Superstition
Superstition is the small practical business of trying to read your luck or keep it: knocking on wood, crossing your fingers, pulling the petals off a daisy to find out whether you are loved, throwing a coin into water, wishing on a star, naming the star sign that explains a couple, laying cards out as a fortune, or watching an ordinary object for a warning. What the songs give is the gesture itself, performed or refused, rather than the belief behind it. The practices are old and mostly domestic, learned young and kept up long after they stop being taken seriously, and they turn up across the catalogue in the places where somebody wants to know something that cannot be known yet.
These are the things people do when they want an answer they have no way of getting, or want to protect something they have no way of protecting. The gesture is tiny and what it is aimed at is not, and most of its force is in that gap. It marks the moments when a speaker puts her question to a flower, a coin or the sky rather than to the person it concerns. It also marks the moments when she stops, because refusing a charm says as much as performing one: it means she no longer believes the outcome is still in play.
Appears in 9 songs
“Daisy's bare naked, I was distraught He loves me not, he loves me not Penny's unlucky, I took him back And then stepped on a crack and the black cat laughed”
Four small readings in a row, taken one after another the way someone takes them when they are anxious: a flower asked whether she is loved, a coin that came up the wrong way, a crack underfoot, and a black cat that seems to find the whole thing funny. None of them is consulted seriously and all of them are noticed.
“And, baby, I'll admit I've been a little superstitious (Superstitious) Fingers crossed until you put your hand on mine (Ah)”
The speaker names the habit outright, which is rare: most songs perform a superstition without calling it one. Then she gives the plainest example, fingers crossed, held until the other person's hand arrives and makes it unnecessary.
“(Ah) All of that bitchin', wishing on a falling star Never did me any good, I ain't got to knock on wood”
The chorus is where she stops. The wish on a star and the knock on wood are named in the same breath and both are turned down: the wishing never did her any good, and the knocking is no longer needed. It comes back round every chorus, so the song keeps announcing that the old protections have been retired.
“I picked the petals, he loves me not”
Pulling the petals off a daisy to find out whether you are loved is a child's way of asking, and the speaker uses it exactly that way. She hands the question to the flower instead of putting it to the boy. It stands for a whole way of finding out where you stand without having to risk anything to find out.
“Roaring twenties, tossing pennies in the pool”
Throwing a coin into water and wishing on it is the cheapest bet anyone makes. The speaker is remembering having done it, which puts the wish among the things she is looking back on rather than among the things she is still waiting on.
“Cards on the table, mine play out like fools in a fable”
Here the cards are not played against a rival but read for a fate already set, 'Cards on the table, mine play out like fools in a fable'. The Fool opens the tarot's major arcana, and laid beside 'it was written' and the sealed curse the spread becomes divination, the hand dealt by something larger than the table.
“I had the fantasy that maybe our mismatched star signs Would surprise the whole school When I ended up back at our class reunion Walkin' in with you”
The speaker brings the star signs up to say that on paper the two of them do not match. Then she imagines it not mattering: the mismatch is the received rule, and the fantasy is the relationship going ahead in spite of it.
“I (I) can't (Can't) speak, afraid to jinx it I (I) don't (Don't) even dare to wish it”
Saying a good thing out loud is supposed to spoil it. The speaker catches herself doing it and stops, which means the belief is live enough to interrupt her in the middle of describing how happy she is.
“Now I'm searching for signs in a haunted club”
After the break-up the speaker starts reading the room for messages. Nothing in the club is a sign of anything, and she searches it anyway, because wanting an answer badly enough turns ordinary surroundings into something that might be trying to tell you something.
“Just twin fire signs, four blue eyes”
Naming what sign somebody was born under is a quick way of accounting for what two people are like together. The speaker reaches for it early, before much else has been established about the two of them.
“The only thing that keeps me wishing on a wishing star”
The wish on a star is made by somebody who has no other way to get what she wants. She cannot say anything to him, so she says it to the sky instead.