The Myth of Americana in Regina Spektor's "Sailor Song"

The poem/lyrics below contain language not always deemed for use in polite company.

Sailor Song
by Regina Spektor on her album, Soviet Kitsch (2004)

She will kiss ya 'til your lip bleeds
But she will not take her dress off
Americana, Tropicana
All the sailor boys have demons
They sing "Oh Kentucky why did you forsake me
If I was meant to sail the sea
Why did you make me
Should've been another(*1) state
Oh state.."
Cause Mary Anne's a bitch
Mary Anne's a bitch x5

Does it matter that our anchors
Couldn't even reach the bottom
Of a bath tub
And the sails reflect the moon
It's such a strange job
Playing blackjack on the deck
Still, atop this giant puddle, dressed in white
We quietly huddle with our missiles
And we miss the girls back home
Oh home sweet home
Cause Mary Anne's a bitch
Mary Anne's a bitch x5

She will kiss you 'til your lip bleeds
But she will not take her dress off
Americana, Tropicana
Americana, Tropicana
Americana, Americana (*2)

(*1) Many "lyrics" websites have "should've been with the state"
(*2) Especially during these last two words, Regina may be saying "Americano" or "America-no"

At first glance, this song sounds like it has something to do with sailors and some women named Mary Ann(e)/Marianne. I think that idea is meant to be portrayed, but more as an establishing metaphor than a "meaning" of the song.

The song plays with the negative, almost cliché idea of a boat of sailors--hypersexual, US Navy men--on the ocean for long periods of time, longing for heterosexual coitus. The first stanza play on this image, since the main reason Mary Ann is considered a bitch is because "she will not take her dress off." In the second stanza, the sailors are on the boat "huddl[ing] with our missiles and we miss the girls back home," a double entendre implying not only the weapons on the boat, but also masturbation.

Although the hypersexual sailor is an image with which we are familiar today, it wasn't always that way. At least, not in all circles. In many stories of the US, sexuality was downplayed. The Navy and all of the US Armed Forces was a place for brave, virtuous men to go protect their country. While away, they thought of a special girl back home. Both boy and girl were chaste while awaiting the other.

An American folk song captures this thread of tradition. Bob Dylan did a version of the song on his 1973 album Dylan: "Mary Ann." In this piece of Americana, the speaker sings to his beloved Mary Ann before going to sea. He says the crow will "surely turn to white" if chastity be broken by the sailor.

Although a large fan of Dylan, Regina Spektor is not a folk musician. Rather, she is part of what folks are calling "anti-folk." In her "Sailor Song," she is doing just what you would think an anti-folk song would do: it takes Americana and stands it on its head, poking through the holes in the story so that reality can peak through.

In the folk song, Mary Ann is a static image, since the man does all the talking. The sailor claims he will be chaste, but Mary Ann makes no such claims. In this song, Mary Ann is still a silent character, but now she is sexualized by Spektor. She doesn't have sex with any of the other guys, but she's kissing men so much that their lips are bleeding--a skewed idea of chastity. Mary Ann has changed from the folk song's static idea to the image of the tease.

Spektor changes the sailor, too, from the chaste man who fights for his girl back home. Instead, he's jacking off and gambling while "miss[ing] the girls back home"--not just one girl, but multiple girls, girls in general.

These two changes are anti-folk because they change a myth of Americana. We no longer have a gender split between those serving in the military and those "waiting" at home. People aren't always waiting at home, either. Life goes on while the soldiers are away. The soldiers aren't perfect, either. Most Americana pieces don't pay attention to the negatives of US history and culture, like the photos we all saw in the news from the Abu Ghraib prison in 2004. It is not only the fictional Mary Ann who is a bitch, it is the whole concept of Americana, the myths about America, the stories we construct and hold on to in order to hide reality.

This anti-folk message is apropos of the album's title: Soviet Kitsch. Indeed, much Americana can be understood as kitsch--a derogatory term used for art aimed at mimicking something popular in order to be popular. The overuse of the American flag and the ribbons to support our troops images I would consider kitsch--attempts at being tasteful, but more for the purpose of making a buck than an artistic expressing themselves.

