How Can You Live in the Northeast?

Often, Simon seems to have two songs going at once, sewing them together at the end. Here, it seems there are three. One is about watching fireworks on July 4, the USA's Independence Day. Another is about making life choices. And the third is about Simon's musings on his own family history.

The discussion about those things in life which we choose-- or not-- takes up the bulk of the song. The chorus, from which the title comes, sounds accusatory: "How can you live in the northeast?" Usually, when asked a question of that nature, we hear "How could you...?" or more pointedly, "How dare you...?"

But then we hear the rest of the chorus, which asks the listener how he or she could live in "the South," or on the "banks of a river"? So the question is not accusatory at all. It's a genuine question of wonder. How can you live here... when you are forgoing a life there? How does one decide, when the options are limitless, and one such choice precludes all others? This query is then extended into the realm of religion-- how can one choose to believe any one thing, when there are so many things to believe? In one of the choruses, the question is further extended to specific practices; "How can you tattoo your body/ Why do you cover your head?"

And then something as basic as food: "How can you eat from your rice bowl?" Ah, but then comes a judgment: "How can you eat from your rice bowl? The holy man only breaks bread." This comes to show how silly these judgments are, especially coming from a Western perspective. Do we really think the only holy men are the ones who eat bread, not rice? Well, then, why do we act like it?

Simon backs off in one of the verses, admitting that in fact we do not make many such decisions. They are an accident of birth, and babies are totally dependent on those adults to care for him or her: "Weak as the winter sun, we enter life on Earth." A father myself several times over, I can tell you that the next line is also correct; before we even process the idea of being a parent, a bureaucrat comes in with a form for us, demanding the name of the newborn. And then there is the ceremony welcoming the infant into the religious community and instruction in a language: "Names and religion come just after birth... everyone gets a tongue to speak." None of these major factors in our development are our own choices!

Ah, but why the word "tongue?" Why not "language?" Because we are born with that part of our anatomy-- a tongue-- with which to make our own voice heard, and our own wishes known. Once we can assemble words into our own sentences, we do start to guide our own courses more and more. After all, "everyone hears an inner voice," of consciousness and conscience. Of self-awareness. It is up to us to listen to it and decide how much of it to share with the rest of the world, and in what manner, with our "tongues."

Then Simon poses a puzzler: "If the answer is infinite light, why do we sleep in the dark?" This is not just a practical question, although even nocturnal animals find dark places to sleep during the day. But Simon has provided his own answer. The same as with sound, so with light-- if we have an inner voice, do we not also have an internal brightness? Further, is there not such a thing as "blinding light," a brightness that denies us the ability to see? We can only see this "infinite light," perhaps, with our eyes closed, and only with our subconscious mind. No matter-- it is internal in any case.

Now, what does any of this have to do with fireworks? The song starts with them, after all. The fireworks celebrate American independence from colonialism. This was one of the greatest strokes for self-determination in human history. "This is a free country," we Americans are fond of saying, but first the whole nation had to become free for the individuals in it to share in that self-determination, that liberty.

(Yes, I know... almost 300 years later and we're still working on getting everyone their fair share of that liberty! And while we are no longer a colony of the British Crown, there are still colonies aplenty on Earth, and some are American).

The holiday is a celebration of excess-- noise and explosions, fire and food, family and parades. It is "happy-go-lucky." We have created many chances in American to become lucky, and we are happy about that. And no one wants to see the party end, so we wait until the fireworks are mere "fireflies" in the sky before packing on home.

But we watch them across the "endless skies," because that's what we see when even the fireflies fade. The sky, and how endless it is. We see in its infinity the infinity of our own possibilities.

And so the question of the title might be phrased: "Now that you can do anything, what do you want to do?" And, since you can choose anything, how can you choose any one thing?

The song ends with a verse in which Simon assesses how all of this has impacted him. He is the son of immigrants, "only three generations off the boat," and has had all of the benefits of the American Dream: "I've been given all I wanted." Usually one plants, then harvests, but Simon knows that in his case, others planted for him first, so he correctly says "I have harvested and I have planted," meaning for his own children.

The song closes with the observation that "I am wearing my father's old coat." When he was born, he was given a name, a faith, a language and so forth. And like other Americans, he grew up to know that these were not the only options. That he could truly choose another name, faith, language and so forth.

But, like most people, he chose to keep the ones he had been given. How can you live in the Northeast, or anywhere else, forsaking all other places? Well, maybe you don't want to move too far from the place of your roots. Maybe, like an old coat, it just... fits.

Add to Simon's grand songs about America-- "America" and "American Tune"-- this one.

IMPACT:
Surprise was, musically, a departure for Simon, as he made extensive use of electronic production (and electronic music guru Brian Eno) instead of his usual acoustic or electric instruments. Suzanne Vega had done the same with her 99.9oF album more than a decade before, but it was still a, um, surprise when Simon did it.

Surprise made it to #4 in the UK and cracked the Top 10 in Ireland, going gold there. In the US, it rose to "only" #14. It also made the Top 20 in much of Scandinavia and did well in other Northern European countries.


Next Song: Everything About It is a Love Song

El Coquito/Born in Puerto Rico

[Readers: We have come to Simon's musical, The Capeman. There are, by my count, 40 songs in this musical, and I write on one song each week. Ordinarily. I do not wish to write about this one musical for the better part of a year, and I am fairly certain you do not want to read about it for that long, either, wonderful as it may be. So I have broken the musical down into 16 sections, most with more than one song, and will write about one of those sections each week; it is not uncommon to find an album with that many tracks. So we will visit with this musical for four months instead of ten.

