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From: Vlad D. Nebolsin
Submitted: 2-AUG-1994 17:03:09.00
Subj: Caspar Houser's Song

Hi, all,

would smbdy please explain me, what means CASPAR HOUSER'S SONG (WOODEN HORSE) dated 1987 from Solitude Standing album.

Just wonder, who is Caspar... ;)

SY,
Vlad.

On Tue, 2 Aug 1994, Vlad D. Nebolsin wrote:

> Hi, all,
>
> would smbdy please explain me, what means CASPAR HOUSER'S SONG (WOODEN HORSE)
> dated 1987 from Solitude Standing album.
>
> Just wonder, who is Caspar... ;)
>
> SY,
> Vlad.
>

...although I am not (by any means) an expert, I could only tell you what I envision when reading the lyrics/listening to the CD. I see a boy whose "small, white wooden horse" is source of hope and his inner strenght-perhaps his soul. In it, he uses his imagination as it becomes something that pulls him out of the darkness. There is a lot of imagery between the darkness and light. Perhaps, being in the darkness with the WHITE horse....? Perhaps, there is much more behind the wooden horse: "...what was wood became alive."

I sense confusion and doubt in the young boy's self-identity...perhaps wanting to be something other than ..a writer like my father..." ...anyone else?

From: Sarah Pearson
Submitted: 3-AUG-1994 01:10:20.00
Subj: Re: Caspar Houser's Song

> On Tue, 2 Aug 1994, Vlad D. Nebolsin wrote:
>
> > Hi, all,
> >
> > would smbdy please explain me, what means CASPAR HOUSER'S SONG (WOODEN HORSE)
> > dated 1987 from Solitude Standing album.
> >
> > Just wonder, who is Caspar... ;)
> >
> > SY,
> > Vlad.

I thought for sure somebody all-knowing would answer this, but they haven't so far.

Casper Hauser is a character in a foreign film made in the seventies about a young boy who lived in a basement for all of his life, and finally comes out of the basement as a teenager---or around 20 or so. the village he finds is more fascinated with him than he is with them. A few friends watched the movie about three years ago, and thought it was deadly boring. but, their opinions, not mine. I can't remember the name of the film, but I can find out later today. let me know if someone's interested.

sarah. n9048262@henson.cc.wwu.edu

I'm really glad someone asked about "Wooden Horse (Caspar Hauser's Song)," as it's my all-time favorite Suzanne Vega song and one that has never failed to move me since I first heard it seven years ago. (This song, along with "Queen and the Soldier," literally had chills running up and down my spine the last time I saw her perform them, back in 1990 in Tampa. A cliche, but true.)

Hauser, from what little I've read, was a German boy in the 19th century whose parents supposedly kept him locked alone in the basement until he was 17 or so, with only his toy wooden horse to keep him company. By itself it's a compelling story with elements of bizarre cruelty (in a sense, this is the second child-abuse song on the album, along with "Luka") and questions about what it means to grow up without human contact. Caspar certainly fits in well with the other wounded, skewed survivors who populate much of the Vega canon; and, as she often does, she tells it from the first person. She called it "a point of view I couldn't resist" when she performed the song in Phoenix in '87.

But ask yourself this as a little creative exercise: If you were to write a song about Caspar, how would you do it? Then look at what Suzanne wrote. If you need a demonstration of what a tremendously gifted artist she is (and no one on this list should), I think this is it: What a lesser songwriter would turn into a preachy ballad or weepy lamentation (imagine a guitar strumming while someone sings "17 years of darkness/no bright sun above me/no friends to play with/no kind hands to love me"), she has turned into a chilling, mystical song that's both universal and semi-autobiographical.

I think she sees herself in Caspar. Because of her song, I see myself in him as well. I think the song is about, generally, the wonder and fear of growing up and becoming a person -- and, specifically, about her own wonder and fear of the artistic gift she carries.

Consider these lines:

"I came out of the darkness" -- so did all of us: out of the womb, and out of the darkness of our earliest childhood, the part we no longer remember.

"Holding one thing
The small white wooden horse
I'd been holding inside."

