[nicole21290]

Originally Posted by michelej1

I think people reveal the truth in their lies. So, the things they choose to lie about are actually very instructive and important. However, no two people are going to agree on what is the lie and what the truth is.

Amen to that. What they choose to:
- talk about when not asked or prompted (and it doesn't 'fit')
- lie about, especially over a long period of time
- omit from accounts
- discuss in the exact same terms consistently with NO change
interests me a lot. And yeah, we unfortunately often have no objective way of knowing which is the lie and which is the truth.

Originally Posted by michelej1

But I see them as inextricable. I think people revert to their past behaviors often. You can go awhile without it happening, but like a rubber band, the past only lets you go so far before it snaps you right back and old hurts, old attitudes and old anger start cropping up again. I think this last tour went extremely well for the most part, but I wouldn't be surprised if their relationship takes two steps back now.

Oh, no, absolutely, I agree. They are. The past impacts the present and the future, and the past colours the way things are and will be no matter how many times they might claim the 'baggage' has gone. They're always able to build and discover more baggage, apparently. I wouldn't be surprised if they *SAY* they relationship has taken two steps back now but I don't think it actually will. Having a few arguments isn't taking steps back, I don't think. Every couple has arguments and even heavy fights. I have hopes that they won't persist in their predictable pattern of 'happy to tour-end tour-we fought-we had a talk-reconciliation-happy to tour', etc, based on a change in approach I thought occurred from after Unleashed but you never know. Even if they don't create new drama to cause trouble between them, the media can be relied upon to create it itself by dragging up OLD, OLD stories yet again.

Originally Posted by michelej1

As for songs, I think those like Sara and Tusk are about several things and people. Don gets a verse. Mick. Jess. OJ. I think there are many songs that are amorphous like that. But I also think there are songs that are about two people. I consider, Show You How, for instance, as one of those. I think it's about Stevie, but I think it's about Kristen too. I think Stevie is the shadow singer, for sure, but I don't think of her as also the one who shows him what it's all about when the lights go out. I see him as thanking Kristen for showing him that there's a life beyond the stage curtain. So, I see the song as being both about an addiction to Stevie, deep, lingering in places where no one ever goes. But I think it's also about realizing a world after that and being pulled out of the abyss, away from the spectre.

Yes, there are definitely songs that are an amalgamation. Lindsey's said as much that some of Stevie's that he thought were about him were like that. I don't think it's necessarily as clear-cut as 'one verse for you, one verse for YOU'. She said that about Say You Will and I don't buy her entire explanation - the narrative of the song doesn't really support that even if she WAS thinking in general terms or about several people throughout.

Ah, Show You How is interesting. I USED to think that. However, I actually lean more towards a view I now have about Cast Away Dreams - WHY force it to be about two women when it can easily be about one if you don't insist on taking his explanations as the gospel truth? I mean, the shadow singer reference (and lingering again, bless) is fairly clear and I can see why the 'show you how' could easily be read as being about Kristen. However, we then come to an exact repetition within It Takes Time (and a near repetition in In Our Own Time) which we KNOW is about Stevie.

Slow down, baby
Cross that line
If you want to save me
It takes time

She says slow down baby,
Slow down now

We crossed the line
From the fire we will rise again
In our own time

We have a small issue here, however. In Show You How, the woman is telling the man to 'slow down, baby'. So is it fair to say the same is true in It Takes Time? That the woman is telling the man to cross that line if he wants to be saved then? Or maybe it's all coincidence and not deliberate. In Show You How, we also have him waking from a dream to find his other half. In Cast Away Dreams, we have dancing on those dreams. And yet we have like THREE references to waking up from a dream, to her being in them, on SWS and yet another on the EP. I don't know how well those wishes that died stayed buried, lol.

Originally Posted by michelej1

The saving idea is a martyr's fantasy. I mean, I'd like to know how often he was really like the protagonist in Under the Skin. Probably, not as frequently as he'd like to think. Or someone's got to sacrifice if the thing is going to turn out right. It's a theme repeated, but how often are sacrifices really made?

