Insomniac's Lullaby

The song is about a lullaby, but we have to get to that in a minute. Because the song, while about a lullaby, is itself a prayer.

After all, it starts: "Oh Lord," and anything that starts that way is a prayer. And what is the insomniac's prayer? "Oh Lord, don't keep me up all night."

It'd be a lonesome vigil. The only other one up would be the Moon, what that only has "desolate eyes." And to journey all those "miles [to] the sunrise" with only such "sockets" as "travelling companions" [OK, so that's from "Graceland," but still] would be too much to bear.

But the darkness "invites" a tune. Simon has been personifying Darkness since he called it his "old friend" all those decades ago, and maybe now we finally know why they are so long acquainted. After all, Darkness would be an insomniac's friend, or at least a familiar face. Anyway, the tune the darkness invites seems to be this very tune.

While he is awake, he hears a "siren" sound "in the distance," but instead of being upset by it-- after all, it means someone is in trouble-- he calls it a "song." To let us know he is being facetious, he complains that the sound "rattles the old window frame."

And then, something unexpected happens: "Gradually, angels reveal their existence." So, they were there the whole time, only now they are letting themselves be seen. The fact that he does not elaborate about these divine visitors, as the listener might expect, leads us to believe that the thin wisps of light that must seep into his dark room resemble angels. "There's nothing and no one to blame," he says, worried that we might accuse him of abusing alcohol (etc.), or having a tumor, what with him seeing angels and all. Maybe he could see what was really causing these angelic apparitions if he put on his glasses..? Lack of sleep can cause hallucinations, after all.

Even if this is a prayer, these visions are not angels. If they were, the speaker would not be talking so much about being alone, as he does before when he says the "desolate" Moon is his only companion, and later when he... well, let's get to that part right now.

Now comes the prayer again. This time, the thing he fears is not the daunting distance until dawn but coldness of some sort also lasting a too-long time: "winter that lasts until June." This may be the lack of human companionship... at least the sort that is awake. So again, he's alone, with no angelic company. (Also, Simon just rhymed "Moon" with "tune" and "June" so slyly we didn't notice.)

Now, two choruses and a verse into the song, we finally learn what the Insomniac's Lullaby is. It's a song that turns out to be one word long:

"Sleep."

Well, of course. What else do you need?

The next verse seems to be about death. "They say all roads lead to a river." While I have never heard "they" say any such thing (all roads lead to Rome, I thought) it is true that every major city is built around a river-- every city more than 100 years old, at least. A river was necessary as a source of water, but also transportation of people and goods.

But, "they" supposedly continue, "one day/ The river comes up to your door." Well, there are plenty of places that don't flood, so this must mean something else. What comes to every door? Only, as Franklin said, "death and taxes."

Hearing this axiom, the speaker asks, "How will the builder of bridges deliver us all/ To the faraway shore?" This is less sincere doubt than simple amazement. When watching a magic trick or feat of athletic prowess, we mutter, "How does he do it?" but only rhetorically.

This is a much nicer metaphor for death than some hooded skeleton reaping our souls with a huge blade, isn't it? A walk across a bridge, is all death is. (Or, if you're Jacob or Robert Plant, you may prefer a ladder or stairway.)

In the next iteration of the chorus, the speaker again asks for sleep, but now so that he can avoid having to face "questions [he doesn't] understand" and "wrestle [his] fears." This is completely understandable. Who wants to do that, all night?

"The sound in my ears/ Is the music that's sweeping the land/ The Insomniac's Lullaby." Maybe the "lullaby" is the agglomeration of sounds coming from everyone insomniac's radio and stereo. Or maybe it's his own radio, and he's listening to contemporary pop (on his headset, so as not to wake his wife) for inspiration. After all, a musician likes to stay current.

Finally, he arrives at dawn, the "light from the East." It is "soft as a rose," and that color, too. "As if all is forgiven," meaning that the questions and fears of the night are resolved, or at least feel that way.

"Wolves become sheep" at this time. The nocturnal animals, like wolves and burglars, are replaced by pleasanter ones, like sheep and ice-cream truck drivers. Also, the menacing gray clouds of night are supplanted by white, woolly ones.

It might be a reference to his song "Pigs Sheep and Wolves," but more likely it's a circling-back to the "Werewolf" of the opening track.

Alternately, one famous sleep aid is "counting sheep"; the idea of imagining sheep jumping a fence, and counting them doing so, is said to help one drift off. This connection of sheep and sleep is possible because of how the song ends: "We are who we are/ or we're not" but either way, "At least we'll eventually all fall asleep."

Like any good bedtime story, the song-- and the album-- end with a yawn and a "nighty-night."

Is the song about death? Is "we'll all fall asleep" about... the Big Sleep, as it is in Hamlet? I don't think so. There are no insomniacs when it comes to death, no "in-necr-iacs." Some people complain, "I just can't sleep," but no one complains, "I just can't die." So this is about sleep, and to the degree it is about the lack thereof, it is about the resolution of that issue.

It's also a very pretty song.

Simon has recently stated that he is retiring from music. If he is, he has earned it. But I can't imagine he is. Music has been his entire life. Now, he is 75. He just finished working on an album and touring the world in support of it. He's tired, is all, and he's talking like a tired person. Once he has a vacation, I bet we'll get another album-- or two-- out of him yet.

I just think that if he stops making music, he'll die. And he isn't ready to do that yet.


MUSICAL NOTE: Bobby McFerrin does the background vocals. In pop circles, he is considered a one-hit wonder because of the dippy-- but perfectly so-- song "Don't Worry, Be Happy." In jazz circles, he is considered a living legend and one of the greatest vocalists ever to live, able to create whole arrangements with just his voice and body slaps. In classical circles, he is that fun conductor who sings the notes along with the instruments and harmonizes with them. Just go on YouTube, type in his name, and enjoy.