-- Wood is dead, inanimate. Caspar held it inside his basement, a surrogate for the living friends he never had. Inside of _us_, it's our potential, whatever gift we've been blessed with, dead like a seed before it starts to germinate. In Suzanne it was the artistic gift that was to start showing itself when she began writing music.

"In the night the walls disappeared
In the day they returned."

-- These, two of the most perfect lines you will find in any song, are loaded with meaning. This was literally true for Caspar; at night he couldn't see his walls anymore. It's also true for us: the night, when we dream or lie awake with our dreams, is when we pass beyond the walls or limitations that surround us in the daylight world. I think it's especially true for children, whose waking lives are limited by the adults around them. Imagine the young Suzanne Vega in bed, dreaming up stories, dreaming of who she would become.

" 'I want to be a rider like my father'
Were the only words I could say."

-- Caspar's dream is to be a rider, with a living horse, and I also sense the longing for the absent father. It's sort of interesting that "rider" sounds like "writer"; isn't Suzanne's father a writer? (I mean the one who raised her.)

"Alive
And I fell under
A moving piece of sun
Freedom"

-- Pretty obvious, I think: Caspar emerges into the outside world. Suzanne discovers her ability to create. We discover whatever is bright and alive in us. This is the song's one fleeting moment of joy.

Then we go back to "I came out of the darkness/holding one thing", but end it with:

"I know I have this power
I'm afraid I may be killed."

-- This is kind of a bizarre couple of lines if the song is still about Caspar; my first reaction was "huh"? What power? Has Caspar's solitude turned him paranoid?

I believe it refers partly to Suzanne's power, the creative gift that allows her to form songs that take lives of their own and live in other people. It sounds to me that she is both joyous and in awe of this gift. To some, the ability to create life where none existed before belongs to God, or the gods; to have such a gift is to risk divine retribution. To have a great treasure is to fear that others will try to take it.

Maybe most of all, to know what a great power we have in being alive and human is to fear death, which can take it all away. Maybe the worst thing is to know how precious life is when it is about to end. Maybe Caspar, once he found the life he was deprived of, feared he was about to lose it.

I've saved the chorus for last:

"And when I'm dead
If you could tell them this
That what was wood became alive
What was wood became alive."

--- Rolling Stone sneered that these lines possibly referred to Suzanne livening up her "wooden" songwriting style, but then again, that magazine has never really seemed to have understood her (what can you say about a publication that knocked her for using the word "equivocate" in "When Heroes Go Down"?). But they might have blundered within a half-mile of the truth. For Suzanne, her songwriting, her artistic talent, _is_ what became alive; for all of us, it's whatever spark within us makes us uniquely human. This is the great secret, the great revelation she/Caspar wants to be remembered for after death. (And can anybody out there hear the words "And when I'm dead" without feeling like somebody somewhere just stepped over their future grave?)

Applied to Caspar literally, these lines again make him appear to have gone a little daft in his basement captivity, as if he is claiming that the toy horse literally became alive. Maybe he just means that his wooden existence underground took life once he joined the world.

But I get a sense of his solitude as a mystical experience: That horse did become alive, and if you don't understand, that's fine, but he wants you to know that it really happened. It _lived_. I get the idea that he understands that only because he was alone for so long; that's what made him able to see the life inside the wood.

Maybe it's the same thing that sets Suzanne apart and lets her see things most people miss. She seems to be saying something like that in "Solitude Standing," where Suzanne wants to be among the crowd in the dark, "gathered into one," but instead is with Solitude, who has her hand extended, who is there to "set a twisted thing straight" and "lighten this dark heart." Many see solitude as a curse, but sometimes it comes bearing gifts. Having chosen a less-traveled path (or maybe, it having chosen her), Suzanne is separate, in a sense, from the mass; in these songs she seems acutely aware of that fact.

Sorry this is so long, and I hope I haven't annoyed anyone too much. I really welcome anybody else's thoughts about this interpretation. My goal is not to kill the song with a barrage of over-analysis, but merely try to explain some fraction of what makes this song so special to me.

I could go on and on about how incredibly spare the song is, how it manages to say so much with so few words (a technique I know I should try to emulate), or about how that incredible drumbeat makes me see this terrifying image of a horse galloping out of the darkness -- but I won't.

Let me know what you think.