Ha, yep. Lindsey likes to hang himself up on that damn cross, and Stevie likes to romanticise romance. Yeah, judging from quite a number of comments he's made about realising he could've helped more, made better choices, etc, not as much as he'd like. But I adore the sentiment in UTS so very much and he does come back to it on SWS as well. It's hard for us to really know how much sacrifice gets made, how much care and protecting is taken. We only see a very small portion of their life/lives and it's filtered and selected.

Originally Posted by michelej1

But yes, I think they both put themselves in the role of savior more often than they deserve to be. As for Lindsey wanting to be saved, sure. In fact, I see lines like "I fall down I get up" or "we fall down, we get up" as a wish for resiliency in relationships that was too often lacking. Let's push through this breach. Let's take a drink from the loving cup and mend the friction. I think it's another way of saying "save us."

Yeah, perhaps that's true and certainly I agree on the idea of resilience - he persists. The 'falling' idea is a pretty consistently re-occurring one and not just in terms of 'falling in love', yes. I always found the turning to each other for the 'not all the prayers in the world can save us' during the Unleashed tour very effective, too, as are the extension of the 'saving' lyrics in GDW.

I wake up / But only to fall
I did a good job of falling, so good I can't win / Every time I try to let it go, it keeps comin' back again
When the road gets rough / I fall down / I get up
Agony's torn at my heart too long / So afraid / Slip and I fall and I die
We fall down, we get hurt, / We get up, and take a drink from the loving cup
Do you still tremble when I fall?
Now fall down onto your knees / show us all what you can do
We fall to earth together / The crowd’s calling out for more
I fall down, I get up and I've always had to fight / Everything that was wrong for the things that were right
What makes you think I'm the one / Who will catch you when you're fallin'?
I can jump right off and fall right into the ocean / I can come right out mean just what I say
Now she's laughing / Now she's falling

Two children too blind to see / I would fall in your shadow...I believe
When they fall / And they can't stand up in the darkness
Find yourself somebody new / To catch you when you fall*
But the ground is further than I thought / I'm afraid of falling, this is a strange feeling
All the looks that you've used on me / Don't work now that you've fallen, fallen, fallen
But you can't keep her / And you can't catch her fall
Too uncertain to fall together / To remain, to be true
Sometimes to turn away from you / And not even fall
I am older now / But I still remember / I took the greatest fall
Sometimes I feel like I was always on-call / Sometimes even I am allowed to fall
Lie down and you fall face-down / And you wonder why you must go on
You fall to your knees / You embrace the storm

Originally Posted by michelej1

As you said, it's sometimes someone else speaking or two people speaking and it's not clear which one is talking, from line to line.

So, I don't really see Gone Too Far as a "save" song. But "Someone's got to set you free" or "Deep Down There is Freedom" or "I'll come back to get you," yes, I see those as all saying, at the end of this, I'll rescue you.

Very cheeky habit of theirs! And sometimes the markers which make it clear and delineate who is talking when are hidden by the time the song makes it from it's demo form ala Sara.

Said "Sara, you're the poet in my heart"
Never change... never stop

He cried Sara... you're the poet in my heart
Never change... never stop

They'll sometimes not just quote someone else, or change POVs or write out a conversation without any of the verbal markers, lol.

Originally Posted by michelej1

I always imagine the conversation, "Well, I'm going home on the bus. You have the car, so you take Ginny," as being more of the planning as a team that they should have been doing and if they had, one of them wouldn't have always have been blowing up, slamming the door and running out. That kind of 'you do this and I'll do that and we'll acommplish X' is something that they don't seem to have worked out very well in all these decades. Instead, they call their managers and write songs about it. The musical love hampers and strangled the other, because it became the default mode of communication.

And I think there would have still been that blowing up, unfortunately, because they didn't address some of the underlying issues they had. However, before Fleetwood Mac I think they were more 'normal' in terms of conversation and interaction and so on. Yes, the songs were even then used to express what they probably couldn't and didn't say out loud to the other person but they weren't 100% dysfunction. Everytime they're promoting a new tour they discuss this 'we've talked' thing - they're always having a talk or the talk or finally addressing things.

Originally Posted by michelej1

I think they've shared a great amount. I just don't think they have much in common.

