Salvador writes at night, for privacy's sake. This is
understandable, as he writes "I part your lips... I feel you in your
letters." One would have to write such delicate thoughts in private, even
if they did not carry the burden of potential bigotry. Salvador already is a
lightning rod for daring to dream of college, and now to be in an inter-racial relationship...
Wahzinak replies that she "understands" Salvador's
"anger," but for now... "I take your hand/ And guide it through
my thighs." The rest of that verse continues this erotic imagery, in a
physical vein.
Then, the next verse eroticizes and santifices their
ethnicities: "Puerto Rican blood blending with Indian/ In a sacred flame
of burning lust."
But here is also an invitation: "You'll love the colors
of the desert." This seemingly throwaway line will have severe
consequences down the road.
Together, the two share only love, longing... and the moon.
So together, they sing: "The quarter moon stares down through my window/
And reads your letters on my bed." (Where else would one read such
material?) "I know they open all the mail I send you/ But love can't be
censored."
We expect a warden to read his prisoner's mail. But is
Wahzinak a prisoner, too? In a sense. She lives on a reservation. "We share
a history," Wahzinak elaborates, of oppression by "the white man."
"The barrio is just another reservation," a ghetto to which
non-whites are relegated. (We learn later who is reading his incoming mail; it
is not "the white man.")
These lovers are both imprisoned. Both in space, both by
prejudice and repression, and both by the several-times-over illicit nature of
their ardor. As if to rub salt in their wounds, others enjoy freedom all around
them. Even animals: "I saw wild horses mating in the sunrise,"
laments Wahzinak. And why not? These animals have no rules, no laws, no
shame... and yet we feel that we are superior? Why do we humans make life so
hard for ourselves?
"I dreamed of freedom," she writes. "The day
of revolution is coming fast." (These words were written in the late
1970s. Wild horses are
still freer than we allow ourselves to be.)
The next song is, inexplicably, called "Killer Wants to
Go to College II" on the Songs from The Campeman soundtrack
CD. The Lyrics book gives it a better title "My Only
Defense." It is another letter, from Salvador this time.
It is a short but powerful song. In it, he tells Wahzinak
that he appreciates her and her wisdom: "I know you're trying to protect
me... with your... poetry... from my ignorance... I only wish I could hug you/
You're my only defense."
While by this time we think of him as quite literate,
Salvador pleads, "I don't understand your writing/ I can barely sign my
name." Perhaps he still feels the sting of having been illiterate for so
much of his life, and that he feels himself so beside her felicity with
words.
He closes by remembering the violence of his barrio, and
perhaps even the pain the nuns caused him in his homeland. "All I ever
learned was fighting/ But I'm not the only one to blame." And now, even in
jail, he is still a "stranger."
In Puerto Rico as a child, he was fatherless and homeless.
In New York, a teen; he was an immigrant, plus an annoyance, then a shame, for his
stepfather. The gang members who befriended him led him into a life of killing.
In jail, he becomes a man, still an outcast among his fellow inmates because of
his intellect, and ambition. "The hatred never
ends," he concludes.
And the next song shows yet another source of this
all-encompassing hatred.
Next Song: Virgil and the Warden
I ... don't understand. Wahzinak is a female. She's voiced by a female singer on the album.
ReplyDeleteWhere did you get that this person was a male? And despite the research you did on the facts of previous songs, you never decided to to look into this fact?
Craig-- Well, when you're right, you're right. And I was not. I have gone back and fixed my earlier posts.
ReplyDeleteI had been going in order and had not yet reached the Wahzinak lines on "Trailways Bus." Rest assured, I would have caught my error this week, as this was the song for today.
All of the other female characters are designated by first name, aside from the parents of the victims, both designated as "Mrs.". The only one thus far known only by a last name, Hernandez, is male. (I am leaving aside from who are known by title only: Mayor, Santero, Warden, etc.) And, if you read the lyrics, there is nothing to indicate Wahzinak's gender at all; no mention of dresses, jewelry, her being someone's sister, her body, etc. All of this taken together, I reached the wrong conclusion. As I mentioned in earlier posts, I was trying to do as little background reading as possible, knowing that all biographies deviate somewhat from reality as a matter of necessity anyway. What reading I did turned up nothing on this figure. on Wahzinak's Duet/ My Only Defense (Killer Wants to Go to College II).
Paul, ten years later, and I've read Richard Jacoby's Conversations with the Capeman, which tells a much more complete (and, actually, a more honest) depiction of Salvador Agron's life.
ReplyDeleteFirst, I'll say I don't like my tone from yen years ago, and I think about that sometimes and I'd like to apologize.
Second, Salvador was planning to marry Wahzinak, but they fell away from each other and he never did. More importantly, for what it's worth, Salvador was actually openly bisexual. He was in prison for a time with a man (whose name escapes me now) that he indicated was, essentially, the love of his life. So not only was I a bit of a dick tonally, but your original indication was not far from the truth at all.
Craig-- First of all, thank you for continuing to connect to this blog for a whole decade! It's nice to have fellow travelers out in cyberspace who care about the songs as much as I do, for as long as I have. That itself is a gift.
ReplyDeleteI am sorry that your comment's tone has been weighing on you. If it helps, I never thought of it as being phrased particularly harshly-- I have been excoriated far more acidly, even in this blog itself. And, whatever the tone, you were right to call me out on my lack of thoroughness. It's not fair for me to posit myself as a knowledgeable source and then not do my due diligence.
The Internet has a way if giving us permission to be snarky, and I have fallen into a dismissive or sarcastic tone myself. I would put this comment under the category of "no harm, no foul."
The Agron case keep revealing more and more layers and continues to fascinate. For myself, I assumed that anyone spoken of only by last name was a man-- the fact that I stumbled upon Agron's LGBT status was pure accident. But thank you for bringing it to my attention... and for continuing to support the blog.