Your Forgiveness

The first four verses of this song end with the words "Your forgiveness," meaning God's. And we know it is a capital Y-Your not because it starts a new line but because of the fourth verse and what comes after.

But let's deal with the verses in order. "Yesterday's boy is gone" means someone was a boy yesterday, but not today. Where did he go? "Driving through darkness." The idea that God's forgiveness is to be found by driving aimlessly along nighttime roads is harrowing, but it seems like that used to be the process.

Next, music was tried, but it was a song that was born out of "sorrow." If there was a loss to be mourned, a common reaction is to think, "It must have been a Divine punishment. I must ask God's forgiveness." A beautiful song often comes out of this impulse.

Maybe there is a formula? A "homeless soul" tries to use a computer, a "digital mind," to crack the code.

Then it turns personal... but first, we have to pause to have a lesson in Jewish thought and practice.

The last prayer of the Yom Kippur service imagines that the gates of Heaven are closing and that this is one's last chance to atone while the prayers still have Day of Atonement status (The name of this lyrical service is "Ne'ilah," meaning "locking"). The prayers have been in the plural for most of the service but now, at their end, many synagogues have a practice of the congregants lining up in the aisle, each taking a turn to approach the Ark (an ornate cabinet where the Torah scrolls are displayed) for their own personal atonements and prayers.

"And I, the last in line/ Hoping the gates won't be closed/ Before your forgiveness."

Wait. The Y is lowercase. So this was just a use of Day of Atonement imagery for a case of human-to human forgiveness. Well, people still close their gates and lock them, denying the opportunity for forgiveness. 

Then the song stops this thread... and turns to water imagery: "Dip your hand in heaven's waters" and "All of life's abundance in a drop of condensation."  And it is amazing to think that all of the life forms we know, and are likely to know for a while, are on this ball of, mostly, water. In cosmic terms? Earth isn't even the largest planet in our own solar system. 

The line "two billion heartbeats and out" refers to the fact that a human life of 70 years, at the rate at which a human heart beats on average, includes 2 billion heartbeats. So, that many, and then death. (Simon is 81. He has a pretty strong heart.) 

And then "A white light eases the pain." Likely, this refers to the idea that when someone dies, they see a bright, white light and a rush of serenity; many having "near-death experiences" report experiencing these sensations, brought about-- science maintains-- by certain happenings in the brain and its parts as it dies. Steve Jobs' last words were a repeated: "Oh, wow!" 

Further, what does "heaven's water" mean? Rain? Clouds? Can you "dip" your hand in these? And is everything just "God's imagination"?

But the real question is... how is this one song? The first half is about seeking God's forgiveness. But the second half wavers between on the one hand, the smallness of Earth and its human next to the eternality of God... and on the other, defiance of all that.

"I have my reason to doubt/ There is a case to be made," and "Waving the flag in the last parade" are words of defiance. "Two billion heartbeats and out"? Is that all there is? Is that all a human is? Is death the end or "does it all begin again?" This is some real "Rage against the dying of a light" material. 

In the end though, even this defiance is swallowed by the vastness of infinity. The "Dip your hand..." line is repeated seven times. "God's imagination" three times. The line "All of life's abundance..." is also repeated three times, and it's how the song ends. 

In the first song, it's: "Man plans, and God laughs." In the third, "Man opines, and God sighs." And here, in the fourth song: "Man rails, and God forgives." 

Next Song: Trail of Volcanoes

Sal's Last Song/ Esmerelda's Dream

Sal (and the book and song title say that the young Sal sings these lines, not the older Salvador-- to a mother, a son is always "her baby" regardless of his age) finally arrives home, to his mother's house. His first words to her are to beg forgiveness, and his words reflect Lady Macbeth's: "If I could cleanse these hands, maybe then/ I could start my life again."

His mother responds that he has "come to the end of the Santa Cruz Road." "Cruz" is the Spanish word for "cross"; perhaps she means that he has come down from the cross and that his penance is complete.

But then Salvador says the thing that he has had to say all this time: He owns his guilt. "I and I alone," he repeats four times. "I and I alone must bear the blame/ For the madness that was done/ For the shame." He even absolves the santero (fortune-teller) and his shells. "When the summer night was torn/ By the dagger of the moon/ It was I and I alone."

Esmerelda responds that she "dreamed" of his homecoming, of his face "in the light." "Let me kiss your hands, no more talk about madness." And then, like a good mama, she says, "I've been cooking since morning/ I wanted your first meal at home to be right."

Salvador hands her something: "This is my book. I've written my life story... All the things I did, for which I am sorry." And then his mother says, "It is repentance that makes good from evil." Even if no one else does, or can, she forgives him.

The last song in The Capeman is hers. In it, she tells of a detailed dream. She was sitting in "an outer room of Heaven." She was wearing her usual house dress and watching two angels-- male, soft-spoken, and blonde-- at a distance. She sees a pulpit, a chair, and transparent marble doors. There is a book on which the angels were chronicling Sal's birth. They carried a broken chain, she says, "laid it at my feet and they were gone."

What does it mean? Well, she interrupts the dream recount to ask Sal; "Do you remember [your] first communion?/ All the children with their candles dressed in white/ And once in prison, you asked me for a ribbon/ To mark the pages that you wrote each night/ Do you remember when we went to the santero/ and he said that you would suffer/ He was right." So these are the images from life that she feels are symbolized in the dream.

