part of the Shadow. Now, althought the Shadow appears to the conscious mind as dark and threatening, it need not be all bad and evil. If your Persona is hateful and belligerent, love and peacefulness may be completely unconscious, and part of the Shadow.

For a brief moment when the crown falls from the Queen's head, and the Soldier takes her to the window, she sees the golden sun and feels her want. Just like in Cracking, the Queen catches a glimpse of the light through the crack when she herself (or her Persona) is cracking. But her hunger is too strong, she has been starving for too long, and she cannot take the pain in her heart, so she kills the Soldier in a vain attemt to get rid of the Shadow, and the battle continues on.

The thread is certainly interesting. According to D.W. Winnicott, strings are often used by children to symbolise relationships -- with a string you can remain connected though still separate. So in a painful relationship, you can keep some distance without cutting the bond altoghether.

I also agree with Bob's thoughts about menstruation and female imagery. The thread could be an Ouroboros -- the snake biting its tail -- symbolising, among other things, the eternal regenerative power, certainly a female image. It could of course also be the Kundalini snake, often associated with the female power, shakti, of the Indian goddess Khali.

There are certainly other female images in the song -- "the long narrow hall" with the "tapestried red" would certainly be a lovely mothpiece for a Freudian. But, to me, it is more interesting if you view these images as symbols of the sexual aspect within a person, than looking at it from a gender perspective. It may just be my own preferences, but in so doing, the songs and the images concern everyone, not only a woman in a certain situation. The battle is raging in you and me, man or woman. It is also, unfortunately raging outside us -- in wars between people, sexes and nations. Perhaps because we cannot deal with our inner drama in an appropriate way when the inner world has been ravaged.

Bob, although women certainly have more experience of bleeding than most men, I think blood and bleeding is a very universal symbol -- let me, for instance, remind you of Bob Dylan's song "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)".

So I don't think The Queen and the Soldier refers specifically to Queen Elisabeth I, Tanita, although it is interesting to see the historical person in the light of this song. I'm sure there are many people living like the queen, and if you are actually a queen, with a queen's power, your conduct can indeed be highly destructive to many people.

***

I'm happy that there are so many discussions going on about Suzanne's lyrics -- the more you think about them, the more you hear of other people's interpretations, the more they mean to you. So please keep the discussions going!

/Hugo

P.S. Someone asked about Salt Water before. It's on an album by DNA called Taste This. It may be hard to find, I'm afraid.

Hugo.Westerlund@ipm.ki.se

Subj: Re: Fwd: The queen and the soldier
Date: 95-07-25 09:06:54 EDT
From: bobking@gate.net (Robert King)
To: Hugo.Westerlund@ipm.ki.se (Hugo Westerlund ipm)
CC: undertow@law.lawlib.emory.edu (Undertow)

"Only women bleed."
-- Alice Cooper, a male

"Not only women bleed."
-- Kate Bush, a female

Class, discuss

Subj: Re: The queen and the soldier
Date: 95-07-25 14:39:10 EDT
From: WChapwomyn@aol.com
To: Undertow@law.lawlib.emory.edu

Tanita,

I see the connection in the song between QEI and the Queen, but I can't say for sure that Suzanne was making a reference to QEI specifically. But, I like where you open the song up to a sort of femenist reading--a powerful female within a patriarchal society and the struggles she has to maintain that power. It might be interesting to unpack this song from that direction.

Wendy!

Subj: Re: The queen and the soldier
Date: 95-07-25 14:56:05 EDT
From: mac2@cornell.edu (Marco Alberto Cabassi)
To: undertow@law.lawlib.emory.edu

>On Mon, 24 Jul 1995, Christian Scarborough wrote:
>
>> It may not be Suzanne herself, but as
>> someone pointed out the "secret burning thread" could represent Suzanne's
>> desire to be a writer like her father, so the queen would appear to
>> represent Suzanne on some level.

