The title means "Farewell, Brothers." And this (Track 1 on the soundtrack) is the song of goodbye, when we see, in some detail, young Sal Agron tried and convicted and led away to prison. First, he says goodbye to his "amigos" in the "House of D"... as in "detention."
It starts with the date, the name of the judge... and the observation that non-Hispanic gangs, white and black, "Well, they'd kill you if they could." So yes, his only friends are those who are truly "amigos," to whose language that word belongs, and those whose world he is leaving.
Now, Aurea, Sal's sister, says that they are not alone in their grief. First, "people are suffering all over the world." Then, specifically, "all over the island tonight"-- Manhattan, that is, but perhaps also Puerto Rico. So she recognizes that the cycle of (male) violence has not spared them any more than it has spared the other "mothers" and "sisters" who "weep" and "grieve."
Sal continues his narrative. He felt the hostility aimed at him by the onlookers, to whom he was "Just some spic/ They scrubbed off the sidewalk." And the judge is no less subject to this prejudice, saying: "The electric chair/ For the greasy pair." The media are against him as well: "Guilty in the press/ 'Let the Capeman burn for the murders.'... The newspapers and the TV crews/ Well, they'd kill you if they could."
Well, yes, but isn't he, you know, actually guilty? Didn't he and the Umbrella Man kill those people? Yes, the song implies, but white killers would be seen as just killers, not extra-guilty-- or certainly guilty-- just because of their ethnic background.
Further-- and this point Aurea and Sal state outright-- if the victims had been Hispanic, there might not be as much of an outcry, either: "A Spanish[-speaking] boy could be killed every night of the week/ But just let some white boy die/ And the world goes crazy for... Latin blood." It's not so much that an injustice has been visited on Sal, as much as unnecessary and unwarranted (and, frankly, racist) insults have been added to his sentence.
Sal concludes his story by describing the restraints he is "shackled" with, and the ride to jail in a "black maria" (slang for "police van") through Spanish Harlem. They passed by their friends hanging out "on the corners"-- perhaps to purposely see him off-- and they call out as they pass, "Adios, hermanos." Sal expresses this as "lay[ing] our prayers upon them."
This slides nicely into the next song, an actual prayer. The title means "Jesus Is My Lord." (What seems to be a draft of this song, titled "Cristo Me Todo" is available online; I will note the few lyrical differences between this and the final version.)
Sal is not here; this scene takes place in his stepfather's church, and possibly later at home. We hear the congregation praising Jesus...
...and then Aurea prays. She thanks the Lord for comforting her mother (in the draft, herself as well). And then she thanks the governor (Nelson Rockefeller), for commuting Sal's sentence from death to life imprisonment (in the draft, for hearing "the Lord's voice" to do so.) Bernadette, Sal's girlfriend, also offers a prayer. We learn that First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt also urged clemency, as did the (female) mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico's capital.
But one man is not moved. And that man is the pastor of this church-- Sal's stepfather, Gonzales. He sees all this Earthly mercy as subverting Divine Will: "...in the court of the mighty God/ No man can ever change his sentence/ He (Sal) is a falling angel pitched to burning hell." Further, he says that Sal's crime is no fault of his own-- "I tried to teach him,"-- but that Sal chose to follow the Vampires, "the bats and the vermin of their name." He concludes that Sal has "brought everlasting shame on Puerto Rico." (Literary note: Simon and Wolcott here rhyme "sentence" with "repentence." Nicely done!)
At this, the women turn on Gonzales. Aurea excoriates him: "You heart is blacker than the suit you always wear... [You are] A hypocrite who hides behind the Bible" (and "Bible' is rhymed with "disciple.")
Then, Esmerelda does her daughter one better-- she divorces him: "How can you say such things about my son?... This marriage is done."
Aurea has two last comments: "For three long years, my mother prayed for this to come." (In the draft, it's "one" year. In any case, what "this" is unclear, most likely that Sal's life would be spared.)
