black flame

To me, the character in this song is a writer, who, upon writing a poem becomes part of the story. The poem is called The Black Flame, and it is a metaphor for the relationship the poem refers to. It concerns a relationship that ends in disillusion and abandonment; the black flame also represents the darkness of unrequiited love. In her effort to be free, she tries to refocus from her obsession but the knowledge of the poem (or the love as it once was) is burned into her heart indelibly. She realizes, in the end she must release the poem and the feelings if she hopes to be free.

This is an explanation of the song "Black Flame" directly from the lyricist herself. This is an excerpt from an interview With Betty Thatcher and Annie Haslam from a broadcast on WYSP Radio on 27 June 1993. The response was transcribed verbatim and I've edited it a bit, but only to remove unnecessary text not pertaining to the answer. The transcription of the entire interview is at nlightsweb.com/lib/reviews/… but this is the relevant part pertaining to this song. Interviewer: "How about the 'Black Flame'?" Betty Thatcher: "OK, I know exactly why I wrote that. It was about the Vietnam War. I was talking to somebody at a party and they said that, that they thought, 'Killing was so bad. It was terrible.' And I said, 'Yes, of course.' And they said, 'So we should take the Americans and line them up against the wall and shoot them.' And I said, 'Well can't you hear what you are saying?' That's killing them, you're being crazy.' And, I went home from the party and thought 'Yeah, but everything's like that. It's crazy.' We're all the same. I mean, badness in people is in us; people don't think we're not bad, but we are. We're all capable of doing things if we think it's right. And it might be wrong." For any Renaissance fans out there that don't already know, Betty Thatcher passed away on 15 August 2011 after a long battle with cancer. She wrote almost all of the lyrics for the group, especially during their most popular and productive period in the 1970s.

It could be about a person's relationship with their own brain, their thought processes, its creative and destructive drive. People don't have all that much control over what goes on inside their heads. These are excellent lyrics.