-- Bob
Bradenton, FL
bobking@well.sf.ca.us

P.S. Happy birthday, Ruby! Congratulations, Suzanne!

"I would shelter you
And keep you in light
But I can only teach you
Night vision."
-- Suzanne Vega

I always thought Caspar was a *real* person, who lived in Germany ca. 18th century, who was locked away with just his wooden horse until he was 'freed' at the age of 17.

------ b.j. mora --------------------- jmora@netcom.com ------

From: Sarah Pearson
Submitted: 4-AUG-1994 09:04:32.00
Subj: Re: Caspar Hauser's Song

It is a true story, sorry for the misunderstanding. I went and read the movie box, and the movie is _based on_ the true story. The movie's called "Every Man For Himself and God Against All", and it's a German film, from the seventies, I do believe. The back of the box basically says that he comes out of the basement with a note pinned on him that does more to mystify his situation than explain it. The townspeople are puzzled by his existence, and try to teach him to get along in the upstairs world. He doesn't even know how to eat "correctly", and they try to give him an education. He learns to eat and drink correctly, but won't accept or deal with (or something) the education.... this is, of course, a memory of the interpretation of the film, which is an extrapolation of the real story. (and they bitched about equivocate!) :)

oh, and on the box they spelled it "Kaspar". ?

sarah. n9048262@henson.cc.wwu.edu

From: (T.K. Ledwon)
Submitted: 4-AUG-1994 14:21:25.00
Subj: Re: Kacspar Hauser

OK, my system works!
The "long and boring" movie is a German one, titled "Kaspar hauser", directed by Herzog ("Heart of glass", "Voyzeck", "Aguirre..." and so on), nice music by Popol Vuh in that movie (although the best is in "Aguirre..."!)

I see I still have problems with the keyboard. Later
Tom

From: Vlad D. Nebolsin
Submitted: 5-AUG-1994 08:05:46.00
Subj: Re: Caspar Houser's Song

Date: Tue, 2 Aug 1994 17:54:59 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Rebecca Chiu (SY 1997)" <rchiu@minerva.cis.yale.edu>

> I sense confusion and doubt in the young boy's self-identity...perhaps
> wanting to be something other than ..a writer like my father..."

Sorry, Rebecca, I guess it's seems like "I want to be a rider like my father".

It's close to truth. ;)

SY, Vlad.

From: Marion Kippers
Submitted: 5-AUG-1994 11:07:13.00
Subj: Re: Caspar Hauser's Song

Hi,

I thought I would add this little bit of information to the various interpretations I read so far... (Thanks especially to Bob -- wonderful mail!). It's one of my all time favourite Suzanne Vega songs as well.

This is from "Language", the publication from the Suzanne Vega Info Center (any other members out there?), the first issue of February 1988.

"I was reading the biography of Caspar Hauser. He lived in Germany in the early 1800's and because he was a heir to the throne, he had been locked in a basement from the time he was born until he was 17 and then suddenly set free. So his problem was, how do you learn to be a human being? The book explains his coming to power and it's a really tragic story because he's murdered in the end, but I thought his perspective would have been so interesting. It's that stripped away thing again. In some ways he was so stripped away, he was almost like an animal. He'd never seen the sun and he could only say one sentence, which was "I want to be a rider, like my father". And they had given him one toy to play with in the whole 17 years, which was a small wooden horse. So I was trying to see how you could take a story like that and turn it into song form."

(Sounds, 6 december 1986).

The "Language" article continues with a summary of the biography. If anybody is interested I could attempt to translate (parts of) it, but it's quite long (4 typed A4-pages). The title of the Dutch biography translates as "Kaspar Hauser: his live and his place in history", written by Hans Peter van Manen (1985). There are more books about him. It's such a sad, but fascinating, story...

Marion

_________________________________________________________________
Marion Kippers Wolters Kluwer Academic Publishers
Automation Department Dordrecht, The Netherlands
Marion.Kippers@wkap.nl "Pity our emptiness..." (HR)
_________________________________________________________________

Very nice work, Bob-- I hadn't seen that the first time around. I might add that I hear the song also as a sort of survival song, a tribute to the beauty and resourcefulness of the human spirit even under the most adverse conditions. Most of us--perhaps thankfully--never get to test this within ourselves, but perhaps we could all benefit spiritually from the knowledge of the powers we have and don't use.