She concludes: "We made America the land we call our home/ We still believe in this country" (in the draft, she believes "this is our country.") I am not sure why this is here. She has already thanked the politicians who stood up for Sal, and has not disagreed that the general public and media are generally anti-Hispanic. And it's not as if they would want to go back to Puerto Rico regardless; the economic reasons for their move still stand. Now more than before, in fact, as they will be without Gonzales' income, and they already know what life is like in Puerto Rico with no man's earning power to count on.
Lazarus repeats Bernadette's prayer, and the song ends in a cascade of "Aleluya!" (spelled "Hallelujah" in English).
Sal bids farewell to his "brothers." And, aside from Governor Rockefeller, no man comes to his aid. But he never bids farewell to his sisters. And, it is indeed mostly women who still support and defend him... and save his life.
Next Song: Sunday Afternoon
Showing posts with label government. Show all posts
Showing posts with label government. Show all posts
Monday, August 6, 2012
Monday, May 7, 2012
The Cool, Cool River
For my money, this song is one of Simon's strongest, if not his overall best. It boasts an almost total lack of cliche. It covers many subjects, it moves between poetic and conversational modes smoothly, and it's tantalizingly enigmatic.
What "Moves like a fist through traffic?" Anger, it seems-- symbolized by road rage, and so impatient the song starts with the verb before the noun is even properly introduced.
The urgency of the anger is reflected in the short-u assonance in "shoves/ bump/ momentum/ lump."
"It's just a little lump/ But you feel it" could be a frustrated lump in one's throat, the terrifying lump in a possibly cancerous breast, or the avoided lump in the rug caused by something being "swept under the carpet." It's frightening because it is unidentified.
The anger hides "In the creases and the shadows/ With a rattling, deep emotion." Compare this to the graffiti scrawler in "Poem on the Underground Wall" who "withdraws/ Deeper in the shadows." [emphasis mine]. This anger seethes beneath the surface, trying to claw or gnaw its way out.
But there is a "cooling" force that ranges over this turbulent sea (or, perhaps, troubled water?), this "wild" ocean that is so agitated that it froths "white" waves like a rabid dog. The force is a river that "sweeps" the ocean with its coolness, keeping it in check.
Where is this anger located-- in what person or people? In the ones who have to say "Yes, Boss" to the duplicitous "government handshake." "The crusher of language" is any imperial force that steamrolls the local language with its own; Indians even speak English with a British accent, some 70 years after becoming independent of England.
And who is "Mr. Stillwater," aside from "the face at the edge of the banquet," who keeps his distance and is more interested in surveying the guests than partaking of the fun? He is the Boss, the one who threw the banquet and sits enthroned at its "edge." "Stillwater" may be a reference to the expression "still waters run deep," which usually means "those who speak least think most."
But here, it would mean that the passive face of power is a mask for deep, conspiratorial machinations. Mr. Stillwater controls "the cool, the cool river," which while not technically still (it is "sweeping" the ocean, after all) is yet far stiller than the "wild... ocean" it subjugates.
At this point, the speaker changes tone. The "anger" at the present abates long enough for him to speculate on a more hopeful future: "I believe in the future/ I may live in my car/ My radio tuned to/ The voice of a star." (This was years before cars had satellite radios!)
This verse refers back to two other Simon songs. One is "Cars are Cars" (the verse that starts "I once had a car/ That was more like a home/ Lived in it, loved in it...") The other is "Boy in the Bubble" (the line "The way we look to a distant constellation/ That's dying in the corner of the sky.").
Why is living in his car such a positive idea for the speaker? Because then he is in charge of his own destiny, or at least destination, at all times. And while the speaker in "Boy in the Bubble" doubts the wisdom of seeking solace in the heavens or outer space, the speaker here seems willing to try. It couldn't be worse!