Some of the instruments were invented by a man named Harry Partch, who could hear 43 tones to an octave; most mortals can hear only 12. So had to invent instruments to make those sounds. They have names like: cloud chamber bowls, sonic canons, kithara and the chromelodeon. The original instruments are at Montclair State University, in New Jersey, where the song was recorded. (More in the entry on the Seven Psalms album).

Next Song: Like to Get to Know You

Questions for the Angels

This song ranges across many spectra, from poverty to wealth, from human to animal, and then from human to divine. As the title indicates, it contains many "questions," and as they are meant for "angels," perhaps it is foolish for us to expect answers.

The central image is a "pilgrim," one on a spiritual quest. Not just a journey-- a pilgrim is headed toward a destination, usually a shrine. At this point, we do not know what this is, merely that it lies on  one side of the Brooklyn Bridge, presumably the New York side. We also know that he is poor, as we wears "torn" shoes.

It is dawn, "when the homeless move their cardboard blankets." This is how time is told in a city, not by, say, the crowing of a rooster. Image-wise, we are back on "Bleecker Street."

He has two questions on a piece of paper. The first one is philosophical: "Who am I in this lonely word?" As if his essence was defined by others-- if he was not lonely, he would know who he was. But he is lonely, and he does not. In the version in In the Blue Light, the word "lonely" becomes "frightened," so it is fear blocking his self-knowledge.

The other question is practical: "Where will I make my bed tonight/ When twilight turns to dark?" (The question mark is improperly placed, in the website and liner notes, at the end of the word "tonight." It is properly placed, in the Lyrics book, after "dark.") It is only dawn, and yet he worries about his sleeping place for the coming night. As well he should, being alone in the world.

The speaker shrugs, sighing that these questions are for the angels, and who believes in those? "Fools and pilgrims all over the world," he answers himself.

In his series of essays published as The Myth of Sissyphus, Camus posits that hope and despair are equally absurd, since the future is unknowable. Given two equally absurd choices, he chooses the one that leads to life and not, as he puts it, suicide. So he uses wisdom and logic to wind up in roughly the same place this speaker does, on the side of hope and angels, even if both know the viewpoint is not substantiated by fact and never could be.

The speaker's next question is about love-- if you lower your romantic expectations and "shop for love in a bargain store," do you have the right to be disappointed? "Can you get your money back?" The question is moot. Even if you shop for love at Tiffany's, and "you don't get what you bargained for," you not only can't get your money back, but you may have to pay an attorney additional money just to be rid of your relationship.

His next question is about the life choices: "If an empty train... calls you... can you choose another track?" This question might well be directed, instead of at the angels, toward the pilgrim, since he travels, "lonely" as he is, alone on an "empty train." Could he, instead, choose another track instead of his pilgrimage toward no shrine, even if he felt "called" to this life?  Just because we are called does not mean we have to accept, after all. (In the In the Blue Light version, the train calls its "final destination," and I think we'd all like to change trains instead of riding our last one ever to the, um, end of the line.)

The penultimate question is not rhetorical or sarcastic at all. In it, the speaker finally reveals something about himself: "Will l I wake up from these violent dreams/ With my hair as white as the morning Moon?"

Wait, what "dreams"? Or are all of these images taken from his nightmares? The lonely, poor "pilgrim," the "bargain store" for love, the vacant "train"? In what way are they "violent"-- do they have a fearsome quality that is not readily observable?

A lone, aimless quest... a relationship that lived down to its low expectations... a train void of passengers-- these may well be haunted dream images. They speak of stark isolation; no other people appear in them, at least none that are interacted with. They are as stark as Hopper paintings.

The question comes again, "Who believes in angels?" This time the answer returns, "I do." The speaker now counts himself among the "fools and pilgrims."

Speaking of which, where is our pilgrim now? He is noticing a billboard, on which Jay-Z, the rap mogul, is pictured "with a kid on each knee." He isn't selling music, however, but "clothes that he wants us to try."

The image might recall that of the Virgin Mary, with the babies Jesus and John the Baptist, one on each knee. Or it just may be an image that caught Simon off guard-- here is a man who made his money on lyrics about crime and punishment, pride and prejudice. And now he wants to position himself as a father figure and fashion arbiter.

If nothing else, this pilgrim with "torn shoes" is miles away, in many senses, from the image he sees. But this is not the shrine he seeks in any case, as he is only "passing" it.

The last "question for the angels" is this: If the human species became extinct instead of another, would a given zebra "care enough to shed one zebra tear?" Given that this meant his hide was safe from becoming a wall hanging, probably not. He might wonder where all the camera-slinging tourists and gun-toting poachers went; probably not. But you don't need an angel to tell you that.

Still, if we don't matter to zebras, and-- as the song indicates-- we don't matter much to our fellow humans either, then, well,... who do we matter to? We matter to someone, right? Must be angels, then. We need to believe in them, if only to feel that someone believes in us.

This subtle track sounds lovely, almost lullaby-like. But the images it presents and the questions it raises are haunting. Simon hasn't been this chilling since "Poem on the Underground Wall" or "Patterns," only this time instead of impending dread, the mood is eerie emptiness.

Musical Note:
One interesting instrument on this track is the celetse, a proto-piano with metal plates instead of wires. The other is a marimba, a xylophone with resonators, or tuned tubes, hung below the wooden bars, as on a vibraphone.

Next Song: Love & Blessings

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