And then there is the definition of kitsch by Milan Kundera in The Unberable Lightness of Being. For Kundera, kitsch is a totalitarian myth--it is a denial of reality by those in power. Spektor uses this idea of kitsch to stand against the myth of Americana. Although her album is Soviet Kitsch, a reference not only to her Russian heritage, but also because "Soviet" conjures negative images and communism to the US mind. And yet, her album is not about anything particularly Russian, but rather, US American: "Ode to Divorce," "Ghost of Corporate Future," "Carbon Monoxide," "Sailor Song," "Chemo Limo," "Poor Little Rich Boy." She is emphasizing that which is behind the Americana, dismantling the kitsch and showing reality.

The sailor isn't yearning for Mary Ann and, besides, Mary Ann's a bitch. So much for home, sweet home. So much Americana. The myth of Americana is as cheap as juice (the word "tropicana" also takes some of the sensual imagery often associated with the exotic, the Other--this song sets up the binary of Americana with its exotic, tropical, fictional other and dismantles it).

It seems that which connected us to the myth of Americana was an anchor that "couldn't even reach the bottom of a bath tub." And the myth is barely alive today, although still held onto in some form by many, especially in politics. It is like a boat that was never fully built, like the USS Kentucky.

And thus the song has de-romanticized the USA, war, and the USA at war.

O if we but knew what we do / When we delve and hew

Below is a dream and interpretation I had January 2011

I was at Gardner-Webb University where I recently graduated and, at the time of this dream, worked and lived, but the scenery was my elementary school in Friendship, Maine. I walked to the back of the small-town school and saw machines at work cutting down trees.

I was aghast. I went to the other side of the playground where I saw a lady preparing a chainsaw to cut down a tree whose width spoke of its age, but whose height invited a good climb or friendly shade on a hot summer's day. I screamed at the lady, "You have no heart!"

Two other ladies were standing near me, guarding the area. The elder was Lois Lash, my third-grade teacher and my church's choir director from when I was kid until the past year or so. The younger was her daughter, Carol Ehle, the church's pianist for as long as I can remember. She is also mother to a neighborhood boy my age with whom I went to school and participated in band and academic events. They looked at me with such surprise, wondering how such terrible words could come from the mouth of a man who was once a young angel of the church, a young man with whom they worked many hours for the church's music.

They were disgusted with me and so I explained to them how wonderful the trees are, for aesthetics, for shade, for the homes of animals, and for the very air we breathe. Despite my reasoning, they stood as still in their ways as the sentries of the Queen's Guard in England. Their foundation was firm and they faltered and wavered not.

So I watched the austere, heartless woman cut down the tree with her chainsaw. In the heaviness of the moment, a crowd gathered. I became anxious, claustrophobic. I was being pressed against a pole of a swing-set. I started to push myself from the pole when two men grabbed me and carried me away.

Scared out of my mind, the men dropped me off at the basketball court, one of the boundaries of our recesses when in elementary school. They wanted me to leave, to stop causing trouble. Before I could interact with them anymore, I woke up to my phone vibrating on the windowsill above my head.

Trees are sacred symbols. They aid us in worship. They provide us shelter and furniture. I look to them and I see us in their seasonal phases of life and death, their ubiquity, their diversity. It is hard for me to see them cut down, although I understand why we cut them. Still, the thought of cutting down a tree before its time gives me pause. In the words of G. M. Hopkins, "O if we but knew what we do / When we delve or hew -- / Hack and rack the growing green!" ("Binsey Poplars")

Considering my dream, I first thought of them as symbols of justice, diverse, strong, and good for life. I was watching a woman destroy something for which I stood, a long-standing tree of my faith. Not only was the tree wide with age, but also at a place marking bookends of my life. The scenery was my elementary school, a place I first began to learn about ecojustice, although I understood the area as my current home, a place where my love for the earth was re-inspired.

In one of my less tactful moments, I told her she had no heart for injustices hurt people. I could not believe she would cut down such an obviously wonderful truth. At least, the truth is so obvious to me. Two pillars of the faith community from which I grew stood as still as trees not seeing what I thought was obvious.

With the injustice committed, with the tree of my affection gone, I felt alone in the masses. People from my past, present, and future are all around me, yet I do not feel safe because I think differently, appreciate different things. I am growing and changing like the trees. Will I be cut down, too? Will my life be cut short, because the acorn has fallen a little too far from the tree?