Then we have two images of light in the distance. One is "the break of dawn" (I did say an almost total lack of cliche... although "bark" and "break" echo each other), when one imagines a thin filament of sunlight on the margin of the horizon. The other is the phenomenon of the distant storm, when one can see the lighting trimming the clouds' edges, but neither hear the thunder nor feel the rain.
"These old hopes and fears/ Still at my side" recalls the song "Graceland," with its image of his "travelling companions," in the passenger seat at his side, being "ghosts and empty sockets." The light, while visible, is still too distant, flickering, and thin to bring the hope of having his hopes realized.
OK, back to the "anger." It is still unhealed. But now it is so buried that it cannot be detected (the image seems to be of one trying to pass a weapon through a security system, or too dejected to even try)... isolated and blind as a "a mole in a motel".... and so willing to subjugate itself to the will of the powers that be that light passes right through it as if it had no substance, "a slide in a slide projector."
This is anger deeply internalized. It is so profound, it has altered its host's DNA and made him almost a ghost of himself. One thinks of Kafka's Joseph K, Orwell's Winston Smith, Bradbury's Guy Montag, and mostly Ellison's Invisible Man.
Now we learn something more about the anger. It was not simply a feeling of having been wronged or denied. It was "the rage of love." It was rage on behalf of a purer emotion. It wasn't baseless, but based in the sense that what was should be again, and that if it wasn't for the Mr. Stillwaters of the world, could yet be. The symbol of that hope is-- must be-- God.
And so instead of shoving its way through traffic like a "fist" that clenches only itself, the hand now clasps its partner, the other hand... in prayer. "These prayers are/ The constant road across the wilderness," just as they were for the Hebrews after the Exodus. Just as they were for the African Americans in the US South, whose songs of protest were prayers like "Go Down, Moses."
"These prayers are the memory of God." This last phrase is repeated, perhaps so that both of its meanings are considered. One is the human remembrance of God as an idea, once thought and now called back to mind. The other is God's own memory; before the Exodus, the Bible says that God "remembered" the Jewish people (Ex. 2:24) and arrived to redeem them. The prayers are things in God's own memory.
Now the note of hope is much more... hopeful. Rather than settling for the physical freedom of living on the road, the speaker dares to image a freedom such as FDR did-- freedom of speech and worship, freedom from want and fear.
The light appears again, dancing on the edges of horizons and thunderheads. But now the "streets... Send their battered dreams to heaven." Simon spoke of such before, in "American Tune": "I don't know a soul who's not been battered... a dream that's not been shattered" [emphasis mine]. The dreams, battered as they are, now have somewhere to go.
And who is "the mother’s restless son"? Possibly the one from "Mother and Child Reunion" or "Save the Life of My Child." Possibly Jesus, a "son" who dwells in "heaven" (and who is "restless" in that he is no longer dead, also urged to action by injustice); this is less likely in that none of the printed sources capitalize the words "mother," "son," or even "heaven."
More likely, this is every mother's son. Mostly likely, the one who has been angry this whole time and now realizes that his anger is wasted. It made him destructive, then it made him disappear. Now, he has turned to prayer and started focusing "inward."
He is now a "witness," in that he has seen that no matter how hard the ocean rages, it cannot overcome the chilling effect of the river. Yet, he is a "warrior," who will not retreat.
He has moved through the various aspects (probably a better word than "stages," which implies a sequence) of grief. He has experienced Anger (moving like a fist), Depression (living like a mole in a motel), Denial (living like a slide in a slide projector), and even Bargaining ("Yes, Boss").
Now, he has arrived at Acceptance: “Hard times? I’m used to them./ The speeding planet burns? I’m used to that." He realizes that this is the way it has always been for most people: "My life’s so common it disappears.”
And then, the grieving begins: "Sometimes even music/ Cannot substitute for tears." He must mourn the loss that certain hope will likely never come to pass. His people will never be totally free.
But maybe the way to deal with the idea that things will never be perfect, that the powerful will always subjugate the weak, is not to seek to overthrow this regime, only to see it replaced with the next.
