Street Angel

There has always been the impulse to-- ironic as it seems-- glamorize the poor, from the holy hermits of yore to movies like With Honors in which a self-proclaimed "bum" out-debates a Harvard law professor. Likewise, there has been an long-held impulse to sanctify the mentally ill.

It's true that some indigent or lower-class people are undiscovered geniuses--like "Good" Will Hunting-- and some-- like John Nash in A Beautiful Mind-- struggle with mental illness while still contributing genius-level work to society. But, in fact, the poor and/or mentally ill are just as mixed a bag as the rest of society, goodness-wise and intelligence-wise.

In this song, we get another sacred genius who has not been able to make his way in society and so has wound up homeless. The speaker calls him a "Street Angel," but doesn't give us his name.

He begins by saying that he sympathizes with those good, decent people who are, nevertheless mentally ill and/or homeless: "My heart goes out to the street angels." He "saves his change" for them, too, and is especially impressed with the ones "working their way back home" either geographically or psychologically.

He doesn't just give them his money, either-- he gives them something more rare: his attention. He talks to one Street Angel who confesses: "Nobody talks to me much." The speaker says he can relate: "Nobody talks to me much." [The italics are not in the lyrics but implied in the delivery and inflection when sung.]

The Street Angel also has something else in common with the speaker (assuming it's Simon himself); they are both writers. But the Angel does it for free. The Street Angel says he makes his verse "for the universe" and asks nothing in return-- he does it for the "hoot" of it. This is an old expression-- "Wasn't that a hoot?" once meant "Wasn't that so very funny?"

"The tree is bare," says the Angel, "but the root of it/ Goes deeper than logical reasoning." Maybe nothing he does bears any fruit, in other words, but there is a reason to do it beyond the expectation of return, or rather not a reason but an emotional compulsion.

Then the Angel switches topics to religion: "God goes fishing/ And we are the fishes." So religion is a trap, complete with a lure: "He baits his [sic] lines/ With prayers and wishes." Does it work? Yes: "We're hungry for the love, and so we bite." God uses our loneliness against us, he argues.

So he is not changing topics as such, but returning to the original one, about how nobody talks to him. He's in a bind-- he's lonely, but on the one hand, human-type people ignore him... and on the other, God while does seek his company, it's only for selfish reasons.

His response is two-fold: To retreat from the world ("We hide our hearts like holy hostages") and to assume all communication is a one-way street-- to/at the world, but not back from it ("I tell my tale for the toot of it.")

What becomes of the Street Angel? Even though he was "working his way back home," he is removed from the street by the same society that dumped him there: "They took him away in the ambulance... He waved goodbye from the ambulance." One last gesture of communication with the one person who ever acknowledged him.

There is one note of possible hope. Remember how he was "working his way back home"? Well, now, he "made a way with the ambulance." So even though it's only "a" way and not "his" way-- and even though that way is not "back home"-- at least he is not on the street anymore.

And he still gets to be an angel.

The song concludes with the line: "My heart goes out to the street angel." Does it matter if a homeless or mentally ill person is angelic in some intellectual or spiritual way? Can't you still feel bad for them, even if they are ordinary, just because they live on the street?


Next Song: Stranger to Stranger

Hurricane Eye

This is actually a very "political" song. It is about, mostly, environmentalism and civil rights, and the people who ignore these issues... at their own peril.

The first four lines make fun of the whole idea of "history" as a definitive thing-- it is, at base, a story with an author, with all of the bias that implies: "Tell us all a story/ About how it used to be/ Make it up and then write it down/ Just like history."

Simon fixes on a particular story, "Goldilocks and the Three Bears," which, he posits, is about "Nature in the crosshairs."After all, didn't a human invade and disrupt a perfectly happy animals' abode in that tale? In this reading, Goldilocks might as well have, in Joni Mitchell's image, "paved Paradise and put up a parking lot."

But how did humans come to be outsiders in Nature? After all, "we all ascended/ From the deep green sea," according to evolutionary theory. Citing Goldilocks' desire for a perfect balance in porridge temperature-- "not too hot/ Not too cold"-- as a guideline, "Where it’s just right and you have sunlight," then, Simon explains, "we’re home/ Finally home."  In other words, when the chemistry is optimal and a source of energy is available, life can blossom.

But what if we are "home" in the sense of "at the height of evolution" but are "home in the land of the homeless," and not everyone has a literal home? Then we have reached a physical peak, but fallen short of a moral one.

The song continues in this social justice vein, with one person voicing concern over the state of society-- "Oh, what are we going to do?"-- and the other not accepting this "we" at all: "I never did a thing to you." Why do I have to help fix this injustice-- I didn't cause it!

