Part IX - The Gospel According to Joe: Meditations on Joe Pug's Sketch of a Promised Departure

8. You’re Not a Secret

There’s no obvious reason for this beautiful song’s inclusion at this point in the album. The scapegoat figure disappears, Gospel references vanish. The idealistic artist recedes, and third-person panorama gives way to the intimacy of second- and first-person pronouns. The lyrics themselves are so spare they could describe any number of characters and scenarios. Nevertheless, a general relational benevolence emerges in an atmosphere of succor and reassurance. 

*Go listen to the music, the podcast, subscribe to the vault, read the dispatches, sign up for the newsletter, and buy stuff.

The “you” addressed in the opening lines can be anyone who faithfully does their job. The character of the speaker is more mysterious. He sings, “You don’t know me but I see you answering the call / Monday morning, Friday evening, winter through the fall.” Given the context and the tone, we can rule out seeing the speaker as some kind of voyeuristic stalker. Rather, he is a witness acknowledging someone who faithfully does their duty. The phrase “answering the call” in the context of the work week and the calendar year evokes firefighters, nurses, teachers, or anyone who responds, not to lucrative opportunities, but to “the call.” The call, of course, is a plea for help in an important cause, a beacon summoning needed aid, and it carries connotations of the word “calling” or vocation. A vocation in the original sense was God’s call on someone’s life to become a religious professional–a pastor, priest, nun, monk. Today, this old idea, still believed by many Christians, implies more than a set of gifts bequeathed willy-nilly by Nature. It implies a set of gifts given by God and God’s commissioning of the gifted person to serve a cause. (On this notion, however, cf. Joe Pug’s “How Good You Are.”)

Whoever the speaker in this verse is, he witnesses someone consistently fulfilling a calling, doing a job, and according to the chorus, he’ll eventually have to announce this faithful person to some audience. He says, “You’re not a secret / That I could keep for long,” and adds, “We’ve known you all along.” The switch from the first person singular to the plural is suggestive of more than a frivolous adoption of the royal we. But even by the end of the song, what that suggestion might be remains just that–a suggestion.

Verse two consists of a humble declaration of need for relationship and support. “You don’t owe me but I need you, trouble came to stay.” With nothing more than pronouns naming these interlocutors, interpretation may range wide. At the very least, the speaker makes an uncoercive request for something like grace. The abstract characterization, “trouble came to stay,” offers nothing definite about the speaker’s problem other than that it hasn’t gone anywhere and isn’t likely to. He says he needs help, “someone right beside me, never walks away.” Now, whatever persona utters these lines, the sentiment is a far cry from the somewhat desperate  assertion, “Neither do I need a witness,” or the defiant, “I’d rather be nobody’s man than somebody’s child.” This speaker makes no declaration of independence, but rather acknowledges his deep need for someone else, for someone near and faithful. 

The augmentation of the chorus’s meaning is subtle in this song. After the first verse, the chorus acknowledges the addressee’s faithfulness and hard work and the clause, “you’re not a secret,” serves as a gentle understatement–people are going to know about this. After the second verse, we can’t even be sure the same persona is uttering these lines. There are no proper nouns, and the speaker in the verse is likely a different character than the persona singing the chorus. The switch from “I” to “we” recurs, but we still don’t know who this collective who’s “known you all along” is. The speaker of verse one, witness to the addressee’s fidelity, may utter the lines at the beginning of verse two. Indeed a person who lives with trouble could use support from someone who answers the call every work day, all year. But who’s singing the chorus? Why does the singular unreliable secret-keeper become a plural who’s known the addressee all along?

The speaker in the first verse is appreciative; the persona in the second verse is humble and needy; the speaker of the third verse is encouraging and unlike the merely appreciative or needy. His exhortation not to “lose heart when skies grow dark and nothing seems to change” arrives like an answer to the second speaker’s complaint of abiding trouble. In the second line, he offers a warrant for this encouraged steadfastness, saying, “Even in a world of strangers, I still know your name.” Again, this situation is vague, but the speaker reassures his audience that they’re not alone; more than that, they are known.

What Nathaniel Hawthorne said of works of art applies fairly neatly to Joe Pug’s songs: “Their highest merit is suggestiveness.” There’s no way to finally identity the speakers in these verses and chorus, but the lack of proper nouns ensures that different personas and situations will occur to each listener. Primarily the song is a beautiful evocation of our deep need for relationships, of the goodness of human “stuff that works,” and the persistence of hope in a dark world. The message of the chorus is that goodness is noted and that we’re not unknown. The message to the audience is that we are known personally.

“You’re Not a Secret” could be the message of a husband to a wife, or vice versa. It could be an addict talking to a rehab sponsor. It could be Joe Pug talking to his listeners. Each verse, each chorus might be a different voice. The relationship suggested to me is that of God to man, man to God. Verse one could be God letting someone know He sees their thankless fidelity to a mundane mission. The person doesn’t know God, but He sees and reassures that goodness will not go unrecognized. The second verse sounds like a penitent acknowledging their need for grace and vicarious strength: “You don’t owe me but I need you.” If this needy soul sings the second chorus, perhaps he’s received God’s grace and now he’s saying he won’t be able to keep the news to himself. The third verse sounds like God again: “Don’t lose heart…even in a world of strangers I still know your name.” The triune God of Christianity would account for the sudden “we” of the chorus and the longstanding knowledge of the addressee–even by name. 

Positing these various speakers in different sections reveals other possibilities. In theme and tone, “You’re Not a Secret” resembles other songs Pug has written or covered: “Veteran Fighter,” “The Measure,” “Deep Dark Wells” by Harvey Young, et al. Each of those contain redemptive, spiritual suggestions; what makes this song different is its lyrical spareness and the mysterious identity of the voices. In the context of this album, I don’t think my religious interpretation is inappropriate. After a song about a martyr’s trial and before one about a “good” man’s crucifixion, it might stand for a divine reassurance to the suffering figure that God is with him, that he’s on the right track–even though trouble remains, skies are dark, and he appears to be alone. 

At this point, the title calls for another look. Implied in “You’re not a secret” is the prior notion that “You are a secret.” Why would someone be a secret? Perhaps because they’re a secret mistress in an illicit affair. Perhaps they’re a gifted artist few people appreciate. Perhaps they’re a new hire the company can’t announce yet. Unlikely options. The title suggests the speaker was mistaken about the one he’s addressing. In line with my religious reading of the song, the second chorus could be a statement about the uncertainty of God’s existence and His seeming unknowability. In Romans 1:19-20, Paul says everyone knows God exists and that “His invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made.” Christianity teaches that while some aspects of God’s ways are mysterious, he’s not a secret. Rather, people “suppress the truth” by their unrighteousness (Romans 1:18). As one pastor I know put it, “Atheism is actually immorality.” An atheist, of course, is likely to disagree with that assessment–God is invisible, after all. An agnostic will tell you that if God exists, He can’t be known. He’s a secret, perhaps. But an agnostic who came to believe in God–a convert to Christianity, say–might agree with Paul and say, “We’ve known you all along.” 

The heart of Christianity is the alienated sinner’s reconciliation with God through faith in the work of Christ on the cross. The result of salvation is that a human being is restored to right relationship with their Creator. This has been described as “knowing God.” Tim Keller put it like this: “To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is our greatest fear. But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God. It is what we need more than anything. It liberates us from pretense, humbles us out of our self-righteousness, and fortifies us for any difficulty life can throw at us.” God knows everything about us, everything we’ve ever done, and He still loves us more than we can realize.

*Go listen to the music, the podcast, subscribe to the vault, read the dispatches, sign up for the newsletter, and buy stuff.