To me, even in Stevie's re-creation of her Rhiannon conversation with Lindsey "isn't that a pretty name? Yes Stevie, it is a pretty name," that Lindsey is thinking to himself, "what in the devil?" I mean, that's not even the real Lindsey. It's Stevie's impersonation of Lindsey and I don't think even the impersonation is that interested in her whimsy.

Yes to the first point and I'm still unsure on the second. I mean, how much does one NEED to have in common? I certainly don't think it's a case of 'opposites attract' for them. They're not opposites. I also think they sometimes play up the differences, in truth. Lindsey likes to bang on about how they like different musical styles and grew apart in that arena. So, Lindsey, did you like Stevie's cover of Crash Into Me or only when you saw Dave Matthews perform it live? Yes, they have different views, different tastes, different attitudes but I don't see that as some insurmountable issue in any way. Besides, it can be fun trying to convince the other person to like what you like. Keep verbally swapping Katy Perry song lyrics onstage, guys.

Originally Posted by michelej1

On the other hand, when they did Soldier's Angel together, I kind of fantasize that they had discussions about politics and probably agreed. So, I think they can relate on some level about things outside of music. I just don't think they can share as much as she did with Dave Stewart. And even though she was with Dave to record an album, the daily dinners she described, the dressing up, the parties, even the theatrical way they posed in all of those pictures together (pictures I did not want Dave in) revealed two people who mesh psychologically. I don't think she has that with Lindsey, although she does with Mick. Of course, she and Dave can't create what she and Lindsey did, in my book, but I think they could have a marriage.

It ends up coming down to the idea of change and meeting in the middle and compromise - are you willing to do that? At what point? What sacrifices might you have to make? Are you trying to change? How important is it to you? These differences may be fundamental to personality (introvert versus extrovert, perfectionist studio rat versus positive atmosphere please, etc) but, while that causes arguments, it also works in their favour as well, I think. Stevie talked about, in terms of her and Dave writing together, Lennon and McCartney, that one person has strengths where the other is weak and vice versa and that strengthens the end product. And that's all true (though it's not true that they wrote like Lennon McCartney, and she recycled her spiel about never having written like this before from like 1983 and experiences with Sandy Stewart, IIRC). I think it also applies to SnL, even if unacknowledged some of the time.

The relationships are just different. And Stevie, as she says, won't get closer to marriage than what she had with Lindsey. The fact that they're how they are as of this year after all this time is sufficient for me to think their bond (whatever it is) is pretty unbreakable now.

Originally Posted by michelej1

And when Lindsey had Stevie over to his house and showed her his family, I think he wanted to kind of give her the fun she had talked about having with Dave, but it's not going to be the same, precisely because I do think she looks at Lindsey's children as hers, potentially and with the pleasure of being around them that she takes in all kids, especially girls, comes a little pain when his daughters are involved.

I was at the concert when she announced Stella's birth after their break. And she was about to say "we" had a baby, but she changed it and I thought it was adorable -- and a little heart-tugging.

Hmm, perhaps. He certainly knew without her talking what that experience was like for her seeing as he talked a few times about spending quite a lot of time with her while she made that album. He also contrasted it to the more negative experiences she'd had prior to that. I would imagine he can't provide that same atmosphere but he can provide something she wants and needs. She actually used to talk more about the kids - their sports, personalities (Will quiet, though? Obviously she HASN'T seen his online presence...), etc - but that got shut down a little at some point. But yes, she does have an 'odd' sense of ownership of them which I find bittersweet. And kind of hilarious - yep, Stevie hold onto your other half's hand and chat about his lovely wife and how you get his kids too. He doesn't even blink, lol.

Oh, sweet. That would've been an amazing concert to go to. I think I almost ruined my eardrums trying to hear exactly what SnL were saying during the 'guitars not working - let's do push ups instead' kerfuffle. But yes, I found that dedication to Stella ENTIRELY adorable. She wasn't ABOUT to say 'we'; she actually did say it before amending it to 'they', lol. She was proper happy and they were pretty affectionate, though, which was nice to see (gotta love her being the one to swap roles and kiss HIS hand after Landslide for a change).