The next line is a cautionary one "Time peaceful as a hurricane eye." A hurricane's eye is peaceful, but it is only the calm before the rest of the storm arrives after the first edge. It is, as they say, a false sense of security. You have to help fix this injustice because, even if you did not cause it, you are still affected by it!

The next verse seems to be about the oppression of the Native Americans. "A history of whispers" is fair enough; most history lessons are about the Western expansion of the Whites, not about the Reds they swept aside. This "White cloud," came in, followed by the "black crow," the carrion eater. Again, the image of the Western "Crucifix" conflicts with that of the Native "arrow," only it was the Natives crucified this time. All that's left are "a shadow of a horse" and "faces painted black in sorrow and remorse." The Natives feel sorrow, and the Europeans the remorse. We know this is about the Natives, again, because it is "the oldest silence," before the other American slaveries and discriminations.

Then Simon offers this bit of passive-resistance advice: "When speech becomes a crime/ Silence leads the spirit/ Over the bridge of time." This applies to the silence of all martyrs, from before the Holocaust up through the age of AIDS. How do we know that a mass death happened? Well, where are all those people? Where are the children they would have birthed, the works they would have created? Silent. It is simply the absence of these people that creates the memory of their loss. It creates a vacuum that our very nature abhors.

"Over the bridge of time," Simon repeats, "I’m walking with my family/ And the road begins to climb." It is supposed to get easier, but instead the incline becomes steeper. This is a possible reference to advancing age; the road is the same, but it feels steeper.  

"And then it’s, oh, Lord, how we going to pray/ With crazy angel voices/ All night/ Until it’s a new day." It is unclear, from the word "with," whether these voices are their own resembling those of "angels," or those of angels praying alongside their own. But it hardly matters. After such a steep climb, how can one find the energy... to pray for the energy for the next day's hike? And what does this "new day" look like? Well, it's "peaceful as a hurricane." Not the eye, mind you!

OK, so we have all of these problems. Well then, let's do something! Oh, so  "you want to be leader?/ You want to change the game?" Counter-intuitively, Simon advises: "Turn your back on money/ Walk away from fame." This is certainly the approach followed by everyone from Buddha, Moses, and Jesus to Gandhi, King, and Schweitzer. 

"You want to be a missionary?/ You got that missionary zeal?" Don't start a church, Simon says, but join the Peace Corps: "Let a stranger change your life/ How’s that make you feel?" 

And "You want to be a writer/ But you don’t know how or when?" Well, Simon is one of the best writers we have, so yes, we'd like his advice! "Find a quiet place/ Use a humble pen." The advice in any case is the same-- be "humble." Seek to learn, not to teach... to be of service, not to be served.

With "you want to talk, talk, talk about it/ The ocean and the atmosphere," Simon returns to the environment. "Well, I’ve been away for a long time/ And it looks like a mess around here." This could refer to Simon's long hiatus between albums, or his long hiatus from political songwriting. In either case, its does not seem to him that things have substantially improved, environmentally, since the beginning of that movement.

"And I’ll be away for a long time," probably means "...once I'm dead." Knowing this, Simon feels obliged to sum up his life's learning and pass it on: "So here’s how the story goes." We lean forward to listen...

...and hear a nursery rhyme! "There was an old woman/ Who lived in a shoe." But his version is different: "She was baking a cinnamon pie." Well, pies figure in many nursery rhymes, from "Little Jack Horner" to "Sing a Song of Sixpence" to "Simple Simon."

The rhyme now ends: "She fell asleep in a washing machine/ Woke up in a hurricane eye." Few places are as agitated as the inside of a washing machine. In fact, the pole with angled fins inside the top-loading kind is called an "agitator." When our old woman woke, though, there was calm. Or, at least, calm where she was. 

The song as a whole is about the activists' mission: to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. Throughout, we have characters who think they live in a world of calm. Well, their world might be calm, but the whole world is not! We have "nature in the crosshairs." Homelessness. Genocide and forced expulsions. 

There is a hurricane of trouble out there! And we should know this, even if it we live in the eye. If for no other reason than that the hurricane moves... and we could at any moment find ourselves not in calm but in 75-mile-an-hour winds.

Next Song: Quiet

Homeless

This is the only Simon song that is mostly in another language. In this case, Zulu.

The group providing the harmonies is called Ladysmith Black Mambazo, which means "The Black Hammer of Ladysmith," a township near the Eastern coast of South Africa. Simon saw them in a documentary on South Africans using music to resist apartheid. The group's leader, Joseph Shabalala (accent on the first "la"), wrote the song's Zulu lyrics, which I was lucky enough to find a translation of in an online Zulu forum. (Three cheers for the Internet!)

Simon, according to one source, sent Shabalala the line "We are homeless, homeless/ Moonlight sleeping on a midnight lake," and he fleshed it out with the Zulu lyrics that make up the bulk of the song.

