Peg - Steely Dan - A Lyrics Analysis
"I've seen your picture
Your name in lights above it
This is your big debut
It's like a dream come true
And when you smile for the camera
I know they're love it."
Peg is an actress, meeting a new Director/Photographer, who is telling the story in the first person as the one who is singing. He has taken pictures of her and created a billboard, with her name in probably neon lights telling the world who she is.
She is just starting out, and with his help, she expects big things of her life. He promises her that with his help, her face and her smile, she will hit it big with the public.
"I got your pin shot
I keep it with your letter
Done up in blueprint blue
It sure looks good on you
So won't you smile for the camera
I know I'll love you better."
Apparently, he noticed her when she mailed him a picture of herself with a letter, hoping that he would help her make it big in Hollywood. The picture was edited thru a blue filter. In a photo session, he encourages her to smile more.
"Peg
It will come back to you."
He assures her that everything he has taught her will come back to her when she in on display in public.
"Then the shutter falls
You see it all in 3-D
It's your favorite foreign movie."
He is again assuring her that she will be great when they start filming her on the movie set. By being on the set live, she will get to see the movie in real life, in 3-D, compared to the people who will see the movie, which will be 2-D.
They are re-filming and updating a movie that was already done previously, a movie that she loved, but this time, it will be the American version.
At this scale, it is easier to see that the trees are not under the influence of "artificial" gravity. It is real.
🌎🌐
The gravitational field around each blade of grass and tree is the same as the field around each blade of grass and tree on the surface of Earth.
Notice that if you drive on a road perpendicular to the cylinder axis, you will increase gravity driving one way and decrease it driving the other. If you drive opposite to the spin and at the radial speed, your gravitational field turns Minkowskian, and you are in a "free fall" or inertial coordinate system. That is, you and the car become "weightless."
That means this: The value of a gravity field can go from a surface-of-a-planet value to a free-fall value by a coordinate transformation among systems that are moving at a constant velocity with respect to each other.
At any instant of time, a car moving at the radial speed is in a Minkowski field, and a system at rest on the cylinder is in a planet-surface field. A ...
"Aja" is the title track of Steely Dan's 1977 album, and its meaning has been a subject of interpretation rather than a straightforward explanation from the band themselves, Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, who were known for their cryptic and layered lyrics. The song doesn’t tell a linear story but evokes a mood and imagery that fans and critics have analyzed over the years.
The word "Aja" is often speculated to refer to a person, place, or concept. One popular theory ties it to the name "Aja," which Becker and Fagen reportedly chose after learning of a Korean woman named Aja who married a friend of theirs. This fits Steely Dan’s tendency to draw inspiration from real-life fragments and transform them into something abstract. The lyrics—"Up on the hill / People never stare / They just don’t care / Chinese music under banyan trees"—suggest an exotic, serene escape, possibly a romanticized or imagined refuge from the complexities of modern life.
Musically and lyrically, "Aja" ...
"Deacon Blues" by Steely Dan, released in 1977 on their album Aja, is a richly layered song that invites multiple interpretations, blending the band’s signature irony, cynicism, and romanticism. Written by Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, the lyrics follow a narrator who seems to embrace a life of reckless abandon, yearning for a kind of mythic, self-destructive freedom often associated with jazz musicians or countercultural figures. Let’s break it down:
The title "Deacon Blues" itself is intriguing. It’s been suggested that it references football—the "Deacon" could nod to Wake Forest University’s Demon Deacons, a team whose colors are black and gold, though Fagen and Becker have said it’s more about vibe than a literal connection. "Blues" ties it to the musical genre, evoking a sense of soulful melancholy. In a 2003 interview, Fagen described the song as being about "a broken dream of a broken man living a broken life," but delivered with a sardonic twist typical of Steely Dan’s ...
