(Image from Flickr CC User Gioia de Antoniis)
The cliche about the Velvet Underground is that almost no one bought their album, The Velvet Underground and Nico, but everyone who did started a band. They were just that amazing and groundbreaking and cool that anyone who heard them, coming out of the New York artsy underground right as the culture began to dramatically shift in the the late 60s wanted to do their combination of sex and noise and fashionable scuzz. But while they were undeniably dirty in a way that Jim Morrison could only hope to imitate, they were also tender in surprising ways.
Love songs for the desperate
The “Nico” on the album was the German model and Warhol Girl, who was a singer and song-writer on her own. Her voice was memorable and sparse and heavily Germanic, like a strung-out Valkyrie. Nowhere was this more apparent than on “I’ll be Your Mirror”, which had a strange pop rhythm laid out underneath her austere vocals, both of which hid a deeply passionate love song that shines a light on why relationships can matter.
(Note: if you don’t totally cotton to Nico’s unusual voice, here is a beautiful cover.)
I’ll be your mirror
Reflect what you are, in case you don’t know
I’ll be the wind, the rain and the sunset
The light on your door to show that you’re home
It’s true that we’re all protagonists in our own movies. We go through our lives really only having our frame of reference, seeing things from our eyes, no matter how empathetic we are. But for all that, it is a trick to really see ourselves. It is difficult. We set up a barrier of cognitive dissonance, sometimes to hide us from our flaws, but other times to keep our goodness away from us. Sometimes, we need other people to really understand ourselves from the outside.
When you think the night has seen your mind
That inside you’re twisted and unkind
Let me stand to show that you are blind
Please put down your hands ’cause I see you
We’re all afraid that people will see our inner thoughts. After all, they are full of desire, unchecked emotions, strange lusts, and inexplicable thoughts that go with the banalities and beauties that make up the palimpsest of our brains. I think most people find their thoughts to be particularly bleak, because we can’t see anyone else’s. But when there is someone who actually knows you, who can see you, you can find out that it isn’t night infecting your mind- it is just being human. We blind ourselves to who we really are, and need someone else to remove those blinders. That’s the heart of being in a relationship- being with someone who knows you, and loves you because they do, not in spite of it.
I find it hard to believe you don’t know
The beauty you are
But if you don’t let me be your eyes
A hand to your darkness, so you won’t be afraid
This to me is the heart of the song. The first couplet repeats the theme from above, but then gives the listener a bit of an out. Sometimes we don’t want, or need, the mirror held up to us. Sometimes we just want someone to hold our hand. That’s what we get from our relationships, and that’s what the love songs teach us. Sometimes we need the lacerating truth. Sometimes we want the scales to stay up. But in that darkness, there can be a hand reaching out for you. You know that someone is there. And you can be that hand in turn, groping toward the beautiful uncertainty of the future.
When you think the night has seen your mind
That inside you’re twisted and unkind
Let me stand to show that you are blind
Please put down your hands ’cause I see you
I’ll be your mirror
I’ll be your mirror
I’ll be your mirror
And then it fades out, repeating, with the insistence of love, the final words. The mirror, the actual mirror, can lie. We see what we want, for good and for ill. But someone who loves you, who knows you, is a mirror you can count on. What you see isn’t always pretty. But it is you, and if someone loves you because of that, then you are the fairest there is. You can reach into that darkness knowing that your reflection won’t fully fade.