Maybe the way to be free from fear and want is just to fear nothing and want nothing. To know that no one can ever chain your thoughts, steal your prayers, silence your music, or own your tears. And so, are you not already free?
Let them have their river, since it pleases them to. You can have the rest of the ocean.
Next song: Spirit Voices
What "Moves like a fist through traffic?" Anger, it seems-- symbolized by road rage, and so impatient the song starts with the verb before the noun is even properly introduced.
The urgency of the anger is reflected in the short-u assonance in "shoves/ bump/ momentum/ lump."
"It's just a little lump/ But you feel it" could be a frustrated lump in one's throat, the terrifying lump in a possibly cancerous breast, or the avoided lump in the rug caused by something being "swept under the carpet." It's frightening because it is unidentified.
The anger hides "In the creases and the shadows/ With a rattling, deep emotion." Compare this to the graffiti scrawler in "Poem on the Underground Wall" who "withdraws/ Deeper in the shadows." [emphasis mine]. This anger seethes beneath the surface, trying to claw or gnaw its way out.
But there is a "cooling" force that ranges over this turbulent sea (or, perhaps, troubled water?), this "wild" ocean that is so agitated that it froths "white" waves like a rabid dog. The force is a river that "sweeps" the ocean with its coolness, keeping it in check.
Where is this anger located-- in what person or people? In the ones who have to say "Yes, Boss" to the duplicitous "government handshake." "The crusher of language" is any imperial force that steamrolls the local language with its own; Indians even speak English with a British accent, some 70 years after becoming independent of England.
And who is "Mr. Stillwater," aside from "the face at the edge of the banquet," who keeps his distance and is more interested in surveying the guests than partaking of the fun? He is the Boss, the one who threw the banquet and sits enthroned at its "edge." "Stillwater" may be a reference to the expression "still waters run deep," which usually means "those who speak least think most."
But here, it would mean that the passive face of power is a mask for deep, conspiratorial machinations. Mr. Stillwater controls "the cool, the cool river," which while not technically still (it is "sweeping" the ocean, after all) is yet far stiller than the "wild... ocean" it subjugates.
At this point, the speaker changes tone. The "anger" at the present abates long enough for him to speculate on a more hopeful future: "I believe in the future/ I may live in my car/ My radio tuned to/ The voice of a star." (This was years before cars had satellite radios!)
This verse refers back to two other Simon songs. One is "Cars are Cars" (the verse that starts "I once had a car/ That was more like a home/ Lived in it, loved in it...") The other is "Boy in the Bubble" (the line "The way we look to a distant constellation/ That's dying in the corner of the sky.").
Why is living in his car such a positive idea for the speaker? Because then he is in charge of his own destiny, or at least destination, at all times. And while the speaker in "Boy in the Bubble" doubts the wisdom of seeking solace in the heavens or outer space, the speaker here seems willing to try. It couldn't be worse!
Then we have two images of light in the distance. One is "the break of dawn" (I did say an almost total lack of cliche... although "bark" and "break" echo each other), when one imagines a thin filament of sunlight on the margin of the horizon. The other is the phenomenon of the distant storm, when one can see the lighting trimming the clouds' edges, but neither hear the thunder nor feel the rain.
"These old hopes and fears/ Still at my side" recalls the song "Graceland," with its image of his "travelling companions," in the passenger seat at his side, being "ghosts and empty sockets." The light, while visible, is still too distant, flickering, and thin to bring the hope of having his hopes realized.
OK, back to the "anger." It is still unhealed. But now it is so buried that it cannot be detected (the image seems to be of one trying to pass a weapon through a security system, or too dejected to even try)... isolated and blind as a "a mole in a motel".... and so willing to subjugate itself to the will of the powers that be that light passes right through it as if it had no substance, "a slide in a slide projector."