The introduction is based on a traditional Zulu wedding song, with re-written lyrics to continue the idea of homelessness, the source continues. Whatever it once said, it now says: "Webaba silale maweni"/ "Hey, Mister, we sleep on the cliffs."

Which might seem dangerous, but without caves or walls to prevent approaches on three sides, a cliff might do just as well.

"Homeless, homeless," the song explains the situation. This might be a literal result of poverty. Or it may speak to to condition of an apartheid-stricken populace, "exiled" without leaving their homeland.

"Moonlight sleeping on a midnight lake." One would only see such a night-time sight if one were outdoors at midnight for some reason, say, as in not having a roof or walls. Also, the transience of the light on water-- visible but without substance-- also symbolizes the plight of the homeless individual.

The next lines are also ones that might be spoken by someone with no home: "Zio yami/ amakhaza asengibulele" means "My heart/ The cold has already killed me." "My heart" could be taken several ways. One is to say this part hurts: "My heart! It is in pain; it is giving out!" Another is to say that this is a person addressing himself, as in "I said to myself, 'Self...'."

But I think he is addressing his girlfriend or wife, calling her "My heart," the way a Spanish speaker says, "Mi corazon," or an English speaker says, "Sweetheart."

The cold already having killed him, again, could be taken on the level of literal cold and hypothermia, or on the figurative level of being "frozen out" of society. As we say in English, receiving a "chilly reception" or a "cold shoulder." This ostracism and disenfranchisement is certainly a lack of person-hood, a living death.

Then comes a phrase that I can't parse: "somandla angibulele" which seems to translate to the words "The Almighty" and "ukulele." Perhaps this is a reference to some sort of celestial music, as in the Western concept of "music of the spheres." Perhaps it is the instrument of God, the way Apollo played the harp. Or maybe a conflation of the two, God played the world as an instrument. It is difficult to say.

Then comes the word "mama," which I could safely assume means that he is addressing his mother, as in Dylan's "Knocking on Heaven's Door."

"Strong wind, destroy all out homes/ Many dead, tonight it could be you." Working still on both levels, this could be the description of a natural disaster, or the idea that apartheid destroyed the South Africans' homes and homeland, driving them into isolation, poverty, and death. And don't think it couldn't happen to "you,' whether "you" live elsewhere in South Africa, the continent, or the planet. Few countries, indeed, are without a case of oppression in their histories.

The "Somebody say..." segment was based on a Ladysmith song that Simon liked. The lines ask for both rescue on one hand-- "Somebody sing, 'Hello!'"-- and resistance on the other: "Somebody cry, 'Why, why, why?'"

One commentator, who spent some time in Africa, notes that "ih hih ih hih ih" is a lyric that connotes hard labor or strenuous effort. If so, this could mean that the speaker knows it will be, to borrow the title of Nelson Mandela's autobiography, "a long walk to freedom."

The song proper is now over, and the ensemble takes a moment to revel in the glory of having recorded this song in, of all places, London's famed Abbey Road Studios. "Yithi omanqoba"/"We are the victors!" they shout. "Esanqoba phakathi e England"/"We have conquered England!" And "Esanqoba lonke ilizwe"/"We defeated the whole country!"

Thus satisfied, they let fly one more triumphant whoop: "Kulumani sizwe/Singenze njani/Baya jabula abasi thanda yo/ Ho" This is their signature sign-off line, meaning, roughly, "We hereby proclaim that we are the best at singing in this style."

Musical Note:
This is not the first time South-African lyrics have become part of the American songscape. The Weavers were introduced to the 1939 South African song "Mbube" ("The Lion") by folksong collector Alan Lomax. They turned it into the chant "Wimoweh," and The Kingston Trio and other folk acts picked it up in the 1950s.

Then The Tokens, including then-member Neil Sedaka, scored a 1961 #1 hit by taking the original South African improvised lyric "In the jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion sleeps tonight" and expanding on it.

Simon no doubt heard both versions, growing up in the US. But the song's journey did not end there. It appears on the Lion King soundtrack. It was incorporated, in 1992, by REM into their song "The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight" (the sidewinder being a sort of rattlesnake).

And the original "Mbube" version appeared in the Eddie Murphy movie Coming to America. The performers? Ladysmith Black Mambazo.

The ensemble has appeared with Simon on "Saturday Night Live," has won a Grammy for a Simon-produced album, and has done everything from a Lifesavers candy commercial to several Sesame Street appearances. Thanks to Simon, the group has become true worldwide sensation.

But Simon, with The Weavers and The Tokens in his head, would probably just consider his championing the ensemble (he also produced a Grammy-winning album of theirs) simply repaying a debt.

Next Song: Crazy Love, Vol II