I always thought this image (the burning thread) referred to an IUD, and its related to the Queen having to keep her purity (no 'souvenirs' must be left of the relationship the Queen had/has with the soldier).

-marco

Subj: Re: Fwd: The queen and the soldier
Date: 95-07-25 16:51:40 EDT
From: Tanita@radfem.demon.co.uk (Tanita Plaskow)
To: undertow@law.lawlib.emory.edu

Hello Robert and "Class" :)

> "Only women bleed."
> -- Alice Cooper, a male
>
> "Not only women bleed."
> -- Kate Bush, a female
>
> Class, discuss

Curiouser and curiouser (with apologies for the possible duff spelling!): this is a comparison I too have pondered for some time without making any particular conclusion. The Kate Bush track ("Eat the Music") has a chorus about a man who is "a woman at heart", for which the singer loves him. I think this is far less somatic about gender than the Suzanne Vega track "As Girls Go", though I always wondered how this figure of a man who is like a woman would relate to Kate`s belief in "feminine" energy?. As far as I recall the Alice Cooper track, it is all to do with women being weak and men being heartless swine, sort of like a kind-hearted old Victorian duffer on hard drugs. Cross reference with Dylan on "Just Like a Woman" for something which is just plain nasty IMHO...

I remember someone was saying about how TQATS might not be specifically to do with Eliazbeth I as the lyric was too universal. Although I take your point on this, and agree there are many interpretations, I don`t think the *possibly* specific reference is in contradiction with other suggested readings. One thing about a *really* good song like this is that it may offer a lot of potential meanings, including but in no way limited to those consciously intended by Suzanne Vega. Reading through this thread as it has grown has increased my enjoyment of a favourite song, and I would love sometime to talk about Marlene on the Wall in the same way if it hasn`t been done to death already here:)

Best wishes,

Tanita
xx

Subj: Re: The queen and the soldier
Date: 95-07-25 19:53:49 EDT
From: WChapwomyn@aol.com
To: Undertow@law.lawlib.emory.edu

Thanks for the support Tanita on the QEI interpretation.

I never meant to suggest that Suzanne had intended to specifically write a song chronicalling the life of QEI. As Tanita was writing, a great song has many layers to unpack--one layer may be the reference to QEI and her own sexual politics--this scratches the surface and I think the rest of my Undertow friends have done a fine job in digging in deep.

When dealing w/ issues of power/politics/and gender, who better to look at that an historical figure who used all of these things to her advantage. Really, that's what the song is getting out--using sexual politics and position to one's own advantage. Had the soldier been in charge--or been able to get at the Queen's heart--perhaps she would have had to relinquish some power. Instead, she desperately holds on to her own sense of identity and does away with anyone who might threaten that--like the bothersome soldier.

Perhaps we can look at the Queen as not wanting to be weakened by love (position wise)--because in some ways she is weak. Love/male dominance--it all poses a threat to her position as Queen. QEI is just the historical figure who lived such a life--had such a psyche.

Wendy!

Subj: Re: Fwd: The queen and the soldier
Date: 95-07-26 03:44:12 EDT
From: bobking@gate.net (Robert King)
To: Tanita@radfem.demon.co.uk (Tanita Plaskow)
CC: undertow@law.lawlib.emory.edu

On Tue, 25 Jul 1995, Tanita Plaskow wrote:

> As far
> as I recall the Alice Cooper track, it is all to do with women being weak
> and men being heartless swine, sort of like a kind-hearted old Victorian
> duffer on hard drugs. Cross reference with Dylan on "Just Like a Woman"
> for something which is just plain nasty IMHO...

Actually, I'm unfamiliar with the Alice Cooper version of "Only Women Bleed." I've only heard Pee Shy cover the song, with two women singing to the accompaniment of a slow accordion and keyboards. It comes across as very mournful and perhaps not at all what Mr. Cooper intended. But the man-as-heartless-swine theme is certainly intact.

Continue with "The Queen And The Soldier"

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