As for the album Songs from The Capeman, since I will be discussing all of the songs in the musical altogether, I will of course cover those in the process. However, the songs on that album do not follow the order of their presentation in the musical itself. As the musical tells a story in a particular order, including  flashbacks, I will preserve the song order of the musical. If you have listened to the album, perhaps listening to the songs in the "right" order will help you appreciate the musical in another way. In 11 of the 16 weeks, I will be writing about a song from the album; as there are so many more songs in the play than on the album, there cannot be an album song covered each week. However, as Simon highlighted these songs by including them on the album, I will only cover one album song in any given entry, to give it its proper due.]

The first song in the musical is an innocent one called "El Coquito." The Lyrics book explains that it is a Puerto Rican folksong by one Olcutt Sanders. It is about a "Little Tree Toad," named for its cry, and in the song the children imitate it. My limited Spanish indicates that the toad sings at night, and the children imagine it sings them a lovely lullaby. The notes also indicate that the song is sung by children who are offstage. 

Then Salvador, our protagonist, sings a brief verse about being free-- we soon learn, from jail. But then he adds, ominously: "But there's the truth that still needs to be spoken."

The first full-length song, "Born in Puerto Rico," is the second track on the soundtrack album. The first verse is pure biography. Sal relates where he was born, that he moved to New York City as child, and that "before I reached the age of sixteen/ I was running with a gang, and we were wild."

The book and the soundtrack differ on the next line, which changes the meaning of the lines that follow. The book has Salvador remembering his own youth and the sights and smells of the barrio evening. The album has the more eyebrow-raising: "He keeps looking but he don't recognize me," as if "he" should. 

Then the chorus, which addresses "you," a party we are yet to meet, unless he or she is onstage; I only have the lyrics, not the "book" of the musical with stage directions. "No one knows you like I do/ No one knows your heart the way I do/ No one will testify to all you've been through, but I will." Again, it would help if we knew whom was being addressed.

The refrain is sung by Salvador and his gang, The Vampires. They repeat the title, then add "And my blood is Taino" (say: tah-EE-no) which the liner notes correctly capitalize (the book does not). This is a proper noun; the Taino people are the natives of Puerto Rico. 

Salvador then picks up the biographical thread, noting how unprepared they were as immigrants (yes, Puerto Rico is part of the US politically, but culturally, significantly distinct)-- "We came here wearing summer clothes in winter"-- and yet, equipped with "hearts of sunshine in the cold." The thrust of the musical, we will see, is how the "cold" won and conquered Sal's spirit, and how he tries mightily to get his "sunshine" back.

The "you" is now revealed to live on the upper floors of a certain apartment building, and to be the stepchild of a Pentacostal preacher. And then again the chorus of "No one..." this time ending "...but this will."

Salvador ruminates: "Small change and sunlight, then I left these streets for good." So he was poor, yet hopeful, and then left. For where? And why?

First, the other Vampires introduce themselves. Salvador says all that is left of them is "blurred... grainy photos" in the newspaper. Then we get a partial answer. Salvador lists the places he was incarcerated; in the book, we get the length of each stay in each place, but in the soundtrack just a list of places, starting with a "school for criminal children" and including infamous prisons like Sing Sing and Attica.

"Twenty years inside, today we're free." The "you" is his partner in crime, then? Salvador says that there was so much written about the case that he did not have a chance to read it all before lights-out in jail... "The night you took The Capeman for your name."

Well, Salvador is The Capeman. So who is he speaking to? To "Sal"... his younger self. In the musical, two different actors play this character at different ages. They are differentiated on the page as 'Sal,' the young punk, and 'Salvador,' the middle-aged ex-con he matures into. 

The older self promises his younger self he will remember him, testify for him. The book's version hinted at this structure with the line "I see myself, those summer evenings..." And so he alternately sings in the first person, and to his younger self as "you." So his own stepfather was a preacher, and so forth.

The newspaper stories "pile up in shame," but there is a note of hope: "...the words release you." But which words? Are these the words of the judge commuting his sentence? Some words Salvador writes? We shall see.

The song ends, in the liner notes with a coda, sung in Spanish: "I was born in Puerto Rico/ My heart... My dear is Puerto Rico." This is attributed to a character named Lazarus, and this is the first time we meet him.

Simon artfully introduces us to his main character(s), Salvador/Sal. In Salvador promising Sal he will "testify" on his behalf, we begin the musical with curiosity and some compassion.

Note: While the CD of Simon's versions of some songs was distributed as the CD Songs from The Capeman, a full original-cast soundtrack, I am told, is available on iTunes.

IMPACT: This is one of Simon's most ambitious projects, and sadly, possibly his biggest professional disappointment; the movie One Trick Pony at least spawned the hit "Late in the Evening." Despite a tremendous cast and production team, whom I will introduce in subsequent posts, the musical was met with protests (which usually fuel ticket sales!) and poor reviews, and closed shortly after it opened. 

My understanding is that it was a major financial loss, more than $10 million. Afterward, Simon did many things I would never have expected. He reunited and toured with Garfunkel, releasing a CD and DVD of that tour. He re-released all of his solo material, with bonus tracks. And more. 

While this material is welcome to all his fans and probably won him many new ones, I cannot wonder if these maneuvers were meant to cover some of his losses. It is simply unlike Simon to look backward like this for so long. It makes me think of Willie Nelson's efforts to pay back the IRS, including the album Who Will Buy My Memories? While Simon never used such an obvious title, these efforts feel to this writer like his asking that question. I say this only as an observation, not a criticism; if Simon did do these things for this reason, thank goodness he had tremendous quantity of outstanding material to do it with!

Next songs: In Mayaguez/ Carmen/ Santero/ Chimes/ Christmas in the Mountains