Trail of Volcanoes

The Jonny Cash song "Ring of Fire" was not the first incident of that expression, It was initially used, as early as 1906, to describe the somewhat circular series of volcanoes that dot the shores which ring the Pacific Ocean.

A different trail of "volcanoes" is meant here, though.

The opening verse-- of just four-- refers to carrying one's guitar "down to the crossroads." In the lore of the blues, this is where one meets the Devil, to sell one's soul to him in exchange for talent and success in a Faustian bargain. This is how Robert's Johnson's seemingly miraculous mastery of the blues guitar in a mere three years was explained; Johnson died at 27, making him one of the earliest members of the grim "27 Club." 

The list of musical references to crossroads is as long as the Devil's tail, and includes the title of Eric Clapton's box set; every act from Cream to Rush to Lynyrd Skynyrd to Dylan has covered Robert Johnson's "Cross Road Blues."

Simon says he carried his guitar "down to the crossroads," but then, "over the sea." This is likely a reference to his first trip to England and the beginnings of his folk music career... but also to everywhere in the world he has toured and recorded, from South Africa to Brazil.

We know this because the next verse is global in its scope: "Now, those old roads/ Are a trail of volcanoes."

Except they do not erupt with lava. These are "explosions" of "refugees." A rundown of sources of refugees as of this 2023 writing: Syria and Afghanistan in the Middle East, Ukraine in Europe, South Sudan in Africa, Myanmar in Asia, and Venezuela in South America. Pretty much every continent.

But, in a larger sense, Simon says, aren't we all refugees? Wasn't he one, sort of, when he left his declining pop music career in the US for a folk music career "over the sea" to the UK? 

Lastly, he speaks of volcanoes, refugee crises, and his own life, saddled with two kinds of regret at once. One, that he did so much "damage" at all. And, two, that now there isn't enough time to sweep up the ashes, reassemble the scattered communities, or make "amends" for all the eruptions he has caused.

Maybe he was a refugee of a kind, but what kind of refugee crises did he cause? Whose lives did he uproot, whom did he make to flee in panic? And, realizing now that he may have done so, there is not even time enough left to apologize, repent, heal, or make reparations. After all, this year he will turn 82 in the fall. 

Next Song: The Sacred Harp

Your Forgiveness

The first four verses of this song end with the words "Your forgiveness," meaning God's. And we know it is a capital Y-Your not because it starts a new line but because of the fourth verse and what comes after.

But let's deal with the verses in order. "Yesterday's boy is gone" means someone was a boy yesterday, but not today. Where did he go? "Driving through darkness." The idea that God's forgiveness is to be found by driving aimlessly along nighttime roads is harrowing, but it seems like that used to be the process.

Next, music was tried, but it was a song that was born out of "sorrow." If there was a loss to be mourned, a common reaction is to think, "It must have been a Divine punishment. I must ask God's forgiveness." A beautiful song often comes out of this impulse.

Maybe there is a formula? A "homeless soul" tries to use a computer, a "digital mind," to crack the code.

Then it turns personal... but first, we have to pause to have a lesson in Jewish thought and practice.

The last prayer of the Yom Kippur service imagines that the gates of Heaven are closing and that this is one's last chance to atone while the prayers still have Day of Atonement status (The name of this lyrical service is "Ne'ilah," meaning "locking"). The prayers have been in the plural for most of the service but now, at their end, many synagogues have a practice of the congregants lining up in the aisle, each taking a turn to approach the Ark (an ornate cabinet where the Torah scrolls are displayed) for their own personal atonements and prayers.

"And I, the last in line/ Hoping the gates won't be closed/ Before your forgiveness."

Wait. The Y is lowercase. So this was just a use of Day of Atonement imagery for a case of human-to human forgiveness. Well, people still close their gates and lock them, denying the opportunity for forgiveness. 

Then the song stops this thread... and turns to water imagery: "Dip your hand in heaven's waters" and "All of life's abundance in a drop of condensation."  And it is amazing to think that all of the life forms we know, and are likely to know for a while, are on this ball of, mostly, water. In cosmic terms? Earth isn't even the largest planet in our own solar system. 

