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

Time is an Ocean

This song, which takes its title from the last line of the previous song, is a duet, but of an unusual sort; the voices are those of Sal as a young man in jail, and an older version of himself whose fate has not yet been revealed by the plot. The older Sal goes by Salvador, so we can keep then straight. (This song is track 10 on the Songs from the Capeman soundtrack.)

The song tells the story of how young Sal, a punk kid, turned himself into the mature Salvador, a writer.

Sal starts us off, confessing that "the evil that we do can't be blamed on our destiny," and so taking responsibility for his actions. Later, however, he does blame racism for his situation at least somewhat.

He tells us that he has, in the image borrowed from Psalm 23, "walked through the valley of Death Row."

Salvador now makes this observation: "It took me four years to learn I was in prison, not a church," and then two more years until he started to write his autobiography. But, "when I wrote my story/ The words flew from the page/ And my soul in solitary [confinement]/ Escaped its iron cage." By taking ownership of his own story going backward, he takes control of it going forward.

Sal takes back over, writing a letter to his mother and telling her to return to Puerto Rico, since she is so  homesick, singing her lonely Aguinaldo carol. "Go back, don't you worry/ I am your grown up son."

Salvador then observes the "politics of prison/ are a mirror of the street... the politics of race." The prison guards, he explains, are notably paler of complexion than those they control, just as the police were outside. As Sal puts it: "A forest and a prison/ Where the snow and guards are white."

He then issues advice to his younger self: If you want to keep your sanity/ You'll teach yourself to write." He had to grow up fast, once inside: "You were a child of sixteen/ With a twelve-year-old mind/ You came here numb and battered."

Young Sal takes up this artistic and psychological challenge, and the two sing: "I'll take the evil in me/ And turn it into good/ Though all your institutions/ Never thought I could." Sal, of all people, challenges the "correctional facility" he is in to live up to its cynical promise... to correct him!

Then Sal and Salvador say "good-bye," promising to "keep your image in my eye/ 'Til the day I die." But whose image? The prison's (the "your" in the last verse)? His mother's (she does sing one line near the end)?

Or... does the old one promise the young one he will not forget his suffering? Does the young one promise the old one that, if he waits for him, he will make it to that age some day?

Throughout, the title line is repeated: "Time is an ocean of endless tears." Sal cries for his crime, his mother cries for him... and the older Sal cries for the two lives that he he took lives that day-- his victim's, and his own.

Next Song: Wahzinak's First Letter/ Killer Wants to Go to College

MUSICAL NOTE:
The older Salvador is sung by Ruben Blades, an Panamanian singer-songwriter accomplished in both English and Spanish. his songs are alternately poignant and pointed, sometimes in the same piece. Like Billy Bragg, he can be both political and personal within the space of one line. He also has been compared to Springsteen.

But like Simon, Blades was a devotee of doo-wop in his teens, but the realities of his nation stirred his political spirit. If anything, his government forced his hand, closing his college and thus somewhat pushing him to pursue music in the US. Blades also narrowly escaped a legal career! Instead, he worked for a record label-- first in the mail room, where he auditioned!-- and then as a composer and band leader.

His album Siembra sold three million copies and spawned the biggest hit in salsa history, "Pedro Nvaja." But his political songwriting got another song banned from Miami radio. Blades also began writing songs for films, and then acting in them. Probably his best is the funny and powerful Milagro Beanfield War. It's hard to find, but very worth it (and I'll keep the director a surprise!).

Blades has continued to write and perform music (five albums in the 1990s alone!). But to start, I'd  recommend the mostly-English Buscando America for his songwriting and Nothing But the Truth-- with songs by Elvis Costello, Sting, and Lou Reed-- for his vocals.

Along the way, Blades he went to Harvard and earned a master's in international law, started a new Panamanian political party, and ran for president there... coming in second. Their loss.