"There are whispers at night in the halls of paintings"

Basically 90% of all songs seem to be either “Baby, I love you so”, or “Baby, you’ve done me wrong”.

What I’m saying is “What is the song?” And the song is either “I’ve done you wrong”, or, “Baby, I love you so”, no matter what style it’s played in. 

- Al Stewart, from a 2012 interview, as quoted in Wikipedia.

Elsewhere in the same interview, Al Stewart says that he prefers not to use words almost everybody does in songs - words like 'baby' (to mean a girl, or a sweetheart). So does he succeed? Apparently not. 

That's because here and there, tucked away in many of his LPs, are paeans to lonely young people, mostly women, aching to belong, to love and be loved, to find some salve for their desolation of loneliness. These songs are sometimes about historical persons (such as "Marion the Chatelaine" from 1995's Between The Wars,) or about people Al has invented ("Almost Lucy" from 1978's Time Passages and "Lori, Don't Go Right Now" from 1984's Russians and Americans,) and some we aren't really sure ("Gina In The Kings Road" from 2005's A Beach Full Of Shells.) These portraits are not superficial; Al manages to get inside the person's skin like a splinter and unearths some of their very essential, unspoken needy cries, utter isolation and desperate loneliness.

I can't seem to stop myself from thinking a lot these days that "Mona Lisa Talking", from A Beach Full Of Shells is pretty much in the same category, though it seems neither a paean to any specific person, actual or invented; nor a portrait. The song inevitably does have to do with Da Vinci's famous painting, but it seems that it does not speak ABOUT it so much as FROM it; and it speaks TO any 'pretty baby' who might conceivably deduce, from the painting's mysterious aura, that love is to be found far from home.

Mystery enshrouds Da Vinci's painting; it is now definitely one of those works about which no one really knows (or can claim to know) anything for sure. The blame for this can be laid at history's door; it always seemed to me that the painting was romanticised, deservedly or otherwise, into the historical quicksand it has become today.

Traditional explanations of it are expectedly simple - that it is just a portrait of a lady named Lisa Gherardini from the del Giacondo family, for which purpose Da Vinci was commissioned. The fact that he embellished a simple portrait with the mystifying smile definitely is deemed merely coincidental. It is also deemed that instead of the marital ring, he painted her hands with her right hand resting on her left, to suggest virtuousness and fidelity. These little touches, inadvertent or not, seem to have played into the hands of those who wanted to romanticise the work. But I guess this was a foregone, inevitable thing, seeing as it even today impresses me as a curiously 'live' and 'current' portrait rather than as a sterile record of someone called Lisa Gherardini. Mystery is surely promised, if not delivered. What we DON'T KNOW about the portrait (and the one whose portrait it is) has kept us going feverishly down the centuries, that's for sure.

This seems to make Al's lyric in "Mona Lisa Talking" all the more comforting and correct - especially in the refrain:

Go home, pretty baby
Go on home, pretty baby
You will go home to the one who is waiting for you,
Anything that you want, anything that you do
You will go home to the one who is waiting alone for you.

As always, Al makes his point delicately yet cannily and knowingly; but to put it in brutally didactic language, he might seem to be saying that the mystery must now finally be swallowed up in fulfillment and the wanderer in search of love must go home, because that's simply where love always was and continues to be found, before the 'romanticisers' came and confused things terribly by their treasure-hunting in the streets. The Mona Lisa is just an ordinary, faithful, virtuous wife with a wonderful smile full of mystery. No more, no less.

Al's bridge and last verse in "Mona Lisa Talking" definitely seem to support what I've just said:

Oh I know, you think you're part of a tragic song
You can show reasons it's over, but I know you're wrong

These renaissance girls know what they're saying
There are whispers at night in the halls of paintings
You think you're the first to come untethered
But we've been watching you forever

So often, the women Al writes about seek love in places where they should never expect to find it - in a smile that promises but does not deliver, on the streets in search of 'mystery'. It's time now to go home, where love always is, and where it is most pleasurably and rightly to be found. A tribute to right living and fidelity, if you like, to put it in brutal black-and-white. Just like the traditional explanation of Da Vinci's painting - a virtuous wife.

Does this seem to take a lot of promise and bite out of the Mona Lisa? Yes and no, but admittedly more 'no'. The smile is still promising; so what if it is no longer just mysterious but also merely familiar? The ultimate fulfillment of promise and mystery is to find love at home and not in the transitory face of a stranger in the dark - we have come full circle indeed.

The soul always aches for home doesn't it. So then, go home, pretty baby.

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Many critics box Al's music into a very convenient category called 'folk-rock', which is okay in its way but there's so much more than merely that going on in his songs. For my part I hate categorisation unless it clarifies the musician's roots, if needed, to some extent. In the 2012 interview I referred to earlier, Al says that his songs end up being 'geographical, historical, from a movie' because he prefers to write songs about things no one else is writing about. He also says he thinks of his songs as 'aural films' (a beautiful expression,) which is what I always thought them to be because the lyrics are so visually evocative in a way few musicians are able to achieve in pop culture. His one recent LP that does this more effectively than any other is A Beach Full Of Shells, something that has begun to dawn on me so much more recently. 

When I first heard the songs on A Beach Full Of Shells I felt a number of them, though substantial, had been left dangling and unfinished intentionally or otherwise. There are still a couple of songs that seem that way. It was only after quite a few hearings that "Mona Lisa Talking" began to impress; and today, I regard the song as one of Al's very best in the tradition of very few of his great songs in my estimation - it stands alongside "Flying Sorcery" (on Year Of The Cat, 1976) and even beside his magnum opus, "Roads to Moscow" (on Past, Present and Future, 1974.) It also begins to rival my favourites considerably - "Merlin's Time" (24 Carrots, 1980,) "Lindy Comes To Town" and "Night Train to Munich" (Between The Wars). It certainly is the best song (by a long way) of his post - Between The Wars LPs.

Al confesses that he likes the opening chord sequences (just as I always suspected) and I love them too. The chords give the song a plaintive, emotional, loaded tone, full of the weariness of a love not found, decisively vital to its premise. Laurence Juber's guitar solo at the end of the song is very lyrical and expressive, as always, but it makes the song seem even more poignant than it actually is.

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This is the Mona Lisa talking
Out on the street where love goes walking
Into the shadows that can't hide you
Here is a voice that speaks inside you

Go home, pretty baby, go on home, pretty baby
You will go home to the one who is waiting for you
Anything that you want, anything that you do
You will go home to the one who is waiting alone for you

This is the Mona Lisa calling
Out of a patch of oil and water
Over the street lamps and the river
Out of a smile that lasts forever

Go home, pretty baby, go on home, pretty baby
You will go home to the one who is waiting for you
Anything that you want, anything that you do
You will go home to the one who is waiting alone for you

O I know you think you're part of a tragic song
You can show reasons it's over, but I know you're wrong

These Renaissance girls know what they're saying
There are whispers at night in the halls of paintings
You think you're the first one to come untethered
But we've been watching you forever

Go home, pretty baby, go on home, pretty baby
You will go home to the one who is waiting for you
Anything that you want, anything that you do
You will go home to the one who is waiting alone for you

This is the Mona Lisa talking
This is the Mona Lisa talking