The line "two billion heartbeats and out" refers to the fact that a human life of 70 years, at the rate at which a human heart beats on average, includes 2 billion heartbeats. So, that many, and then death. (Simon is 81. He has a pretty strong heart.) 

And then "A white light eases the pain." Likely, this refers to the idea that when someone dies, they see a bright, white light and a rush of serenity; many having "near-death experiences" report experiencing these sensations, brought about-- science maintains-- by certain happenings in the brain and its parts as it dies. Steve Jobs' last words were a repeated: "Oh, wow!" 

Further, what does "heaven's water" mean? Rain? Clouds? Can you "dip" your hand in these? And is everything just "God's imagination"?

But the real question is... how is this one song? The first half is about seeking God's forgiveness. But the second half wavers between on the one hand, the smallness of Earth and its human next to the eternality of God... and on the other, defiance of all that.

"I have my reason to doubt/ There is a case to be made," and "Waving the flag in the last parade" are words of defiance. "Two billion heartbeats and out"? Is that all there is? Is that all a human is? Is death the end or "does it all begin again?" This is some real "Rage against the dying of a light" material. 

In the end though, even this defiance is swallowed by the vastness of infinity. The "Dip your hand..." line is repeated seven times. "God's imagination" three times. The line "All of life's abundance..." is also repeated three times, and it's how the song ends. 

In the first song, it's: "Man plans, and God laughs." In the third, "Man opines, and God sighs." And here, in the fourth song: "Man rails, and God forgives." 

Next Song: Trail of Volcanoes

My Professional Opinion

Did you ever realize that our opinions are only worth half as much as we think they are? After all, when I offer you my opinion, I say, "Well, here're my two cents."

But when someone asks for my opinion, they say, "Penny for your thoughts."

You think your opinion is worth two cents. They would only pay, however, one cent. Half as much.

In interviews about the Seven Psalms album, Simon explains that he was routinely awakened by dreams, very early in the morning, with inspirations for these songs. 

So when he writes, here, "Looks like you haven't slept all night," he may be talking to himself, or at least about himself. There has got to be a mixed feeling for an artist, on the one hand being grateful for inspirations... and on the other wishing they waited until he'd had his morning coffee instead of rousing him when only crickets, owls, and bats are awake. 

Which could be the source of his name "Mr. Indignation."

In any case, he is in his 80s and does not work a job where he has to punch a clock, so for him to "go back to bed" as the song suggests, after jotting his "vampire hour" inspirations is just fine.

If the speaker feels that the person he is addressing is "Mr. Indignation," he admits "I'm no more satisfied than you are." He also admits that he does not have a solution that would resolve the given indignities, as he is not a "doctor" or a "preacher" and doesn't even have a "guiding star"-- say, a Scripture or philosophy-- that might suggest a solution.

On the other hand... what is there to be indignant about? "Indignation" comes from the same root as "dignity," and no one has any dignity to begin with, really: "Everyone's naked, there's nothing to hide." (This echoes Simon's observation in the song "Old" from You're the One: "Take your clothes off-- Adam and Eve.")

The next verse also has a reference to religion. In an echo of the spiritual "Down by the Riverside,"-- "Gonna lay down my sword and shield/ Down by the riverside"-- he writes, "Gonna carry my grievances down to the shore/ Wash them away in the tumbling tide."

There you go-- no more indignities! The idea that immersion in water provides rebirth is held by many of the world's faiths. Physical cleansing can become spiritually cleansing. 

So far, the title line, "in my professional opinion" is said twice. Once, it's to say, "You're exhausted because you are exhausting yourself." The second, it's to say, "You have troubles? So does everyone." 

Now, we the opinion offered that all cows must bear the blame for one specific cow insulting another. This seems... sarcastic. I suppose the point may be that even cows must suffer indignation.

But also, what is this guy's profession, that these are his "professional opinions"? It seems that the profession is, itself, the offering of opinions. If one spends any time on the Internet, one realizes that this may be the most popular profession today.

In the next verse, Simon synopsizes the situation: "So all rise to the occasion/ Or all sink into despair." Better than "all" would be "each," as each of us must rise and address our own indignities-- either by confronting them or "washing [them] away." But "each" doesn't sing as well as "all." The other option is to "sink into despair," dragged down by our indignities.