Anxious, claustrophobic, I felt I would die if I did not push against the grain of the crowd coming in on me. In my dream, my life was cut off, in a sense. I was cut off, exiled from the people by two strong men. The anima and the animus have ousted me, one ignoring me and the other removing me. I am rejected and I awake, thrust away from the subconscious mingling of past, present, and future, and forced once again into the conscious present, left on the margins of recess.

The tree was not simply a justice for which I stand. The tree stood for still more than just the people I know who are hurt and oppressed by the injustices of felling such trees, left not to be themselves, but a haunting visage of who they could be in a just society. The tree was also me, falling when he cannot stand to see others fall, falling with them and going with them to the fire. The tree was me, dealing with the potential end of my formal education, watching others and wondering if I can join in. The tree was me dealing with the rejection of women and men as I apply for jobs.

The tree is me and the tree is you, co-inheritors of the sins of others. Whether we wield the chainsaw, yell slurs, stand guard, or watch, we reap what we sew and what others sew, be it a cut tree, the evil deeds of capitalism, or the hodgepodge donations of surplus. Like a forest, we are all in this life and on this earth together. We might fall when we sin and we might fall when others sin, but one day we will fall.

Christmas According to Mark: A Deconstructing Advent & Christmas

I'm normally very bitter about Christmas. I don't like crowds, shopping, and gimmicks. However, being a Scrooge is no fun.

Instead, I have been rethinking the Advent and Christmas season a little bit, as reflected in my two previous posts. This morning I was thinking about Advent again. The Advent wreath contains four candles arranged in a circle and one candle in the center of that circle. Often times when I think of circles, I think of Jacques Derrida who noted how circles are defined by a center, but the center is not part of the line that is the circle. In effect, the center is something transcendent to the circle ("Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences").

The concept of center is, well, central to how we understand Advent, Christmas, and life in general. Around the Advent wreath are candles representing hope, peace, joy, and love, concepts connected like radii to the center of the circle, connected to Christ and Christmas through the stories of Jesus's birth.

And already the circle is starting to re-de-fine and un-define. There are multiple Christmas stories, stories of Christ being born in and to humanity in Jesus. There is the story in Matthew, the story in Luke, the baptism of Jesus in Mark, and the abstract story in John, not to mention a number of stories that never made it into the canon.

I'm particularly interested in the stories that aren't birth narratives, but tell of Jesus' coming to Earth. The book of Mark opens: "The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God." According to Mark, the Good News of Christianity has nothing to do with Christmas, which is an understanding of Jesus, Christ, and the Gospel quite contrary to the portrayal in Matthew, Luke, the Nicene Creed, and the month of preparation Christians have observed for centuries, not to mention the long celebrations of the US "Christmas season."

If the author(s) of Mark were to celebrate Advent, they wouldn't be waiting to celebrate the birth of Jesus, but rather the coming of Christ's movement in the life of people. For Mark, this coming didn't happen when Jesus was born, but rather when Jesus was baptized, reborn not of man and woman, but of God solely. In this story, Jesus' virgin birth was of God, not Mary.

And thus, Advent and Christmas are de-centered. Hope, peace, joy, and love are no longer connected to Christ through the generally-accepted reconstruction and assimilation of the stories Christmas. They may still be connected to Christ, but Jesus as the Christ--"born of the Virgin Mary"--is no longer that which defines them for this or any season.

Since deconstruction is not destruction, a de-centering of Advent and Christmas is not an end to Advent and Christmas. Advent can still be a season of anticipation--of hope, peace, joy, love, and Christ. A deconstructed Advent sees the themes inevitably and forever interconnected and interdependent, instead of four dependent on the one. Furthermore, a deconstructed Advent will embrace the interplay of anticipating and receiving, the already and the not-yet, of God's absence and presence, and of absence in presence in relation to hope, peace, joy, and love.

Christmas deconstruction will re-remember Christ in the various aspects and stories of Christ's "beginning" on earth, a beginning lacking an originary event. That is, Christ never came, but has always been coming and has always been here (to use some more deconstruction terms: a "hauntology" of Christmas in the "aporia" between presence/absence).

