Scilla

Tiny Tuesday: Texture

"You consider me the young apprentice
Caught between the Scylla and Charybdis
Hypnotized by you if I should linger
Staring at the ring around your finger

I have only come here seeking knowledge
Things they would not teach me of in college
I can see the destiny you sold
Turned into a shining band of gold

I'll be wrapped around your finger
I'll be wrapped around your finger

Mephistopheles is not your name
I know what you're up to just the same
I will listen hard to your tuition
And you will see it come to its fruition

I'll be wrapped around your finger
I'll be wrapped around your finger

Devil and the deep blue sea behind me
Vanish in the air, you'll never find me
I will turn your face to alabaster
Then you'll find your servant is your master

You'll be wrapped around my finger
You'll be wrapped around my finger
You'll be wrapped around my finger"

The Police ~ Wrapped around your finger

It never fails to amaze me, what detail there is in the texture of even a tiny flower like this Scilla, when you look closely enough. Texture is something we often feel but take for granted.  Texture as something that we look at is rather different. It is one of those things that often we don't see unless we stop to look closely enough.   

Which brings me back to the texture inherent in those lyrics.  I appreciate that Scilla the plant is a rather different thing to the Scylla of Ancient Greek legend, despite their similar sounding names, but when I hear the name of the little bulb, Sting's lyrics come bursting into my mind.  I always thought that this one of their best songs, but could never decide on quite how to interpret the lyrics.

There are at least 3 interpretations that I am aware of:

1.  The most obvious interpretation takes the lyrics at face value.  One can see the lyrics as a sort of love song in which our young and inexperienced protagonist has to decide between two difficult courses of action, one of which will see him seduced by an older more experienced married woman.  In that interpretation, he deliberately sets out to learn what he can from his married lover until ultimately the balance of power in the relationship shifts and he leaves her to move on.

2.  But it is also possible to put a different (although carefully hidden) interpretation on the lyrics.  The mythological references and use of the phrase shining band of gold could be a clever mask what was going on in  Sting's head at the time, not in his personal life, but also in the band. By this stage in the Police's career there were famously open hostilities between band members over just about everything, including or most particularly, the song writing. This was the last album they recorded together before the band broke up. 

In that light the song can be seen to document  the relationship between Sting and Andy Summers.  When the Police started out Andy Summers would have been the most important member of the group, vastly experienced he had been critically acclaimed as the guitarist in the band Curved Air in the '70s.  Summers would have been the "master" to Sting's "apprentice".

Entertaining as this interpretation is, I find it difficult to reconcile this interpretation with Sting's use of the term "shining band of gold"; even if one tries to see this as a metaphor for other things.

3.  The third, and I think more persuasive, interpretation sees the lyrics as being addressed to Sting's first wife Frances Tomelty who was some 3 years older than Sting.  In that light she is the master, he the apprentice.  By the time the song was released Sting had left Frances and started a relationship with Trudie Styler, his neighbour and Frances's best friend.  In this light the choice that Sting is saying that he was faced with was to stay or leave his marriage.  

In this light the song can be seen as a companion piece for "Every Breath You Take".  Nobody said that pop stars had to be nice people.  In fact there is a good argument that some of the best pop stars are very much not nice people.

For me, it is very much this last interpretation that holds the key to the meaning of the song. Notwithstanding that as such, it is really not a very nice song, I love it all the same!  (Well done if you got down this far, I really must try not to ramble!).