This is anger deeply internalized. It is so profound, it has altered its host's DNA and made him almost a ghost of himself. One thinks of Kafka's Joseph K, Orwell's Winston Smith, Bradbury's Guy Montag, and mostly Ellison's Invisible Man.
Now we learn something more about the anger. It was not simply a feeling of having been wronged or denied. It was "the rage of love." It was rage on behalf of a purer emotion. It wasn't baseless, but based in the sense that what was should be again, and that if it wasn't for the Mr. Stillwaters of the world, could yet be. The symbol of that hope is-- must be-- God.
And so instead of shoving its way through traffic like a "fist" that clenches only itself, the hand now clasps its partner, the other hand... in prayer. "These prayers are/ The constant road across the wilderness," just as they were for the Hebrews after the Exodus. Just as they were for the African Americans in the US South, whose songs of protest were prayers like "Go Down, Moses."
"These prayers are the memory of God." This last phrase is repeated, perhaps so that both of its meanings are considered. One is the human remembrance of God as an idea, once thought and now called back to mind. The other is God's own memory; before the Exodus, the Bible says that God "remembered" the Jewish people (Ex. 2:24) and arrived to redeem them. The prayers are things in God's own memory.
Now the note of hope is much more... hopeful. Rather than settling for the physical freedom of living on the road, the speaker dares to image a freedom such as FDR did-- freedom of speech and worship, freedom from want and fear.
The light appears again, dancing on the edges of horizons and thunderheads. But now the "streets... Send their battered dreams to heaven." Simon spoke of such before, in "American Tune": "I don't know a soul who's not been battered... a dream that's not been shattered" [emphasis mine]. The dreams, battered as they are, now have somewhere to go.
And who is "the mother’s restless son"? Possibly the one from "Mother and Child Reunion" or "Save the Life of My Child." Possibly Jesus, a "son" who dwells in "heaven" (and who is "restless" in that he is no longer dead, also urged to action by injustice); this is less likely in that none of the printed sources capitalize the words "mother," "son," or even "heaven."
More likely, this is every mother's son. Mostly likely, the one who has been angry this whole time and now realizes that his anger is wasted. It made him destructive, then it made him disappear. Now, he has turned to prayer and started focusing "inward."
He is now a "witness," in that he has seen that no matter how hard the ocean rages, it cannot overcome the chilling effect of the river. Yet, he is a "warrior," who will not retreat.
He has moved through the various aspects (probably a better word than "stages," which implies a sequence) of grief. He has experienced Anger (moving like a fist), Depression (living like a mole in a motel), Denial (living like a slide in a slide projector), and even Bargaining ("Yes, Boss").
Now, he has arrived at Acceptance: “Hard times? I’m used to them./ The speeding planet burns? I’m used to that." He realizes that this is the way it has always been for most people: "My life’s so common it disappears.”
And then, the grieving begins: "Sometimes even music/ Cannot substitute for tears." He must mourn the loss that certain hope will likely never come to pass. His people will never be totally free.
But maybe the way to deal with the idea that things will never be perfect, that the powerful will always subjugate the weak, is not to seek to overthrow this regime, only to see it replaced with the next.
Maybe the way to be free from fear and want is just to fear nothing and want nothing. To know that no one can ever chain your thoughts, steal your prayers, silence your music, or own your tears. And so, are you not already free?
Let them have their river, since it pleases them to. You can have the rest of the ocean.
Next song: Spirit Voices
Monday, March 26, 2012
Can't Run But
The song begins, uncharacteristically, with its chorus. The speaker seems frustrated with his progress, even acknowledging his limitations in this area: "I can’t run but/ I can walk much faster than this."
Then come three seemingly unrelated verses. The first is about the nuclear power plant disaster in Chernobyl, Ukraine, in April of 1986. It was one of the worst disasters in the history of such facilities, contaminating wide swaths of populated territory with toxic radiation. It was unequaled until the tsumani/earthquake-provoked nuclear catastrophe in Japan in 2011.
