The Riverbank

The widely reported figure of "22 veteran suicides a day" is an overstatement, with regard to young or recent veterans. Among veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars in the early 21st Century, it's about 1 a day. That's still far too many, of course. Each such death sends a shockwave through its community, and this song is the story of one such impact.

But the song takes a moment to reveal its story. It starts with a startling nighttime phone call. The news is sad, and the recipient does not go back to sleep, but prays all night instead.

There was a "price already paid," but now on top of that price comes an awful tax: "A son gone to the grave." Nothing is sadder than outliving one's own children, we are told.

And so there is a memorial service, a "sorrowful parade," to be made to the riverbank.

This son was highly thought of. The high school and police station have shut down for the day so the entire town can attend the service. There is crying and hugging and a choir.

Now we get more information: "Army dude." So, the family lost a son in battle. How terrible-- yet we agree this is noble, and a price both the family and solider were willing to pay.

Except, no. That "price" was already paid. He was gone from his home and family, he was in harm's way, he lost friends to his enemies... he paid his dues.

So, if he didn't die in battle, he died after he came home? Oh, what a horrible irony. It must have been a car crash or something.

No, not that either: "Nowhere to run/ Nowhere to turn to/ He turns to the gun."

It was suicide. Brought on by PTSD, the psychological scars of war or other trauma.

"It's a cross" to bear. It's a "stone," a weight he carried. "It's a fragment of bone," which could be what he saw of a friend, or himself. And he found no one else who could help him carry this weight, or relieve him of it.

The song pivots again to the mourners: "It's a long walk home/ From the riverbank."

And then back to the victim. Surely, we can all understand the veteran's insomnia, his "nightmares" and their incessant reminders that "life is cheap."

We end with the "Army  dude's mama." She is "limp as a rag." Among her thoughts must be: "All these people, mourning now... where were they when my son was hurting?"

She is holding a flag presented to her by the Army, folded neatly into a triangle. She is walking home, past the car "dealerships and farms."

And..."Then a triangle of light/ Kissed the red and blue and white/ Along the riverbank."

What might this be? Lights, from a spotlight down to a laser pointer, are usually round, not triangular. Was this a Heavenly light? Is the triangle a reference to the Trinity? I looked up the expression "triangle of light" but found nothing useful. I admit this image has me stumped. (NOTE: A comment by a reader gave me an idea of what it might be, weeks after I had posted this. It could be the sunlight refracting off the triangular, clear case the folded flag is kept in, once it was removed from the casket and folded. See the comments for a more detailed explanation.)

Whatever it is in specific, it is meant to be a calming, reassuring gesture, judging by the word "kissed." (In "Sound of Silence," Simon writes of eyes being "stabbed by a neon light," quite the opposite effect of light.)

In "Wartime Prayers," Simon discusses the kinds of prayers the mothers of soldiers might make. Surely many pray for their sons to come back, and come back whole if possible. But how many pray that their sons, and now daughters, come back mentally whole?

(This is far from Simon's first song about suicide, but his first in a while. Also it is not the first to use the imagery of a "riverbank;" that was also in the song "Can't Run But.")

How abysmally sad, to have a war kill your son even after he'd survived it. Some kinds of shrapnel just don't show up on any MRI.


Musical Note:
Flamenco music was a major inspiration for Simon on this album, especially the rhythmic stamping and clapping. One of his percussionists, Jamey Haddad, introduced him to a Boston flamenco troupe. They ended up recording the basic rhythm tracks for four of the songs: this one, "The Werewolf," the title track "Stranger to Stranger,"  and the first song to debut from the album, "Wristband."

In fact, the song intentionally uses the same clapping rhythm, and some of the same bass lines, as "Wristband."


Next Song: Insomniac's Lullaby

Once Upon a Time There Was an Ocean

Donovan, seeming to quote the I Ching or some such mystical source, wrote: "First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is." 

Simon opens this song with "Once upon a time there was an ocean/ But now it's a mountain range." But Simon seems to be inspired more by the history of geological processes. The fossils of giant sea creatures have been found in what are now deserts, and layers of silt of varying thickness are exposed in the striations of cliff-sides that were clearly once river beds. This evidence proves that geothermal bursts, tectonic shifts and glacial plowing have reshaped our planet dozens of times over... and continue to. Even Hawaii is really a mountain range, if you ignore the ocean covering most of the slopes.

But all of that is a prelude to Simon's theme: "Nothing is different, but everything's changed."