The two, taken together, seem to refer to the ideas of new chances and new beginnings: a birth, a first communion, a broken chain. 

The angels might symbolize the white-garbed children-- their halos, the candles. She remarks that the angels' hair is "lightened by the sea and sun." This echoes the people, and heavenly sensation, Salvador recalled at the seaside resort of El Malecon.

Their book likely is Sal's book. The empty pulpit might refer to her ex-husband, the fiery preacher. The empty chair may have been the one Salvador has been vacating. 

But she is in the "outer room" of Heaven because she is not dying and so has no reason to enter Heaven itself. The doors are marble and so impenetrable, but clear so that she can see that there is another side. There is hope.

The last things Sal sings are lines from earlier songs. One is, "I believe in the power of Saint Lazarus," who has fulfilled his promise. Now that Sal's soul has thirsted, quenching rains have been provided.

The other is (and the title of the song is the last three words of the line): "Don't tear apart this satin summer night." This was the prayer he expressed when he was young and in love, before all of the trouble started. Lazarus swore that Salvador would be alone until he repented, and he did lose Wahzinak because he had not. Now that he atoned, maybe he will find someone again.

In the previous song (above), he claims that he was responsible "when the summer night was torn." Now he says "Don't tear apart this... summer night." So who is he begging this of now? His mother? St. Lazarus? Or himself-- his own self-destructive nature? Things are finally hopeful again, he says to himself, so don't screw it up!

All of this is captured in the name "Sal," which is not in either of these songs (although it may be in the dialogue). He is not the burdened Salvador or the dreaded Capeman. He is simply, once again, Sal. As in his mother's dream, which re-recorded his birth 40-some years on, he is born again.

[Note to readers: This concludes the songs of The Capeman. Starting with the next post, we will resume discussing the songs from standard albums, starting with the songs from You're the One. Therefore, we will be resuming the usual schedule of one song per week.]

Next Song: That's Where I Belong

Tony Hernandez/ Carlos & Yolanda

Salvador is free, so he is going back to his New York barrio to catch up with the people he has known since he lived there.

First up is the Umbrella Man himself, Tony Hernandez. Hernandez was the one who brought him into the Vampire gang, and the other one who served time for the murders that fateful night.

Tony calls out to Salvador from the darkness with a compliment: "You know, it takes a strong man to survive." This is the same line he used in the song "The Vampires" to entice Salvador into the gang to begin with. Only know does he realize how right he was.

Salvador is glad to see him: "Man, I thought you were dead." Hernandez replies: no, he's "living in the Bronx." Salvador shoots back: "Same thing."

Hernandez-- not that he should, but that he might-- seems to hold no ill will toward Salvador and calls him his "Death Row brother." He is willing to meet him here-- not in the light, as that might tip off the parole board-- but in shadow, if that's what's necessary. When Salvador invites him to join him to see Carlos and Yolanda, Hernandez declines: "I don't like to see nobody, only you." Perhaps their common troubles have made Hernandez feel that Salvador is the only one who could understand him.

Hernandez continues that his father has died, but he has a daughter now-- "it balances," he philosophizes. He adds that he has a job as a janitor at an area hospital: "But there's one stain that don't fade./ You know what I'm talking about, Sal?" Yes. Yes, he does.

He wishes Salvador farewell and good luck with his writing career. Then he adds: "When I look up in the sky above/ It's like an old umbrella with holes." He was once the fearless Umbrella Man. Once. And for what?

Now, Salvador visits Carlos and Yolanda. He tells them he is OK, but "feels like a ghost." Carlos admits that he understands, having been in jail himself, and he wants to be there for Salvador now, the way Yolanda was there for him after his sentence.

Carlos tells Salvador he has his "papers," perhaps those works he wrote in jail. "I wrote those pages.. with blood," Salvador recalls. Carlos says that's good, "That's the stuff that sells." And when Salvador protests that money was not his object, Carols is all practicality: "You got to eat."

Salvador muses that he will never shake the moniker "Capeman," and Carlos soothes: "No one remembers anymore." Of course, as soon as they introduce Salvador to their son, the boy asks: "Are you the Capeman?" "I used to be your father's pal," he side-steps.

Yolanda says he always will be. Salvador, surprisingly, challenges this: "Or, in your mind, was I the only one?" Carlos sighs: "But Sal, it was dark, so long ago, you and Tony..." This implies that Carlos had something to do with Salvador's incarceration, but Yolanda quashes the whole conversation: "What's done is done."

Then, suddenly, comes a man selling raffle tickets-- the prize is a trip to Puerto Rico: "Leave your worries and your kids in the Big Apple/ We may live in New York City/ But it's Puerto Rico where our hearts belong." Really? So the answer was never to have left Puerto Rico for New York to begin with? Now he tells us!

The song begins and ends with a chorus singing, in Spanish, "My liberty/ My freedom, come." But both Hernandez and Carlos refer to the Puerto Rican Day parade that is just ending. Hernandez asks if it's Salvador's first; perhaps they began when he was still in prison. Perhaps they began in reaction to his notoriety, to reclaim some Puerto Rican pride. But Carlos says "The parade is almost over."

This line comes as a relief. There has been so much "parading" and noise and marching and ado in Salvador's life. Even in jail, he was more mobile than most. Perhaps this line means that he can finally welcome his freedom-- to sit still.

The parade is almost over, but is has one more stop. In the next song, Salvador finally reunites with his mother.

Next Songs: Sal's Last Song/ Esmerelda's Dream