The verse summarizes the event's, well, fallout. The "rain" was "new" in nature due to the high levels of radioactivity, and everything from "trees" to "umbrellas" were used to shield the populace from it. Everything had to be analyzed for radioactive contamination, from the "soil" of what had been a Soviet breadbasket region, to the "food"-- now more "contemplated" than eagerly consumed-- to the "water" that had to be purified. Boiling water was supposed to free it of bacteria; if anything the radiation would have taken care of that, as radiation is used to kill, for example, cancer cells. Meanwhile, I doubt even boiling temperatures would affect uranium or plutonium radioactivity, given how this was itself spread by burning smoke.
The picture is one of overall incompetence, and the government's inept attempts to cover it up. The idea that umbrellas and boiling water would protect against nuclear fallout reeks of the same population-pacifying pablum as the films American schoolchildren used to watch, explaining to them that in the event of an atomic-bomb attack, they should "duck and cover" under their flimsy desks.
Next, the song turns to a description of the speaker's dream, possibly about his lover. It may have been brought on by drinking, given the mention of "bottles." (In the In the Blue Light version, the line "in the bottles and bones of the night" became "after the long goodnight." I feel this line is weaker and more cliche. Also, it says that the relationship was a desirable one, so why then afterward dream about pain?)
In the dream, he feels "a pain in [his] shoulder blade." His guesses? "...a pencil point? A love bite?" Both seem unlikely-- why would someone stab someone else with a sharpened pencil? And aren't "love bites" ("hickeys," in American slang) usually given higher, around the neck (and does that mean people lied about hickeys by saying a vampire had bitten them?) The two guesses seem to equate the pain of writing with the pain of love. And why the "shoulder blade"? Maybe his subconscious is telling him that he has been stabbed in the back. Perhaps he senses some infidelity or other betrayal. (Or maybe he fell asleep while writing and was jolted awake when he rolled over onto the pencil.)
Also in the dream, there is another couple: "A couple was rubbing against us/ Rubbing and doing that new dance." So first, we realize that the initial couple-- the speaker and his lover-- were dancing, in the dream. Then, this other couple is not accidentally brushing against them as they shimmy on the dance floor-- the word "rubbing" is used twice. In the dream imagery, this is to show that this couple is somehow connected with them.
My feeling is that they are them-- a manifestation of this same couple as they could be. They are doing a "new dance" and so are "hip" and in sync with the times. The man is somehow both formal and casual at once-- "wearing a jacket and jeans"-- elegant, yet relaxed (ostensibly a combination the speaker has not himself mastered). The woman is "laughing in advance," probably in happy anticipation of where the night would lead (ahem). He feels this other couple could be what they themselves ought to be.
Taken together, the two verses are images of frustration. In one, a country believes itself to be advanced and sophisticated, only to learn it is not, when it counts. In the next, a man dreams about his ideal relationship and realizes that his real one falls painfully short. Also in both, someone realizes he is being told something less than the full truth, and is being merely appeased instead of actually helped.
The last verse is as free-flowing as the "river" that forms its thin cohesion. The verse begins with the image of the river winding, then it getting "wound around a heart." Is the river somehow emotionally important to the speaker, that his heart is wrapped up in it? (In the In the Blue Light version, this verse is introduced by the words "The legend is," so perhaps the river/heart image comes from a folktale.)
The noose of the river tightens, but the heart is not strangled; instead, the river breaks-- its "waters part." The image of parting waters immediately calls to mind the parting of the Red Sea in the Exodus story of the Bible (although the river that turned back on itself to let the Israelites across was the Jordan, as told in The Book of Joshua).
However, the term "muddy waters" recalls something else: iconic bluesman McKinley "Muddy Waters" Morganfield. This is not an accident; the next image is of a "blues band" arriving at the banks of this river. (Performing a song with a "Muddy Waters part"?)
