Hello, friends, and welcome to the Land of Conan's Dar Williams page!
Dar has been a very important musician to me. There are a few albums that I own that will always be "home" to me, the ones that I will return to again and again, and Dar's first album (The Honesty Room) will always be one of the precious few. As with the Nields, I know that I could not do Dar justice by describing her music myself, so instead, here is a link to her official homepage. Though I love all of Dar's songs, to differing degrees, there are a few that stay with me on a deeper level than the others--as luck would have it, one from each album. They were not necessarily the songs that grabbed me first, or the songs that I can't stop singing for days on end. They are simply the songs that have taught me something important about myself. I recognize myself in these songs, I think, more than in any of Dar's other songs. These songs are In Love But Not At Peace (from The Honesty Room), Southern California Wants To Be Western New York (from Mortal City), and If I Wrote You (from End of the Summer). My detailed analyses of these songs can be found below.
If I Wrote You
If I Wrote You is for me, first and foremost, a song about my experiences at my summer camp, Sunapee Arts Camp. The friendships I have made at camp have been both very wonderful and intense, and that intensity is almost frightening, looked at from a more distant perspective. It is also impossible to maintain once we leave camp. Camp is where I met some of the most beautiful and fascinating people I know. Inspired by the sense of camaraderie that enveloped the camp, we bonded on a profound level. We gave our hearts to each other, and we didn't even know each other's address. We told each other so much about ourselves--some of our most intimate feelings and dreams--and we didn't even know the simplest things about each other. We knew we'd be close friends forever. But once I left camp, I began to realize, painfully, that the instant, deep friendship we had forged might not survive our separation.
I never thought you were the letter writing type/So now I see the words you chose, the way you write. The person who wrote to the narrator is not "the letter writing
type," but he or she (I always think of the "you" in this song as male, especially since the song is dedicated to Townes Van Zandt) feels very close to the narrator, and feels that the relationship is important enough to him that he should write to her (I always think of the narrator as female). When the narrator gets the letter, she is struck by how the other person expressed himself and his feelings, and starts to write back to him. She also feels a deep connection to him; although she can't articulate her feelings about what she wants to say, she thinks he'll know what she means anyway: And I saw a bird, couldn't say what it was, but I thought you'd know.
And if I wrote you, if I wrote you/You would know me, and you would not write me again. This is the most important part of the song: she is afraid to write to him. In my opinion, the reason for this is that she is afraid that she is not the same outside the context of camp (i.e. the situation in which they met) as she was when they were there together and met each other. She is afraid that she will reveal the "real" her--that he will know her the way she really is most of the time, in the "real world"--and he will change the way he feels about her, and he will not write to her ever again. She knows that their relationship can't be the same as it was in those first intense days that they knew each other, and she is afraid to show him the other side of herself.
The second verse is the most beautiful verse, in my opinion: When the spring came and flooded all the streams/It's like how you got the night you told me all your dreams. During the time they were together, they shared so much about themselves. They were so amazed to have found each other, and to have found in each other an open heart and a sympathetic ear, that all they were keeping inside of themselves flooded out. They opened themselves up to each other and taught each other the importance of honesty, however painful it may be: It's like how you shrugged when you knew the truth was the only way out/But not the only way, oh no. And yet the narrator is still afraid to tell him the truth about the person she is outside of camp, so she says that the truth is "not the only way." But that line also has a double meaning for me. When they told each other all their dreams, it changed their relationship and made it much more intense. But now that the narrator is removed from that time, she comes to realize that maybe pouring out all their secrets to each other was not the best thing to do. It gave their blossoming friendship a degree of intimacy that it was not strong enough to bear, and she is starting to understand now just how weak their friendship may really be. But she doesn't feel that she can tell him that; she is afraid to tell him the truth about their relationship.
