"Rusted Pipe is like "Language" from the last album. "Language is liquid" there and "Words are like water" here. And I'm rusted. The "creak" is like a faucet turning on. Basically, it comes down to feelings. Because as a child, I think I must have decided that feelings were impractical and not useful, so therefore you put them away for a while. It's a song more about finding the story than telling it. But Paul Nelson's reading of it - that it could be about a baby who wants to speak and walk but can't do it yet - is accurate. Not in a literal sense, but to me, a song is like a piece of sculpture. You hammer at it from all angles until the pure thing is left in the middle. And then if it works from every angle, you know you've got something."
"The Open Hand Book - Notes on her New Album", Musician, 1991, also published in Language and in the Limited Edition of 99.9F° (http://www.vega.net/handbook.htm) transcribed by Eric Szczerbinski

"Some people wonder what "Rusted Pipe" is about. In this song I was talking about your spiritual condition, a feeling that you have something to say and you have something to express but it hasn't been used in a while, so you feel yourself to be rusted and not in good shape. And if you are the vessel for something, as of something coming through you, at that point I felt very rusted, I felt I had not been used in that way in a while. I was trying to find my way."
Interview with Fátima Castro Silva in "Urgent Whispers" (http://watermarks.vega.net/urgent_whispers/index.htm)