Last comes a dig at the music industry: "The music suffers/ The music business thrives." The idea is that the music was getting worse and worse, while the studio coffers overflowed more and more (this was before Napster, of course.) Now, the Muddy Waters story is a typical one of musicians suffering at the hands of rapacious studios, since the start of the recording industry. But--the implication is-- at least the music itself was worth stealing back then.
In the In the Blue Light version of the lyrics, however, the blues band has become a more au-courant "D.J." And, instead of a slap at the music industry, we get this review of this D.J.'s performance: "The sub-bass feels like an earthquake/ The top hand cuts like knives." Perhaps Simon wanted to seem more "with it," or perhaps taking shots at the music industry just felt like it took the song in a mean-spirited direction.
This last verse is a free-associative stream-of-consciousness. A river winds... it is wound around something... its waters are muddy... Muddy Waters played the blues... Muddy Waters is from Mississippi... the Mississippi is a river nicknamed "The Big Muddy"... the blues are played all along the river (there is a song titled "The Big Muddy," about the river)... the blues (the emotion, not the music) were made worse by the very industry that (like a river) carried the blues (the music) to the world. Compare this to the headline in the satirical Onion newspaper: "Affluent White Man Enjoys, Causes the Blues."
Why are things not better? Why, if you want to provide power for thousands, must you risk poisoning them with it? Why can't we be like that happy, dancing, laughing couple over there? Why does the music business succeed by destroying the very thing that sustains it?
By now, bemoans the speaker, I expect human progress to be slow. But slow is one thing-- I could even walk faster than this!
Musical Note:
On guitar is J.J. Cale, a bluesy performer from Oklahoma (not to be confused with the Velvet Underground's John Cale). He returns later in the album as well.
Cale's songs have been covered by Eric Clapton, Kansas, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Captain Beefheart, Carlos Santana, and Widespread Panic.
Next Song: The Coast
Then come three seemingly unrelated verses. The first is about the nuclear power plant disaster in Chernobyl, Ukraine, in April of 1986. It was one of the worst disasters in the history of such facilities, contaminating wide swaths of populated territory with toxic radiation. It was unequaled until the tsumani/earthquake-provoked nuclear catastrophe in Japan in 2011.
The verse summarizes the event's, well, fallout. The "rain" was "new" in nature due to the high levels of radioactivity, and everything from "trees" to "umbrellas" were used to shield the populace from it. Everything had to be analyzed for radioactive contamination, from the "soil" of what had been a Soviet breadbasket region, to the "food"-- now more "contemplated" than eagerly consumed-- to the "water" that had to be purified. Boiling water was supposed to free it of bacteria; if anything the radiation would have taken care of that, as radiation is used to kill, for example, cancer cells. Meanwhile, I doubt even boiling temperatures would affect uranium or plutonium radioactivity, given how this was itself spread by burning smoke.
The picture is one of overall incompetence, and the government's inept attempts to cover it up. The idea that umbrellas and boiling water would protect against nuclear fallout reeks of the same population-pacifying pablum as the films American schoolchildren used to watch, explaining to them that in the event of an atomic-bomb attack, they should "duck and cover" under their flimsy desks.
Next, the song turns to a description of the speaker's dream, possibly about his lover. It may have been brought on by drinking, given the mention of "bottles." (In the In the Blue Light version, the line "in the bottles and bones of the night" became "after the long goodnight." I feel this line is weaker and more cliche. Also, it says that the relationship was a desirable one, so why then afterward dream about pain?)
In the dream, he feels "a pain in [his] shoulder blade." His guesses? "...a pencil point? A love bite?" Both seem unlikely-- why would someone stab someone else with a sharpened pencil? And aren't "love bites" ("hickeys," in American slang) usually given higher, around the neck (and does that mean people lied about hickeys by saying a vampire had bitten them?) The two guesses seem to equate the pain of writing with the pain of love. And why the "shoulder blade"? Maybe his subconscious is telling him that he has been stabbed in the back. Perhaps he senses some infidelity or other betrayal. (Or maybe he fell asleep while writing and was jolted awake when he rolled over onto the pencil.)