The third verse is probably the most complex verse, so before I offer my interpretation, let me explain where I'm coming from here. We drew our arms around the bastard sons/We never would drink to the chosen ones. Since my camp is an arts camp, it tends to attract a certain number of misfits or "bastard sons"--more so than, say, a sports-oriented camp, for example. And one of the most wonderful things about camp is seeing people who feel out of place where they come from blossom under the love and acceptance of the others at camp. But the more of a misfit they are in their own towns, the greater the chance that the relationships they form at camp will be needy and unhealthily intense, because they are often the first real friendships that these people have made; and it is such a rush and a revelation to these kids to suddenly feel so understood, that they often feel that they have found their soul mates in someone who is just willing to be there and listen to them. So the narrator and the person who is writing to her were both sort of misfits--they felt out of place and awkward around more socially accepted people, the "chosen ones," and they felt more comfortable with people more like themselves, the "bastard sons." But it seems to me that the narrator, after leaving camp, has tried to fit in more with the "chosen ones," recognizing that that is the path which will cause her less pain in the real world. ...the way I went was not the way I planned... Which is not to say that she will become popular (in the high school sense of the word)--she hasn't compromised herself that much. It's just that, where before, she refused to "drink to the chosen ones," and basically indulged in a bit of reverse snobbery, now she has realized that that attitude is too strong, and that it is important to recognize that those people also deserve her respect. I think that's what she means when she says that the world needed "love and a steady hand." The intensity of her relationship with the other person made it unstable and unsteady, and she wants to tell him that love needs to be steady, instead of needy and unhealthy. However, the fact that she repeats "I'm steady now..." seems to me like she's almost trying to convince herself that she is steady now. She's still unsure of how the other person is going to respond to that.
In the last chorus, she wants to tell him that she's more steady now--that she's not such a misfit--and she wants him to know, because she does still love him, and she wants to tell him that she's happy. And I'm so happy, I had to tell you/And I love you, and you will not write me again. But she knows (or thinks she knows) that he won't understand the person she's become. And she is sad because she still loves him, but she knows that their relationship has changed forever.
Southern California Wants To Be Western New York
Southern California Wants To Be Western New York is one of my favorite songs from a purely poetic point of view. Among the qualities that make me love poetry are its rhythm and its images, and its use of the two to evoke feelings. Dar uses both beautiful images and a smooth, even comforting rhythm to make this song so remarkable. The song is a collection of images that always manage to evoke in me feelings of homesickness--even when I'm home!
The first verse sets up the two locations: Southern California versus Western New York. There's a part of the country could drop off tomorrow in an earthquake/Yeah it's out there on the cutting edge, the people move, the sidewalks shake/And there's another part of the country with a land that gently creaks and thuds/Where the heavy snows make faucets leak in bathrooms with freestanding tubs. SC is "cutting edge" and WNY is most definitely not. But already the lyrics show a bias towards WNY, with words like "gently," as opposed to the harshness of SC's "cutting edge." She goes on to place the leaking faucets in houses that are haunted with the kids who lie awake and think/About all the generations past who used to use that dripping sink. WNY has a history; it has ghosts (not only those in the haunted house, but also "the restless ghost of Mrs. Ogilvey"), it has old land that "creaks and thuds." SC, instead, has unstable land that quakes and could disappear altogether at any moment. Not only does SC have no history, its future is uncertain.
This first verse introduces the three main themes in this song: the contrast between the land in SC and WNY, the histories of the two places, and the communities that exist in each place. The focus in the lyrics is almost entirely on WNY and its beautiful, gentle land, its abundant history, and the families and communities it harbors. SC's lack of all that is implied by its longing for what WNY possesses.
It wants to have a family business in sheet metal or power tools/It wants to have a diner where the coffee tastes like diesel fuel. WNY is presented in the second verse as very unglamorous, but surprisingly glorious. Instead of finding glory and beauty in the trendy atmosphere of SC, WNY finds it in "a town they say has hit the skids"; it sees beauty in a town full of hard-working people with family businesses, drinking lousy coffee in a local diner. The beauty here is not in the appearance of the town, but in the people who work and live in the town. SC is even attracted to a SUNY student with mousy brown hair/Who is taking out the compost, making coffee in long underwear. It is longing for people who are not necessarily beautiful by SC's standards, but who have a strong commitment to being good people--working hard, taking care of the land they live on. WNY's appreciation of and love for the people and communities living there is lacking in SC's fast-lane culture. Sometimes the stakes are bogus, sometimes the fast lane hits a fork/Sometimes Southern California wants to be Western New York.
Dar even makes SC's yearning universal: Tempe, Arizona thinks the Everglades are greener and wetter/And Washington, D.C. thinks that Atlanta integrated better. But SC's is a special case. It doesn't just want some elusive quality WNY possesses; ...it wants to travel back in time but it just can't leave L.A. It wants to discover its own history, to return to a time when life was simpler, but it's weighted down by all its possessions. It can't let go of L.A. (symbolic of a complex lifestyle--I'm thinking of the freeway system here--as well as violence, pollution, and other such lovely things), and so it can never really be WNY. The closest it can come, in true SC style, is a theme park.
