When I was about 12, my family subscribed to a CD catalog, and I got to choose three CDs for our first shipment. Any three I wanted! My first three CDs were, inexplicably, the following: Aquarium by Aqua, The Globe Sessions by Sheryl Crow, and Surfacing by Sarah McLachlan.
These CDs were my treasures. I played them over and over again on the boombox in my room, sitting on the floor, just listening. For some reason, I never got much into McLachlan’s earlier or later albums, but Surfacing hit me at just the right time. I remember thinking “Angel” was too cheesy, and worrying about whether “Adia” was kind of gay, if Sarah McLachlan was kind of gay, if it was gay to like her, or if people would think it was gay to like her (verdict: maybe!). But I loved that album. I recently thought of Surfacing and gave it a listen, to find that I still love it. I remembered every line, every note. And 20-odd years makes a difference – there are parts of this album that hit me harder at 33 than they did at 12. Below, I’ve matched up each song on Surfacing with tarot cards. Give it a listen. It holds up.
Building a Mystery: The High Priestess, Knight of Cups
This one seems obvious on its face. The singer’s lover, “a beautiful fucked-up man,” is deeply mysterious, and the High Priestess is all about mystery. But there’s something try-hard about this person, meticulously building a mystery. The song is a veritable laundry list of spooky stuff: vampires, secret gods, ghosts, razor wire shrines (a shrine made out of razor wire?? a shrine TO razor wire??). It’s almost too much. There’s a possibility that the subject of the song is the Knight of Cups, in love with the dark romance of the self-image he’s created. He’s not as deep as he thinks he is.
I Love You: Two of Cups crossed by Eight of Swords
The title of the song is what the singer fails to say every single time she sees this person. The potential partnership of the Two of Cups is blocked by her inability to communicate, represented by the Eight of Swords. She’s trapped in her own mind, unsure of how to share her feelings. So she remains stuck, caught between too many words and not enough.
Sweet Surrender: The Hanged Man
I revisited Surfacing because of “Sweet Surrender.” In my Halloween blog post on the Hellraiser franchise, I wanted to feature a song about submission, and what better song than “Sweet Surrender?” This song is the Hanged Man all over. The singer has crossed the line of no return, submitting to some other person or power, and finding it “sweet.” There’s a kind of grace in it. I chose another song for that particular post, but “Sweet Surrender” and Surfacing wouldn’t let me go. Fine. I surrender!
Adia: Three of Swords, Six of Cups
There is some Three of Swords heartbreak between the singer and Adia. The singer has “failed” Adia in some way, while Adia is withdrawing and isolating herself: “I leave you with your misery/a friend who won’t betray.” The way back to wholeness for both of them is to recognize the innocence within themselves and each other. This is learning to forgive oneself, forgive a loved one, as one would forgive a child who made a mistake. “It’s easy, we all falter.”
Do What You Have to Do: Eight of Cups
Ah, my old friend the Eight of Cups. In this case, the singer is stuck at that turning point. The Eight of Cups requires the seeker to turn their back on everything they’ve built, but sometimes those Cups still pull at your heart. The singer knows that this relationship is unsustainable, gone rotten: “I’m shaken by the violence of existing for only you.” And yet, “I don’t know how to let you go.” The singer is in the moment of realization about what she has to do, but she doesn’t know how to do it. She’s trying to pull free from “the yearning to be near you,” but she she hasn’t quite reached escape velocity.
Witness: Judgement
This is the moment of Judgement, taking stock of a life lived, ready to transition into a new state. But the singer wonders what the next life will be: “Will we burn in heaven/like we do down here?” She’s apprehensive of this rebirth, but she’s ready for it.
Angel: Four of Swords
The singer has been through some Three of Swords tumult: “everywhere you turn/there’s vultures and thieves at your back.” She needs to find some solace from the demons that plague her inside and out. “You’re in the arms of the angel/may you find some comfort here.” The “angel” takes the singer away from the pain and turmoil. She retreats to a Four of Swords moment of rest, where she can heal before returning to the world. I still think it’s kind of cheesy, but maybe that’s because we sang it in my high school choir. As teens, we could not take a song about angels seriously.
Black & White: Temperance reversed
The singer is deeply unbalanced. Temperance asks us to find equilibrium, sometimes between seemingly “opposite” poles. But the singer has lost her sense of harmony and sense of self, pulled apart by the expectations of others, “everyone is waiting for your entrance/so don’t disappoint them.” Burdened by these demands, she feels unable to reconcile the disparate parts of her life and her self.
Full of Grace: The Tower, The Star
This is one of my favorite songs on the album. The verses describe a period of despair: “I’m pulled down by the undertow/I never thought I could feel so low.” Something’s been wrong for a while now, prolonged by the singer’s unwillingness to admit it: “It’s just that we stayed too long/in the same old sickly skin.” But just as the singer accepts the painful truth, the chorus sweeps her into a new feeling of hope, a sense of beauty as she emerges from the wreckage: “If all of the strength and all of the courage/come and lift me from this place/I know I can love you much better than this.” She allows herself to acknowledge how bad things have gotten, and in the next moment she feels the light of a distant star on her face, calling her onward.
Last Dance: Six of Cups
A delicate tune for piano, bass, and saw, there’s something precious, almost fragile about the song. This is a moment that must be approached with gentleness or it will surely shatter. The Last Dance evokes all the dances that came before and all the dances that will never come hereafter. The present moment is already crystallizing into a bittersweet memory, and the stomach twists as the last chord fades out. You can almost feel the slow brush of bodies pulling apart for the last time.
Thanks, 1997.