Song Meanings: The Black Crowes "She Talks to Angels"

The remedial interpretation of this song is simply that it is about an addict. Right from the first line, "she never mentions the word 'addiction'." Oh, she's an addict! Let's just force that perception throughout the song. Except there are millions of addicts, but very few are "song-worthy." Why her? What makes her special? Let's instead dig to the next level.

"She never mentions the word 'addiction' in certain company; she'll tell you she's an orphan after you meet her family."

Two ways to take these lines. First, she's a functional addict (who knows better than to raise suspicions by talking about addiction) but she'll tell others anything she can to get the fix. Second, she has a complex backstory that she does not share with people until she trusts them. Consider instead that an addiction killed her family, and the people who raised her are not her birth parents.

"She paints her eyes as black as night now, pulls those shades down tight. She gives a smile when the pain comes, the pain gonna make everything all right."

The remedial interpretation here is 'Aha, closed shades, smiles to pain - must be her addiction to heroin!' Sure, or she could also be a cutter. Instead of satisfying an addiction, she may be truly suffering from depression. Getting away from people gives her some level of comfort. The outsider looking in views it as fetishizing her own sadness. Whatever coping method(s) she uses for her pain, it could be more than one. Addiction or depression. People never show everything on the surface, and I doubt these lyrics do either.

"She keeps a lock of hair in her pocket. She wears a cross around her neck. Yes, the hair is from a little boy and the cross from someone she has not met, not yet."

A God-given cross? Perhaps. The lock of hair in her pocket is from a little boy. Her child? Maybe. Her deceased brother? Also possible. We can fictionalize a tragic backstory where her mom's OD killed her brother, and CPS gave her to an adoptive family, so she truly was an orphan. Or, it harkens back to the first interpretation that she is an addict with false narratives that she uses to appeal to others who do not know her.

"She don't know no lover. None that I've ever seen. And to her that ain't nothing, but to me, it means, means everything."

This line is the one I love most! Not the first part, the second. "To me, it means everything." She doesn't know she is loved. Yet, if she did, I would not care as much about her as I do! Her depression or addiction suckers me in. I am in love with her, even when I don't know her real story. Suddenly, there is a method to her madness. Could she just be a bored girl trying to find love through various lies of grandeur? If so, then (at least in my case) it worked!

"Says she talks to angels, says they all know her name. She talks to angels, says they call her out by her name."

The chorus can underline a certain distrust of her story. She says she talks to angels and that they call her by her name, but she is the only witness attesting to such discussions.

An addict.
An orphan.
A victim.
A liar.

The truth? We'll never know.

Mall Santa Dream

I had a very bizarre dream last night! It was highly incongruent, as most dreams are, and I probably forgot many details before I even woke up, as usual. But there was one moment, a moment so ridiculous, that I think I woke myself up laughing aloud – and I immediately composed a text to capture the quote. I drafted it as a reply to my most recent text, which happened to be a co-worker. Thankfully I did not hit send, because (as you’ll see) that would be hard to explain.

My dream took place at a two-story mall, where I was restricted from access to a certain corridor because the mall security guard insisted that Santa was coming, so we could not go down that corridor. At this point, I remember heading in the opposite direction of the Santa primarily because the mall security guard just had an unlikable presence. Literally, a repelling quality. Therefore, I was happy to change direction into the opposite path of him.

I am not sure how much time elapsed, either in real time or in meta-time inside dreamtime, a la Inception (“just because a concept is unnecessarily complex does not make it cool”), but as I was heading out of the mall, we were all stopped. The security guard yelled to the crowd that no one was permitted to enter or exit the mall for three minutes, because Santa was arriving. I remember shrugging in apathy. In comes the mall Santa.

Not the Mall Santa in this dream

What you are probably visualizing for “Mall Santa” is what I was expecting, too. What appeared instead was anything but the visual I had expected.

It was a robot on wheels, like a competitor on Robot Wars. Its head was that of a dog (like a Shih Tzu) but its head was distinctly left of center of the robotic block on which is set. It was either poorly assembled or intentionally placed in a decentralized spots for an inconceivable logic. The head itself was animatronic. Overall, it looked very hokey by today’s standards, but it probably would have been very impressive 10 years ago. Except the animatronic head. That movement was outdated by 30 years, like a reject from Showbiz Pizza.

Its deep voice carried a lot of reverence though. And Santa (apparently Santa was its name, and completely unrelated to St. Nick) addressed the crowd assembled for the exit, not his appearance. “Let us be blessed,” Santa began. “WHO!” The crowd responded in unison, “Who?” I remember thinking at the time how appropriate it was that we got to ask "who" since I literally had no idea who this was or what was going on, so I joined in the response.

My parents took me to Showbiz Pizza for my 8th birthday

Next, Santa said, “MOO!”  I responded, “Moo.” No one else in the crowd joined in that time though. I was not sure why. After a moment of dead silence, Santa looked directly at me and said, “God bless you, my cow.”

Everyone remained silent, seemingly bewildered between what had just happened and what could happen next.  Casually, Santa backed up and pivoted to move in the opposite direction of the assembly of onlookers and mall patrons, presumably none of us knew this Santa either, and then the crowd began filing out of the mall.