>Subject: Re: Caspar repost
Date: 95-03-03 01:24:46 EST
From: moshe@amanda.dorsai.org (Moshe Feder)
To: bobking@well.sf.ca.us (Robert P. King)
CC: undertow@law.lawlib.emory.edu

On Tue, 28 Feb 1995, Robert P. King wrote about the Caspr Hauser song:

> " 'I want to be a rider like my father'
> Were the only words I could say."
> -- Caspar's dream is to be a rider, with a living horse, and I
> also sense the longing for the absent father. It's sort of
> interesting that "rider" sounds like "writer"; isn't Suzanne's
> father a writer? (I mean the one who raised her.)
>
>
> "I know I have this power
> I'm afraid I may be killed."
> -- This is kind of a bizarre couple of lines if the song is
> still about Caspar; my first reaction was "huh"? What power? Has
> Caspar's solitude turned him paranoid?
> I believe it refers partly to Suzanne's power, the creative gift
> that allows her to form songs that take lives of their own and
> live in other people. It sounds to me that she is both joyous
> and in awe of this gift. To some, the ability to create life where
> none existed before belongs to God, or the gods; to have such a
> gift is to risk divine retribution. To have a great treasure is
> to fear that others will try to take it.
> Maybe most of all, to know what a great power we have in being
> alive and human is to fear death, which can take it all away.
> Maybe the worst thing is to know how precious life is when it
> is about to end. Maybe Caspar, once he found the life he was
> deprived of, feared he was about to lose it.

Nice job, Bob. Not to take anything away from your beautiful expansion of the lyrics, but I thought you'd be interested in one of Suzanne's comments on this song at the Learning Annex session that relates to the two passages I've excerpted above. She said that Caspar's father was a member of the nobility, and that his imprisonment may have been meant to keep him from his rightful succession. Hence, "I want to be a rider like my father." Nobles rode, perhaps in a military role, while the common folk walked. Hence also, "I know I have this power. I'm afraid I may be killed." The power can be the political power that is his by right, and which someone may deprive him of by murder if necessary. I have to admit, I wasn't familiar with this dimension of the C.H. story, which I was aware of long before hearing the song. Still, food for thought. Keep up the good work.

Moshe Feder ===> ===> ===> ===>
moshe@amanda.dorsai.org
Typos unintentionla >>>FIAWOL<<<
days: 718-461-5302

Subject: Re: Caspar repost
Date: 95-03-04 00:32:01 EST
From: bobking@gate.net (Robert King)
To: moshe@amanda.dorsai.org (Moshe Feder)
CC: bobking@well.sf.ca.us (Robert P. King),
undertow@law.lawlib.emory.edu

Thanks for the kind comments, Moshe.

Yes, I too was fascinated to hear Suzanne's comments about this song in the Learning Annex workshop, which I listened to right after I reposted my interpretation. It was especially interesting that she said the rider/writer pun (if that's the right word for it) was deliberate: The real Caspar Hauser really did say "I want to be a rider like my father," and Suzanne pointed out that her father is a writer, giving the line extra meaning for her. To me, her comments reinforced the strong feeling I've always gotten from the song -- that it's her intense identification with the character that makes it special.

While I'm here, I just want to extend a big public thanks to Eric for taping that talk, which I found absolutely incredible. Especially enlightening were her descriptions of her early career, and the very specific reasons she has for not being overtly political in her songs (it would make good fodder for someone doing a graduate thesis on Post-Vietnam Political Disillusionment as Reflected in Contemporary Folk Music). I laughed several times, including when she described herself as the only half-Puerto Rican, white, Buddhist folk singer she knows. And where else could you hear her relate Buddhist prayers to the type of guitar notes she favors?

The workshop was much too wonderful to have been lost to history, so I'm glad it wasn't. It was better than any conversation I have ever imagined having with her. (I know you've done the same thing too. Admit it.) My offer remains open for anyone who wants copies to send me blank tapes, plus mailer and postage. But be warned: If I don't receive it this week, I won't be able to get to them till the end of March.

-- Bob

"Any thought could be the beginning of the brand-new tangled web you're spinning."
-- Sebadoh

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