Also in the dream, there is another couple: "A couple was rubbing against us/ Rubbing and doing that new dance." So first, we realize that the initial couple-- the speaker and his lover-- were dancing, in the dream. Then, this other couple is not accidentally brushing against them as they shimmy on the dance floor-- the word "rubbing" is used twice. In the dream imagery, this is to show that this couple is somehow connected with them.
My feeling is that they are them-- a manifestation of this same couple as they could be. They are doing a "new dance" and so are "hip" and in sync with the times. The man is somehow both formal and casual at once-- "wearing a jacket and jeans"-- elegant, yet relaxed (ostensibly a combination the speaker has not himself mastered). The woman is "laughing in advance," probably in happy anticipation of where the night would lead (ahem). He feels this other couple could be what they themselves ought to be.
Taken together, the two verses are images of frustration. In one, a country believes itself to be advanced and sophisticated, only to learn it is not, when it counts. In the next, a man dreams about his ideal relationship and realizes that his real one falls painfully short. Also in both, someone realizes he is being told something less than the full truth, and is being merely appeased instead of actually helped.
The last verse is as free-flowing as the "river" that forms its thin cohesion. The verse begins with the image of the river winding, then it getting "wound around a heart." Is the river somehow emotionally important to the speaker, that his heart is wrapped up in it? (In the In the Blue Light version, this verse is introduced by the words "The legend is," so perhaps the river/heart image comes from a folktale.)
The noose of the river tightens, but the heart is not strangled; instead, the river breaks-- its "waters part." The image of parting waters immediately calls to mind the parting of the Red Sea in the Exodus story of the Bible (although the river that turned back on itself to let the Israelites across was the Jordan, as told in The Book of Joshua).
However, the term "muddy waters" recalls something else: iconic bluesman McKinley "Muddy Waters" Morganfield. This is not an accident; the next image is of a "blues band" arriving at the banks of this river. (Performing a song with a "Muddy Waters part"?)
Last comes a dig at the music industry: "The music suffers/ The music business thrives." The idea is that the music was getting worse and worse, while the studio coffers overflowed more and more (this was before Napster, of course.) Now, the Muddy Waters story is a typical one of musicians suffering at the hands of rapacious studios, since the start of the recording industry. But--the implication is-- at least the music itself was worth stealing back then.
In the In the Blue Light version of the lyrics, however, the blues band has become a more au-courant "D.J." And, instead of a slap at the music industry, we get this review of this D.J.'s performance: "The sub-bass feels like an earthquake/ The top hand cuts like knives." Perhaps Simon wanted to seem more "with it," or perhaps taking shots at the music industry just felt like it took the song in a mean-spirited direction.
This last verse is a free-associative stream-of-consciousness. A river winds... it is wound around something... its waters are muddy... Muddy Waters played the blues... Muddy Waters is from Mississippi... the Mississippi is a river nicknamed "The Big Muddy"... the blues are played all along the river (there is a song titled "The Big Muddy," about the river)... the blues (the emotion, not the music) were made worse by the very industry that (like a river) carried the blues (the music) to the world. Compare this to the headline in the satirical Onion newspaper: "Affluent White Man Enjoys, Causes the Blues."
Why are things not better? Why, if you want to provide power for thousands, must you risk poisoning them with it? Why can't we be like that happy, dancing, laughing couple over there? Why does the music business succeed by destroying the very thing that sustains it?
By now, bemoans the speaker, I expect human progress to be slow. But slow is one thing-- I could even walk faster than this!
Musical Note:
On guitar is J.J. Cale, a bluesy performer from Oklahoma (not to be confused with the Velvet Underground's John Cale). He returns later in the album as well.
Cale's songs have been covered by Eric Clapton, Kansas, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Captain Beefheart, Carlos Santana, and Widespread Panic.
Next Song: The Coast
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