song interpretation: bound for glory

As I've blogged before, I'll sometimes listen to a song for years before having a sudden insight into its meaning (which, in my favorite music, is usually complex and bears much contemplation). Today such an insight struck me while I listened to the Indigo Girls revised cover of This Train. Rather heavily revised, from what I've seen of the original; it could count as a whole new song. I've loved this track since I first heard it, for its evocative imagery, fierce instrumentation, and Amy Ray's voice like a smoky wildfire (one of my three favorite vocalists).

One part of the lyrics that always stuck out to me was on a railroad car/one hundred people/ Gypsies, queers and David-stars. But it wasn't until this morning that I made this connection: those three groups - Gypsies, homosexuals, and (of course) Jews - were all targets of the Holocaust. And were transported en masse by train.

Intended or not, this is certainly an impactful connection. Listening to the song again on the way to school, other lines jumped out at me: we are climbing / out of these boxcars / out of these chambers / out of the bed where we lay, ten strangers...

And then, measure the bones / count the face / pull out the teeth / do you belong to the human race?
(Do I belong to the human race? Am I as worthy of life, of dignity, of freedom, as any other human being?)

(Or of the means to do what it is my very purpose to do?)

here is a dancer who has no legs
here is a healer who has no hands
here is a teacher who has no face
here is a runner who has no feet
here is a thinker who has no head
here is a builder who has no back
here is a writer who has no voice

Words which were already powerfully evocative gained new dimensions of meaning, up to and including the very end, which was a capella and veritably spat out as if in anger:

These are the questions
stacked like wood
these are the answers

Here is potential, and it's gone for good.