Wednesday

One of the three best songs, in my opinion on Scarlet's Walk (Wednesday, Carbon, Gold Dust) It's just about American life. That Americans like to beat around the bush. I'm guessing. There's probably a lot more to it.

Tori is very complex and will stick in symbols that are super interpretable. It's hard sometimes to get everything she's trying to say, and I think this song is one of her most complex. The symbol of the "Eagle" represents America and American life, the "Thumbelina size 10" is probably referring to the range of the American people (size, mainly, but others too), and maybe the line "Persian we call Cajun on a Wednesday" refers to the American way of changing our thoughts & prejudices according to those around us.

I look at this song on a much less national level: I just think it's about this woman (maybe in her 40s or 50s) working hard in a small town, and she's become tired of her husband (who is the "you" in the song that's not a "Templar man").

The whole bit about the phantom is the woman knowing something's not right with the marriage, that she doesn't want to be in it anymore.

"Seems as if we're circling for very different reasons But one day the Eagle has to land"

I think this part reflects how even though they're both in the same marriage, they're looking at it and experience it differently. He's perfectly content with it; she's not. Or something like that.

I could be way off; either way, I love this song. :)

The beginning of the seventh verse is wrong it should be: "you tell me to cheer up you suspect we're oddly even, even still the Eagle has to land" not "Seems as if we're circling for very different reasons but one day the Eagle has to land". In an interview Tori Amos says that the songs about a woman in a marriage who finds out that her husbands been keeping secrets, and she thinks that he's having an affair but she isn't sure if she's just imagining it, this fits in with the lines: "No one's at the door You suggest a ghost perhaps a phantom I agree with this in part Something is with us I can't put my finger on -- is Thumbalina size 10 on a Wednesday --" and also the line "just a hang up call". The line "you suspect we're oddly even" shows that he's also suspicious of her. Here's a good link to find out more: http://www.yessaid.com/frames.html

just my simple interpretation, I looked up a few of the references...

synopsis:

basically two would be lovers, but it ain't happenin'. she's leaning into it, though with reservations because her partner is so reserved (he?) is tepid, more so than she is.

She tries to point out he probably has more passion and direction than he is letting on to ('though you say you are not a Templar man'; The Templar Knights of the middle ages were Christian military knights - if you were one of them then you were basically fighting for your religion - so you must have some passion about it. But he seems to feign not to be into it maybe because he doesn't want to expose himself, be vulnerable? who knows...).

She lets on she is leaning into the potential of the relationship by the mentioning the eagle one day has to land - an eagle obviously starves if it circles forever without landing or going after its quarry...

then the humming "When the Dove's Cry" a song by Prince about lovers who are hot for one another for sure but argue and have trouble (thus crying dove).

The Thumbalina part I cant quite get - but it is a reference to a fairytale of a miniature girl who is flooded with wedding proposals from many small animals until she finds a flower prince just her size and she accepts...anyways, maybe someone could better make sense of that part.

I will try to explain the song in the way i think which (by the way) might all be wrong:

• The song starts with a lazy woman may be a housewife on a Wednesday...she has inner feeling of fear though that she said that she was ok and nothing to fear of...
• "the Persian we call Cajun" means her Persian cat whose name is Cajun. and if he sleeps so well so nothing to fear of...all the thoughts about what she was going to do must be all crap
• the fact that sh she may be about to go out and she was going out to run some errands and there is some thing deep within which was telling her that she might see something to prove all her doubts that day,,,,
• she knew that he husband was betraying her with a mistress thought she didn't want to believe herself ( she see all the evidences... hang up phone calls... mysterious knocks on the door.. her husband daily tours out) she trying to convince herself that if he was betraying her she would certainly knew this and she cant believe the fact that a mistress might be another old woman... not a usual Thumbalina girl but a size 10 mistress..
• i Think she went out and decided to follow him and then she saw him with her and she couldnt cry and ( plucked up) her courage and kept silent cos she can't imagine knocking down the house of marriage which she was trying to build for many years.. and she said( After all the eagle has to land) and he would return again to her
• but it seems that both of them kept secrets from others , he with his mistress and love affair and she with her( unpleasant sex without orgasm) she always had ( i guess that what she meant by PRINCE song When the Doves Cry cos the woman there wasn't satisfied and may be that was her own secret !!!)

Tori always makes references to Neil Gaiman and his work on her albums. They are close friends and their shared interests in mythology and cultures obviously dovetail. A little trivia many people are never taught: Although we think of ourselves as primarily Judeo-Christian, our daily lives are imbued with pagan artifacts, including many of our holidays and our timekeeping. January, for example, is named for Janus, the two-faced god who simultaneously looks into the past and the future. What does this have to do with anything?

Sunday = "sun day," the day dedicated to the Sun Monday = "moon day" Tuesday = "Tiw's day," dedicated to the Norse god of war Thursday = "Thor's day," and you know who Thor is Friday = "Frigg's day," Frigg being the Norse goddess and wife of popular and powerul gos Odin Saturday = "Saturn day," dedicated to the god Saturn, who is also the planet Saturn

So what's Wednesday? It's "Woden's day," and Woden is actually another pronunciation for Odin, one of the most revered Norse gods.

Tori's Wednesday relates directly and tangentially to Neil Gaiman's character Mr. Wednesday, who is an antagonist in Gaiman's novel American Gods. (The novel is now a hit TV show as of 2017, and Wednesday is the primary god character.)

The old gods (pagan/pre-Christian gods from Europe, Africa et al) in American Gods have arrived in the US and are engaged in a war of relevance with new American gods, such as Media, Technology, etc. The old gods, invluding Wednesday, Anansi, a leprechaun, have mischievous personalities--and this plus their supernatural aspects are represented in Tori's song, Wednesday. When she sings at the end of the song, "can't someone help me; I think that I'm lost here, lost in a place called America," it's a definite nod to the book, in which the old gods, including history, tradition, mystical knowledge, etc., are being lost to our consumerist/materialist/disposable culture. And of course that is only one more layer that inform's Tori's incredible Scarlet tapestry, an album that is at once told from the perspectives of Tori herself, a character called Scarlet, American Indian nations, American history and the spirit of the land as a sentient being--all distinct and at once connected.

"If there is a horizontal line that runs from the map of your body straight through the land, shooting up right through my heat, will this horizontal line when asked know how to find where you end, where I begin?" <---It's about that.