The speaker this time is clearly not Simon, but someone with a "dead-end job" that he "think[s] about quitting every day of the week." The "view from [his] window" is "brown and... bleak," just like his outlook in general. "When am I gonna get outta here?" he wonders aloud.

He longs for something to shock him out of his doldrums, perhaps a winning "lottery ticket," which will allow him to live life to the fullest, to "shake every limb in the Garden of Eden."

And here, he ties in his geological metaphor: "Once upon a time, I was an ocean"--  a limitless, wild person-- "But now I'm a mountain range"-- solid and stolid. "Something unstoppable," as irrefutable as a glacier or volcano, put him here, and here he is.

He prides himself on his ability to accept anything, even a simple life, with apartment so small he calls it a "room," and no stove, just a "hot plate." "But I'm easy," he boasts, "I can drift with the drift." This sounds like snow, not a rigid mountain. Still, he has cast himself to fate. It's brown and bleak, but oh well. He's not stuck in a rut, he consoles himself, he's down in the groove!

It's not like "home" was better, anyway: "Never going home again... I never think about home."

So he is both miserable and blase. Since he can't change anything, he takes pride is being able to accept his lot and not rail uselessly about it, even if he does grumble.

"But then comes a letter from home." Well, it's not a lottery ticket, but it does have an affect. "The handwriting's fragile and strange." Once again, "something unstoppable" has been set into motion.

From the evidence, that something is death. And, once again, "nothing is different, but everything's changed." His parent, or whomever, was dead to him anyway ("I never think about home") so his life has not been affected in any outward, visible way. But yet...

How do we know that he goes back home to attend a funeral? We see "stained glass" (the website has a typo-- "stain glass"-- but the liner notes have the correct term, as does the Lyrics book), so it's probably a church. "The frayed cuffs and collars" would be on a worn suit, such as one worn by the deceased. These were "mended by halos of golden thread," calling to mind angels. Oh, and there is a "choir," singing "hymns."

And then this pretty line: "All the... family names/ Came fluttering down leaves of emotion," giving the image of a tree (a family tree?) losing its leaves in autumn. We imagine our speaker, sitting in church at this funeral, hearing the songs and eulogies drifting down upon him from the pulpit. "Leaves" also means "pages" of a book, and at funerals, "family" members in attendance sign their "names" in a guestbook.

The choir is singing a hymn we have never heard of, titled "Once Upon a Time There Was an Ocean." It is highly unlikely that a church where Creationism is preached is going to present a sacred song about plate tectonics and the Pangea Theory. So we must assume that our speaker hears something in this music that speaks to him, and this is how it lands on his ears.

Also, instead of the imposing, overwhelming line "something unstoppable set into motion," we have the lyrical, gentle "fluttering down as leaves of emotion" (another website typo; it omits the word "as"). Even so, the almost imperceptible touch of a falling "leaf" seems to have turned him back from a "mountain" to an "ocean," or at least nudged him in that direction.

He still has the same job now, when he leaves the church after the funeral. He is still going back to his "room" and his "hot plate" after the burial. Even his clothes are the same as when he arrived. So "nothing is different," right?

Yes, except for the fact that "everything's changed."

We don't know what happens next. We don't know if he goes home, looks up the classifieds, and finds a new job that gets him a better apartment. We don't know if he stops "drift[ing] with the drift" and becomes more of a purposeful "ocean"  with forceful tides. For all we know, he stays back in his "home" town and reconnects with his family.

But we do know that the experience was a moving one, and that he was moved.

This song is sort of a companion to the previous track. In "Another Galaxy," an impending wedding spurs a sudden movement. The bride was moving too fast in a direction she didn't like, and jerked the wheel, only to speed in another direction. Here, a funeral shakes a man out of his rut. He was not driving at all, but now he is.

There is a term in communications theory: "speech act." A "speech act" is something that happens only because we say it has. Such instances are actually quite common: a business transaction, a speeding ticket, a graduation, a wedding, the naming of a baby, the inauguration of a president. Nothing is different afterward-- we are biologically the same as a minute before-- but since we all say and accept that everything has changed, it has. We behave differently. There are even legal consequences.

This is a great part of what it means to be human. That we can change completely, yet show no change outwardly. Donovan sings, in the same song as above, "Caterpillar sheds its skin to find the butterfly within." Well, we humans don't need such obvious shows of change. We can turn from mountains to oceans while sitting still, listening to a song.

Next Song: That's Me.