4:18am September 30, 2014

“She said, “I have swallowed
A secret, burning thread
It cuts me inside
And often I’ve bled.””

Suzanne Vega, “The Queen and the Soldier”

That line feels like the heart of the song to me.  She had this to say about it:

Concerning the line “And she said I’ve swallowed a secret, burning thread” Suzanne said in the same interview:

“That’s the line that means a lot of different things to me, because it’s the one line that doesn’t make logical sense. People don’t swallow threads. That comes from a lot of different sources. One source was that I had a cat who would chew the bottom off the curtains. She did in fact swallow a thread and she had to be put to sleep around that time. The other thing is that, sometimes in your life, I think, you may have a secret; and if you swallow it, if you keep it to yourself, that’s what it feels like. Or I used to think of relationships between people as threads, so if there’s one that’s secret and has a certain poisonous character to it, then you keep it to yourself, you swallow it. I think that’s really the deeper meaning of what I meant. She swallowed something that was hurting her. And I had something like that in my own life.”

And it still intrigues me.  Although the story about the cat horrifies me: If you ever see a thread or a piece of yarn dangling out either end of a cat, do not pull, call the vet immediately, you may need emergency surgery, if you’re lucky, because the thread can rupture internal organs like the stomach, esophagus, and bowels.  End important PSA that I tell everyone any chance I get people people just don’t know that kittens playing with balls of yarn are more ominous and horrifying than cute from the standpoint of anyone who’s ever known a cat who died that way.

But aside from that, the many layers of meaning there have always fascinated me.  Really, with that whole song, because I don’t think even tue author knows “what it’s about” like she does with  most of her songs.  It’s just this eerie fairy-tale-like song that has a lot of depth to it he harder you look.

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