We're back on track again with Velvet Dress....and it pulls all the elements together. Right from the opening line, "the moon is playing tricks again", we are plunged directly into his conundrum between committed love (sun) and mistress (moon). He addresses the moon in 1st person in 2nd stanza "do you really want me to be blue as you/it's HER daylight that gets me through"......(nice blue moon reference!). Again the ambiguity with the you and your and hers. Getting lost again? Maybe he's a bit scared from the what the world showed him? (LNOE, Gone, Miami, Playboy Mansion). He's slipping... With "moon is playing tricks again", substitute playing with turning. Turning tricks means to sell yourself- like a prostitute. Good word play by Bono here. Goes back to 'take the money, honey' etc.!!!! "and you're turning tricks with your crucifix"..... Heavy! That moon is just a damn slut! He resents her interruption, her temptation, (and knows it could ruin him) but he can't help but be lured. He's trying to get back at her, to put on the brakes: "I've been good cause I know you don't want me to." He hates her right here, really smug and trying to show her she is unwelcome. But it is sung as if he is teasing her. He's still flirting with the idea of it, but is trying to be good and back off. We all do it -- tell someone no, just so
they will ask again and again. He's also tormenting his tormentor. He hasn't strayed, he's just overwhelmingly tempted.
The moon-lover is desperate, scratching at his door, and he was unmasked before her, naked and cold, equally desperate like a 2 year old wanting more. There are so many ways she made him childish. Selfish. Crybaby. Lost his way. Need his "mom," his wife. Children
are scared of the dark. But that desire with he's "JUST wanting more like a 2 year old" is so strong. He JUST wants more. (just= simply, but nothing's as simple as you think.) She has totally fucked with his head and made him into a child who needs his mom. JUST makes the "wanting more" an even stronger statement. JUST = ONLY. It's desperate, pleading. I love the unspoken-ness of the
chorus "If you wear that velvet dress....".....what? I won't be able to control myself? I will have to give in? My desire will overwhelm me? I love that it remains unspoken. Poor man, so wracked with desire, "I'm wanting"...... and it is sung achingly. Then the sun-wife comes in, and she's sharp and clear and easy to understand, but nothing at all like the moon. Back and forth!! Back and forth- just like the earth moves (is it moving for you the way it's moving for me?!) In one line "she's sharp and clear" the next line "BUT nothing at all
like the moon." There's that aching. And he says BUT nothing, not AND. An AND would support the face he likes the sharp and clear. The BUT says there is something missing in the sun!.... It's like when you are so totally overwhelmed with desire that the truth of the good thing you already has begins to blur, you can't see clearly. You are blinded by desire. He can't see straight. Can't see clearly (almost like he's been staring at the sun and see spots. Spots of darkness! Blindness...! The sun makes blind spots............. oh shit) It's a different sort of blindness than wrapping the night around you -- it's a blindness that comes from extreme brilliance.
"It's okay, the struggle for things not to say / I never listened to you anyway." I think this is actually brilliant. He wasn't going to moon for a companionship. Not intellectualism. Completely and utterly sexual. It's like a slap in the face to her- something you NEVER want to hear a man say, y?know? He's bitter and pissed and hitting her where it hurts. ?I've got my own hands to pray." Maybe this means he can take care of the mess on his own, praying to his wife to take him back. God for forgiveness? Either way he used her for the dirty work, he's being rude again. "I only need you for sex, or escape." Or whatever it was. Maybe this is the only way he can deal with her, the only way he can get rid of her- is to harden himself to her. To get mad, hoping she'll get mad back and leave. Classic male reaction
to a confusing situation!! "My own" hands to pray.... means, take your stinking hands away because I don't need them. "My own" again
is a very astute choice of words, because it adds bitterness and contempt. "I didn't want it that much anyway", if he is talking about the moon-lover, is a blatant lie. And if he's talking to the sun he's trying to slap HER face and say "I didn?t want YOU that much anyway." Which is ALSO a lie. That line is a lie. "It's no secret that a liar won't believe anyone else". He's in denial on several parts of the album, almost like he is trying to convince himself of something he knows to be untrue. ("what you leave behind you don't miss anyway" -- I don't think that's true for him here. It has become true for him by the time of ATYCLB, but it is not true for him on this album. He still misses it. He's changed his name, loses himself along the way, says he doesn't miss what he left behind [meaning himself] - but I don't
believe him). He is lost. "Light flickers from across the hall" -- can see him lying in bed with his wife, with the moon-lover-light
flickering in the distance. "Who'll catch the star when it falls" - he is OBVIOUSLY the star in every sense. Especially the sense that the sun/moon are satellites. The only other thing is a star. Which is him. Which is falling. Does that answer our question? Did he go back for just one more rendezvous? The moon will obviously take him back, no matter how much he insults her. SHE is aching (scratching at the door?! He leaves it up in the air about which woman will be there to catch him. The fact that this line comes after the "light flickers from across the hall" leads me to believe that YES, he is going back to the moon just one more time. If he had said "who'll catch the star when it falls" after a loving line about the sun, then I would think he had realized the truth about the moon. But the moon is a mirrorball,
flickering seductively across the hall, then "who'll catch the star when it falls." He's falling again. Wow this song is harsh! I'm not sure if there ever is a resolution either. We might stretch the Please metaphor into: "get up off your knees" talking to himself. Not going to beg the sun OR the moon anymore. But that might be a stretch since it's obviously a religious song.