But now I hear they've got a theme park planned, designed to make you gasp and say/"Oh I bet that crumbling mill town was a booming mill town in its day." The theme park will show visitors a town with a history that is still apparent in its daily life today. And the planners planned an opening day, a town historian will host/And the waitresses look like waitresses who want to leave for the West Coast. From this point on, the lyrics are all beautiful, poignant images of what this theme park will have. And they'll have puttering on rainy weekends, autumn days that make you feel sad/They'll have hundred-year-old plumbing and the family you never had/And a Hudson River clean-up concert and a bundle-bearing stork. LIstening to this verse, it's hard for me not to get misty-eyed and sentimental, thinking about autumn days that make me feel sad and the family I am lucky enough to have.
In Love But Not At Peace
No other song explains so perfectly how imperfect love is, and yet how necessary. It is not a song of disillusionment, but rather a song of realization: that love does not solve all our problems, or even many of them. Loving someone else, and being loved by that person, can't make the troubles of the world disappear; and yet, we need to love. I don't know how coherent I can be about this song, since when I listen to it now, it seems so obvious what it's about; but I remember that it took me a long time, and many listens, for me to get it.
In the first verse, the narrator is being reminded of her past relationships, which were not successful. Love took a long time, it followed me here/.../Love spoke of my past as a valuable test... True love has taken a long time to find her, and has tested her in her previous relationships to see how strong a person she can be when she is in love. Now the narrator is falling in love again, but thanks to the lessons she has learned from her previous relationships, she will not lose herself in love this time. She is on her "own side this time," and she will not forget herself. ...you'll still think of famine and you'll still dig up train fare/And you won't mind the wrinkles 'caue you'll know how they got there. Love is not going to be perfect. She will still worry about the world around her, and she will still live her daily, perhaps even mundane life; and she will notice the other person's faults and the faults in their relationship, but these faults will no longer be a threat to love. Instead, she has learned to see those faults as a necessary part of a real and enduring love. She is in love, but not at peace; she knows that real love will not bring her insulation from the real world, but she will love anyway.
The narrator used to think of love as something that would lock her away from the world. Once for me, love was the boat inside of a bottle/It felt like a gondola ride. She would be safe and happy inside the bottle love would construct around her. But her vision of "perfect" love was of an unhealthy love that would not let her live her own life. "The fish never live" inside a glass bottle; life cannot survive locked away from the world it was meant to be a part of. And the moon hang above like a Valium pill. This image is especially meaningful in this verse. The moon represents romance and the initial stages of love, the kind of love that makes you forget about everything else. But that kind of love has a numbing effect on people, and causes them to sleep through their lives. This is the kind of love that the narrator used to think she wanted, and she was willing to deceive herself to achieve it, saying she would be fine when she really wouldn't. So now she has her own work to do, independent of any other person, and she does not rely on anyone else to do anything for her. It's a case of a still-life gone cinema-verité. She was once immobilized, and she didn't participate in the world around her; but now she's become an active individual living a real life, and finally telling the truth.
The bridge is important because the narrator wants to make it clear that she has not completely given up her romantic longings. And I still need the beauty of words sung and spoken/And I live with the fear that my spirit will be broken. She is still moved by beautiful poetry and music, but now she is also wary of being broken by a relationship. But she realizes that she cannot love without that fear, and she's learning to live with it, instead of being paralyzed by it. She was always afraid of being hurt by love, but now she understands that true love necessarily makes you vulnerable, and being hurt is a risk that she must take if she is to love fully. She knows now that love is not safe, but she wants to love anyway.
The last verse begins by describing all the little flaws in her character and in the character of her lover: So I'll keep you wondering what time I'm arriving/And you'll drive me crazy with your backseat driving/I'll talk in my sleep and you'll steal all the covers/We'll argue it out and we'll call ourselves lovers. They have arguments, but their love is greater than their irritation, so they remain lovers. This time, they both keep their individuality intact, knowing that that is how real love must behave. And despite the sirens screaming in the background, they manage to live their lives and go to sleep, kiss each other and then fall into their separate dreams. And we kiss for the waking and then join the dreaming. The imperfections and perils of the world affect them, but will not stop them from loving each other. So they are in love; and though they are not at peace, they accept that as a necessary part of life.
Thanks for reading my dissections and interpretations of these songs; they were very cathartic to write! I hope they make sense. Who would have ever thought I would actually enjoy analyzing literature (and yes, I do place Dar's lyrics in the realm of literature)? If you would like to add anything to the discussion of any of these songs, please feel free to email me or sign my guestbook. In fact, if you have a different interpretation of any of the songs here, you can send it to me and I'll put it up here! I'd love to get several people's different takes on Dar's lyrics. Thanks for visiting the Land of Conan's Dar Williams page!
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