SUZANNE VEGA: What's Your Problem?
RELATIONSHIPS
Raised in a politically active Puerto Rican family, in the tough East Harlem district of New York City, Suzanne Vega exorcised her reflections on urban life over three, highly successful albums. Yet her cool detachment suggests Suzanne has as much difficulty with one area of existence as her fans. As the waif-like one ushers her fourth LP, 99.9F, into the spotlight, VOX confronts Suzanne Vega about her problem with ... relationships
"When I was 16, my family began practicing Buddhism. Some people see Buddhism as selfish, but in our particular form the highest thing you can chant for is someone else's happiness. I chanted for clear skin, and to be thin, and to have a record contract. It took me four years to get clear skin, five to become thinner than I was, and eight years to get the record contract.
Many adolescents are self-obsessed. I felt that I had to look out for myself, because I didn't see that anyone else was going to. I was probably self-absorbed, but I won't apologise for that.
I write about things that are very close to me , so I need to have the detachment, otherwise I'd just burst open - and that would be very unattractive. But I'm not actually a detached person. People, when they get romantically involved with me, don't seem to see me that way. Usually it's the opposite. If I'm serious I tend to fall all the way. I don't stand around playing funny games. Maybe one day I will write 'I love you' in a song, but only when I can find a way of saying it that hasn't been said before. I find it embarrassing, and there are much more interesting things to write about. When I do write about men and relationships it tends to be flirtatious and playful.
My music is not really as detached as it seems. On a track like 'Rock In This Pocket', which is about King David, that's not about me and a man, necessarily. It's about a small person and a large person, or a small person against an institution. I wrote this song before the riots happened in LA, but there's that sense of powerlessness and you want to get the attention from someone ... and so you have a rock in your pocket and the urge is to throw it. It's not necessarily against a man, especially not a man whom I'm equal to. It's about someone in power, someone much bigger than I am.
The problem I have is a power problem, and it's not specific to men. I don't have a problem with men. I like men. I don't like people having power over me. It's not that I want to have power over other people - I couldn't care less about that - but most of my songs are from a small or a victimised point of view. I find it necessary to struggle against this larger thing that's trying to confine me or define me. That would be paranoid if it were a fantasy, but it's not a fantasy. It came from circumstances in my own life, growing up in the part of New York that I did.
People have compared my childhood to Madonna's, but Madonna grew up without her mother, and so she learned how to manipulate her father, or other men around her, with her sexuality. But I didn't grow up under those sort of circumstances. In the places where I grew up, if you walked down the street in a short skirt, you'd get 25 guys looking at you and shouting things at you. You learnt to protect yourself against that kind of sexuality; you don't exploit yourself in that way where I came from.
I had not known my real father until four years ago. In the beginning, meeting him again, it was very difficult for me to accept his love. I still can't call him 'Dad'. I call him Richard. But there's definitely a sense of a gap being filled in my life. I've been able to relax within myself for the first time in I don't know how long. I'd always struggled against myself, because I couldn't accept the fact that I was white and I was not my stepfather's daughter. This always was something that had caused me a lot of pain. I wanted to be like the rest of the family I grew up with, because I loved them. But I always had the sense of being apart from them, and being different in a way that wasn't good - so I hated myself for a lot of my childhood.
Low self-esteem is a tiny, genteel little phrase that describes a huge, gigantic, horrible feeling. I just had the sense that I was never right. A lot of people, even my family, feel that I'm too correct. It doesn't strike me that way, but in some ways I regret not having more of that 'just throw everything to the winds' sort of feeling. Eventually I'm sure I'll lose all these inhibitions and things that have controlled me, and maybe I'll hit some kind of wild adolescence in my 40s ...
This year is probably the first time I've not been involved with someone in about eight or nine years. Sure, I'd like to be in a ten-year love affair with somebody; I don't think it takes the edge off your work.
If you find coldness in my lyrics it's probably because I'm a really reserved person. I feel very deeply and passionately about things, but I don't like music where the person is bleeding all over the CD player. '99.9F' is a song to a man whom I think would be equal to me. That's a very overtly flirtatious song. Is that rare for me? I don't know. I feel that a lot of women write songs about their relationships, why do I need to join the list? I feel people miss the chord of what's interesting in my work. There is something interesting, I know there is. I'll punch anyone in the face who says there isn't!"
(Suzanne Vega was talking to Martin Townsend)
Submitted by Robin Shortt
VegaNet@aol.com
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