A deconstructing Christmas is one where "God so loved the world," not "God so loved all the people I love." Christmas would then lose and gain significance. It would lose the significance of gift-giving to those we love and being with those you love, it would no longer be a holy day (holiday), a day set apart and other than the rest of the days, because it would give significance to the rest of the days of the year by recognizing the Other and Otherness by asking for generosity, for hope, for peace, for joy, for love, for Christ, for "the Christmas spirit," to be a year-round thing, so these things are born every minute, not once a year.

A deconstructing Christmas would be an active holiday where significance needs to be created, not inherited. For all of these abstract terms--generosity, hope, peace, joy, love, Christ, Advent, Christmas--are merely abstract terms with no center defining. If we are to use them at Christmas or ever, they need to be embodied. Words don't mean, they are given meaning.

And so it was in Mark with Jesus. Jesus wasn't born the Christ. Jesus became the Christ by giving that term meaning--that was the beginning of the good news. Christmas is a time not only to remember, but to actively remember by continuing to create meaning for Christ, by continuing to create Christ, to birth Christ.

This Advent, I'm Not Waiting for Peace: Isaiah 40:1

At this point in the Advent season, tradition emphasizes people waiting for the peace associated with the coming of Christ. As I at least hinted at last week, I believe the real impact of Advent is not waiting for Christ, but embodying the return of Emanuel. When I sing, "O Come, o come Emanuel," I am not singing for a human to come out of the clouds, as if I believed heaven were literally above the sky. Rather, I am singing for God to be born in me, that I might be pregnant with God's transformative love and power. The second coming of Christ is not a one time event to happen in the future. This parousia is a continual event. Like the first advent, this advent consists of Christ being born in humans. But this time, unlike the first, it can happen in all of us, not just in Mary.

In light of this understanding of Advent, I don't wait for peace.

"Comfort, O comfort my people," says your God.
"Speak kindly to Jerusalem;
And clal out to her, that her warfare has ended,
That her iniquity has been removed,
That she has received of the LORD's hand
Double for all her sins"
A voice is calling, "Clear the way for the LORD in the wilderness;
Make smooth in the desert a highway for our God.
Let every valley be lifted up,
And every mountain and hill be made low;
And let the rough ground become a plain,
And the rugged terrain a broad valley;
Then the glory of the LORD will be revealed,
And all flesh will see it together;
For the mouth of the LORD has spoken." (Isaiah 40:1-5)

I am not waiting for peace, because I am making it.

In an attempt to mimic the Hebrew words, Isaiah 40:1 has become hard to understand in English. In the Hebrew, the verb is in a tense known for intensity (Piel). The intensity increases when the word is repeated, not something we do in English. In verse 1, God really wants comforting to happen, given the verb tense.

Apparently comforting is really needed. In v.2, we find out why: "[Jerusalem] has received [...] double for all her sins." Generally one dose of retribution is bad enough, let alone two. For this sort of comforting, generally you expect divine action. The Bible is full of God promising to make up for any sort of suffering of the Israelites, even when it is deserved.

But in this instance, God tells someone else to be the one doing the comforting. Actually, God is telling a group of someones to be comforting; the imperative "comfort" is plural in Hebrew, a construction we don't have in English.

To whom is God talking in the mind of Isaiah the author?

I don't care.

Let's remember that Isaiah or Deutero-Isaiah and Tertiary-Isaiah understood the world like people understood the world before the common era (BC/E). You know, back when it would have been acceptable to think evil existed below us, in the center of the earth.

I don't care who Isaiah thought God was talking to, because God can only be telling us, in reality. A few truths from Isaiah 40:15 are: (A) people need comforting and (B) God wants those people comforted. Who is going to do that comforting? Us, the people of God.

It is no wonder that Isaiah 40:1 echoes the common construction of "your God" and "my people" from "I will be your God and you will be my people." The two concepts are inseparable. If God's people are to be comforted, then God will do it through God's people. It isn't just the concepts that are inseparable. God and God's people are inseparable. God exists in God's people.

"I will be your God and you will be my people." Today's Christianity knows this concept better in the idea of "the body." The Church is the body of Christ. They are one and the same. Inseparable. Interdependent.

Don't wait for the advent of God's peace. Be God's peace. People, let it be born in you.

