Listening to Suzanne again today.
I wasn't sure of where to post this, here or under poetry. I'd like to share these lyrics with Cathy, since I thought of your recent post when I heard this song today. One can relate to it on many levels, I know I have and thought perhaps you could as well.
"Bad Wisdom"
Mother the doctor knows something is wrong
Cause my body has strange information
He's looked in my eyes and knows I'm not a child
But he doesn't dare ask the right question
Mother my friends are no longer my friends
And the games we once played have no meaning
I've gone serious and shy and they can't figure why
So they've left me to my own daydreaming
What price to pay
For bad wisdom
What price to pay
For bad wisdom
Too young to know
Too much too soon
Bad wisdom
Bad wisdom
Mother you've taught me the laws are so fine
If I'm good that I will be protected
I've fallen through the crack and there's no getting back
And I'll never trust whoever gets elected
Mother your eyes have gone suddenly cold
And it wasn't what I was expecting
Once I did think that I'd find comfort there
And instead you've gone hard and suspecting
What price to pay
For bad wisdom
What price to pay
For bad wisdom
Too young to know
Too much too soon
Bad wisdom
Bad wisdom
Mother I'm cut at the root like a weed
Cause there's no one to hear my small story
Just like a woman who walks in the street
I will pay for my life with my body
What price to pay
For bad wisdom
What price to pay
For bad wisdom
Too young to know
Too much too soon
Bad wisdom
Bad wisdom
Leonard Cohen once asked what did Suzanne learn too early. Might be relevant, cause the song goes "Too young to know too much too soon bad wisdom" in almost one breath.
"I learned about the way people can treat each other and the way people, in extreme circumstances, will do things that they wouldn't do if they were thinking about it; how people, at a very basic level, will fight to survive and act in ways that humans would prefer to not think of themselves acting like. Those are things I think I learned pretty early. That was my sense of the world, as a place where... the world I grew up in was a very extreme place, it seemed to me. Maybe it was just because of my temperament. I don't think so. I don't think it was because of my temperament. I think it was the circumstances. Those were the first things I think I learned. I mean, I learned other things as well, but those were the things I learned too early. The other things I learned were things that children know, which are things of the imagination and things, you know, more spirit-like things. Things like, myth-like things. Those are things I also knew as a child."
"The bad wisdom is knowing something before you're ready for it. It's knowing something before it's time. Before. It could be sexual knowledge. Some kids take LSD too early. Bad wisdom is when you have too much too soon. You go beyond what you're prepared to handle."
"In some ways, everybody has their own form of it."
MP3 at
www.suzannevega.com/audio/99p9.htm