Suzanne Vega's Songs of Innocence and of Experience

The younger Vega made a version of "Small Blue Thing" that ambiguously encapsulates an adult with unresolved childhood trauma, a need for basic fundamental holding. Ambiguously, because there's a child in there too: 

This is perhaps someone who is being loved for real, who allows themselves to be small, to be held in someone's "pocket," to be parented by their partner. That's how I saw it when I was eighteen. 

 The older Vega made a version of "Small Blue Thing" that less ambiguously gets to the child version of something like that feeling:

This is perhaps someone who doesn't have enough of a loving parent. Who is exposed to something. Who feels funny even when they're in that parent's pocket, so to speak. 

Gosh I love this song so much. It is one of my go-to PTSD grief release songs of all time. 

Which one is more disturbing? 

Is that the wrong question? 

Isn't it interesting that sometimes a caring genius grown up can find the child aspect of a thing better than a younger person reaching for the "grownup" sound? They feel safer so they can find the vulnerability with more confidence? 

And isn't it amazing a younger adult can find what is terrible or hypocritical--or in this case, broken and unresolved—about the older adult stance? 

Isn't it? 

And isn't it interesting how 18-year-old Tim who heard young adult Vega's version totally loved it and had a pretty accurate intuition that it could be about a grown-up with unresolved childhood trauma? 

And isn't it interesting how now-Tim who hears that and the older Vega's version can't decide which one is better? Loves them both? Sometimes loves one better, sometimes equally? And neither "both" nor "either" kinds of loving are better kinds of loving, because loving is loving and tuning to that love beam is the only thing that makes sense the older you get? 

What are Blake's songs? Who are they for? 

One thing about the older Vega version: there is more silence in it. The younger version's narrator is straightforwardly ambiguous, split between grown up and child feelings. 

The older version's narrator is however ambiguously straightforward. They allow for a lot of silence around the singing line. Like a child who doesn't need to fill in the space. Who doesn't know they are signaling how much danger they are in, to a caring grown-up, in that very quietness. 

From the very first two lines of "Luka," you know something is terribly wrong. It's the very straightforwardness with which they go, "My name is Luka. I live on the second floor." To someone they may have seen on the stairs but have never spoken to. To a stranger they need to talk to because...

I actually can't listen to that one, not because I don't like it but because, see remark about PTSD. Because it's so on the money. 

Then there's the fact that planet Earth is a small blue turning thing and condensation and evaporation and scattering like light...how babies think they're the universe. 

Like I say, this is a genius song.