My Advent Hope & Kazuo Ishiguro's "Never Let Me Go"

Today I finished Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. The book is a story of recollections from a girl who was raised for the sole purpose of donating her organs as an adult, donations resulting in her death. She and a number of other clones were raised at a unique boarding school that treated the clones similarly to normal children with a liberal arts education.

Their school, Hailsham, was unique because most other clones were treated as commodities, not people. Near the end, the characters weigh whether or not it was good for them to be taught to believe in their humanity or if they should be treated like the commodity they end up being.

One character asks, "Why Hailsham?" Why be taught to create art, to appreciate art, to be more than simply healthy, but also to enjoy life when, in the end, you are not seen or treated as fully human. Why Hailsham if you're going to be ignored and die in the end?

"Why Hailsham?" is a question from everyman and -woman when "Hailsham" is understood to be the home (-ham) from which one hails. Now the question is not only by and for the characters in the book, but also for us. Why life? Why are we raised to seek pleasure and think our lives are significant when we die at the end and donate our organs--and the rest of our bodies--to the cycle of existence?

Side by side with this question about the meaning and enjoyment of life, we are presented with the questions about another's quality life, about the Other's quality of life. What a natural progression: when pondering the meaning of one's own life, you are pondering life in general. If your life has meaning and deserves enjoyment, then the lives of others have meaning and deserve enjoyment.

"Never Let Me Go" left me with conviction. I act as if my life is meaningful, yet my life stands on the shoulders of suffering based on systemic issues about which I cannot change by myself or in a timely fashion.

Yet, today is the first Sunday of Advent, a time for hope, specifically hope for the coming of Christ. The church I attended this morning lit a candle for awareness instead of for hope. How appropriate for Never Let Me Go. In the novel, the main characters become more aware of their status in regards to the rest of the society and the more aware they become of themselves and the world. This awareness raises more questions than anything. The elevation of awareness gives rise to the need for hope--hope for meaning and hope for a better tomorrow.

By "a better tomorrow," I mean a tomorrow in which all life that is meaningful has the opportunity to enjoy life. Hope for fair trade practices, philanthropy, love of neighbor and equality regardless of your race, religion, gender expression, sexuality, nationality, or ethnicity. Hope that those who are hungry will receive bread and that those who have bread will be hungry for justice. Hope that the luxuries of life will not mean the suffering of those less fortunate. Hope that the poor will teach the rich lessons and, in turn, the rich will give the poor opportunities to turn their lives around.

And my hope is built on nothing less than Christ effecting that change. By "Christ" I mean God's transformative power--love. In this season of Advent, it is appropriate that my hope is for Christ's advent. However, my hope isn't a traditional Advent hope. I am not hoping for the second coming of Jesus. Rather, I am hoping for that same Christ we saw in Jesus to be in us. If humanity is to be the body of Christ, then the only hope for advent is that we embody Christ, that we embody the advent of Christ. Our hope is in a holy trinity: God, neighbor, and self.

I hope we will embody that Christ enough to turn the world upside down, like Jesus did before us.

Context: A False God

"Context" is one of the false gods of biblical studies, biblical studies referring not exclusively to what happens in the academy, but also in the church.

Context is especially praised at the level of translation. Just like in English, Greek, Hebrew, Latin, and Aramaic have words with many meanings. How do we determine which meaning to use in a given situation? Omniscient Context tells us.

The Ever-Blessed Context also receives much praise in hermeneutics (of which "translation" could be a subcategory, depending on how you look at it). Preachers and academics alike will tell you certain words, passages, and pericopes are misinterpreted, because they are taken out of Context's loving hands.

Take the Hebrew word dowd. It is translated "beloved" many times in the Song of Songs. Dowd is the same word used in describing how Esther and Mordecai know each other: she is the daughter of Mordecai's dowd, generally understood to be his uncle. How do we know that "dowd" refers to a lover in the Song of Songs and to an uncle in Esther and other places?

Thanks be to Context.

But Context isn't exactly clear here. Love in ancient Israel included a lot of relationships understood as taboo in current, US-American culture. Would it really have been that unheard of for Mordecai to have catamite or some other sort of male lover? Pederasty and homosexuality was not unheard of in ancient times and although Mordecai seems very traditionally Hebrew in this story, we cannot be sure how much he may have acclimated to Persian culture at this point in the exile.

