okay a quick little question about Dusseldorf that has been bothering me every time i listen to this wonderful song. when reg says "it made me miss my New York nothing" does she mean it made her miss nothing about living in New York or does she mean that she misses that feeling of irrelevance and emptiness you get when you live in a big city?? please post any other questions you have here so others can reply and please someone that a genius answer this stupid question!!! thanks a lot

quote:

Originally posted by i like wonder bread:
or does she mean that she misses that feeling of irrelevance and emptiness you get when you live in a big city??

I'm thinking that's it. Not that I know for sure, especially since to be honest I never really thought it about it.

Another resource:

http://www.songmeanings.net/artist.php?aid=137438962288

quote:

Originally posted by i like wonder bread:
okay a quick little question about Dusseldorf that has been bothering me every time i listen to this wonderful song. when reg says "it made me miss my New York nothing" does she mean it made her miss nothing about living in New York or does she mean that she misses that feeling of irrelevance and emptiness you get when you live in a big city??

What I deduce from the line is that she is going to all these great and fantastic places all over Europe but even while seeing all these amazing and interesting things she still misses the things that comfort her...like the feeling of being such an insignificant and small piece New York City

quote:

Originally posted by andreseng:
Another resource:

http://www.songmeanings.net/artist.php?aid=137438962288

An excellent source indeed, it has answered many of my questions.

since she says "it made me miss my moscow mother" i was thinking more along the lines of.. she didnt really have anyone to miss "from" new york persay, but still misses it. its probly wrong but thats how i always thought.

This, as we all know, is just conjecture and we debate about her lyrics all the time. Which, as I have said before, is exactly the way reg wants it. Gotta love that reginka malinka......

Just look at the discussion on songmeanings about this particular song. Is it Moscow mother or Moscow muttdom. I am of the opinion that it is muttdom. What does muttdom mean? Well lets see what these folks think:

http://reginaspektor.infopop.cc/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/2261015901/m/9171026212

Her lyrics will always keep things lively around here. Thank God!

now if anyone else has a question this is the place to ask!

I'm with Andreseng -- I don't think those lyrics are correct. When I get home I'll listen again...but I think neither "mother" nor "nothing" is correct.

I'll post again later!

I just listened and it definitely sounds like muttdom to me.

Well mutts are all mix-species'd and Reg is sort of from New York as much as she is from Moscow...

Maybe she means she's a cultural mutt? :P

I dunno, just throwing stuff out there.

I agree with JohnnyC on this one. I believe it just refers to being a mutt. Various ethnic family roots.

Having listened again, I think there's no question that it's muttdom. That's kind of what was in my memory for it.

But while I didn't think it was "new york nothin'", it appears to really be that (I listened to three versions and she never puts the "ing" ending on it, just the "in" version of the word).

I would agree with the above theories about her muttdom, but would also add that the famous Russian writer Mikhail Bulgakov wrote a novel called "Heart of a Dog" where a scientist takes a starving "mutt" (usually called a mutt in the English translations) off the street and turns him into a human being. In reality the story is a satire of certain kinds of human behavior, particularly as represented by the Soviet bureaucracy, and the "mutt's" attempts to understand, as an outsider, all the strange ways that humans behave. I've never read it, but maybe I'll try to track it down now, after reading about it again.

In a review of the story, Bill Statton says:

"The double meaning implicit in the monstrous creation that represents an amalgamation of Pavlovian conditioning and supernatural creation demonstrates the foolishness of any form of social engineering or the blind adherence to dogmatic belief systems, rather they be Marxist, Capitalist or religious.

If not, the obvious referencing to Pavlov’s experiments would be of little consequence since the very process of conditioning a dog to react in a certain way to a given stimulus assumes the necessary arbitrariness of the stimulus involved, whether blinking lights or bells, which are symbolic of the difference between ideologies of Marxism and capitalism. Thus, while Heart of a Dog represents an explicit condemnation of the Stalinist regime, it is at the same time an implicit critique of the herd mentality itself that gives rise to such social phenomena in the first place. As it stands, the mis-adventures of Sharik, as he oscillates between the conditions of unwanted dog and "common" man, gives voice to a biting critique of modernity that grew out of an era most rapt by dreams of progress and utopian achievement beyond human imagination born from what soon became the horror or technological achievement that saw the dawning of the Atomic age."

This may have nothing to do whatsoever with Regina's song, but I know she really loves Bulgakov's writing.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: morricone1900,

About two-thirds down the page here:

http://sextant.cnu.edu/Hanes.htm

is a really detailed discussion of the Bulgakov book. The more I read about it, the more I would think Regina would have read it and been influenced by it, even if it is not directly the reference in this particular song.