But now I've gone outside of Context's realm. Context in translation is immediate context, not levitical laws, cultural mores, and, of course, the heterosexual bias of the majority of biblical translators and readers. By immediate context alone, we cannot translate the dowd of Esther or the Song of Songs definitively as uncle or lover.

However, Context is wider than just a single book. Although the Christian or Hebrew Bible is not immediate context for Esther--the book was written independently of any canon--it is an Israelite book and therefore has Israelite stories in its background, including levitical laws.

But levitical laws do not change the scandals that go on many places in the Bible. Sometimes God's decrees are neither obeyed nor condemned in the Bible. Famously, Hewbrew midwives in Egypt refused to obey Pharaoh when told to kill all baby boys born to Hebrew women. The midwives simply don't do it, but they concoct a story for Pharaoh. That is, they lie, breaking one of the Ten Commandments God later gives the Hebrew people. What is God's response to these lies? "So God was kind to the midwives" (Exodus 1:20). Mordecai could be a Sodomite and God might not care. Apparently God doesn't always care when you're a liar.

Where will Context lead us next? Or more precisely, where does Context end?

"Il n'y a pas de hors-texte."
--Jacques Derrida

There is nothing outside the text (or: there is no outside to the text). To state it positively: everything is context.

No matter how much we use the name of Context, it is in vain. If I argued well, you now see how Context (at least immediate context) cannot show us if Mordecai's relationship to Ahihail was lover or nephew. Neither do we know if the relationship in the Song of Songs is purely sexual or if it is sexual and familial. But we can still have more to consider in the name of Context, because we, too, are part of the Context.

The Hebrew scriptures did not "close" with the writing of the last book. Neither did it "close" with canonization. Interpretations came afterwards and people still cite how early Rabbis (famously, the Mishnah) and commentators understood those texts. They became part of the text the moment they read it, the moment they entered into it, learning it intimately, becoming dowd, both family and lover--becoming one.

Or, if you don't appreciate my blend of text- and reader-oriented theory, imagine, then, how some get from Context being the Hebrew scriptures to Context including the New Testament. Then how Context begins to include language: Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and English. For that matter, translation context includes many different versions of the texts we know as the individual books of the Bible. Finally, translation necessarily includes the translator as part of the context, because translation is interpretation. Then the subsequent interpreters have their own contexts that begin to swirl around in the amorphous context that influences the interpretations of other interpreters.

You may trust that God has aided translation to be accurate. Even so, you have again entered the context, because your interpretation includes your beliefs, what many hermeneuticians would prefer to call your "pretext." But, "il n'y a pas de hors-texte." It is all context.

You are context. I am context. Our histories, backgrounds, and cultures are context. Context is not omniscient in the sense that it knows all. However, perhaps Context is omniscient in the sense that it knows everything known, since everything is Context. We--everything--are the body of Context. When we die, we enter more completely (in the sense of being finished) into the relationship of the trinity of Context (author, text, and reader).

Perhaps Context isn't that false of a god after all, just not in the traditional understanding of a god.

Things To Do After The Rapture: Top 5 List

Did you hear Jesus might return to earth on Saturday? If he does, then my lack of belief in the calculability of any such date will likely result in my staying on this wonderful blue sphere we call earth. It is most likely way too late for me to change enough to get raptured, so I've compiled a quick list of things I might do if the rapture does occur on Saturday.

5. I'm already planning to visit my parents. While there, I will re-read the Left Behind series to figure out what I'm in for.

4. Re-read Revelation in the KJV. I didn't figure the rapture was going to happen in the first place, which is why I'm reading Left Behind first. This read through, I'll have a different perspective.

3. Get my two overtly religious tattoos covered up, just in case some sort of anti-Christ comes into power.

2. Move to a commune in the wilderness that grows their own, sustainable, organic food, but sneak in my iPod so I can listen to some cool tunes while gathering fire wood.

1. Thank God that the New Jerusalem really did descend to earth. I guess the rapture was God's way of getting rid of the crazies who think they can calculate a God-ordained apocalypse with a little bit of math and a Bible.