Here, his opinion is simply: "Don't go there." Why raise an issue only to dismiss it? This professional does not seem very good at... whatever their job is. 

The song ends with admission that, yes, our professional opinions are worth about one cent, even if we are professionals at offering them. Because ultimately, only God's opinion matters.

But it would take another whole blogpost to unpack the last verse. It says that God did three things to us with "His opinions": "He became us/ Anointed us and gamed us."

How did God "become" us? In the sense that God became human in the form of Jesus? In the sense that He made us "in God's image"? Wouldn't that be us becoming Him?

Kings, priests, prophets, and the messiah are, in the Bible, anointed. So which does Simon mean we are, when God anointed us? Or are some of us kings, some prophets, and so on? 

Most unnerving is the idea that God "gamed" us, conned us. How? And why would He want to do that? What would be the fun for an omniscient being to trick a mere human-- who after tens of thousands of years of getting rained on can only say, "There is a 40% chance of rain tomorrow"?

Lastly, what is the whole concept of God having opinions? Isn't God all-powerful, too? Doesn't God's thinking something make it, you know, not opinion but fact?

In my professional opinion, whatever the specifics of Simon's meaning, his general thread is the same as in his earlier song "The Lord": "Man plans, and God laughs." Only here, it's more "Humans opine, and God sighs." 

Next Song: Your Forgiveness

Love Is Like a Braid

The problem with a famous person quoting a less famous person is that, when you look up the source of the quote, you can only find the famous person having said it... not the person they quoted.

So when Simon writes: "Love is like a braid, some say," I cannot find, now, who that "some" is. Every reference to the expression I see online is a reference to this selfsame song. 

And I can see how relationships are like braids, in that they are interwoven-- the same person may be a parent, a child, a spouse, a friend... their one life interwoven with many others. Even the connection between computers is called the Internet or the World-Wide Web. 

But even one love, one relationship, has many layers of want, need, interdependency, trust, vulnerability, and so on, all interwoven. So in that sense, love can be plaited and braid-like.

This braid is then ornamented, he suggests, like hair can be-- with cowrie shells (those small shells that are also used to make a gourd rattle called a "shekere") and jade combs. That one is typically African and the other Asian is the point; our culture, whatever it is, "decorates" our relationships, beyond its own characteristics.

The song takes a turn here to focus on the story of one life. "I lived a life of pleasant sorrows," sounds like an oxymoron, but it is just a set-up. These sorrows may be pleasant in that they are the downsides of a generally positive thing, like the mixed feelings of pride, hope, fear, and loss experienced when a child leaves for college or gets married.

They are a set-up, though, for "the real deal," which "broke him like a twig." Biographically, I do not know what sorrow this refers to, but it was significant, even life-defining; depending on its outcome, either "all is lost, or all is well."

It involved a period of uncertainty: "A jury sat deliberating." This could be a real courtroom jury or any group of a decision-making people, such as a cadre of doctors discussing a patient's treatment options. 

This period was marked by both "prayer" and "reason," and that resonates. In times like these, we try to face facts, but we also hope to bend fate in our own favor.

The next verse holds some clues as to the event in question. The "real deal" may very well have been an illness or death of a parent. Coming "home," he is "shocked" to find: "I'm a child again, entwined in your love." You think you are an adult. You even have your own children. And then, when you lose a parent, you remember being their child, and for a while you are one again.

Simon's father and mother passed away in 1995 and 2007, respectively. But in approaching his own death, he undoubtedly thought back to theirs. 

And... there is our metaphor again. We began with the image of a "braid." We seemed to have dropped it for two verses. But no, that was just to get us to here, where we find it again, in the word "entwined." 

The word "doorstep" may be significant; the only other songs I know of to use the word are ones of hope. One is is "Three Little Birds" by Bob Marley. In it, three birds come to his doorstep to sing "Don't worry about a thing/ Every little thing/ Is going to be all right." Such assurance might be welcome in a sad hour like this.

The other is "The Sunny Side of the Street," which urges: "leave your worries on your doorstep/ Just direct your feet/ To the sunny side of the street." 

The speaker now presents another dichotomy. We have had "pleasant sorrows," "prayer [active] and waiting [passive]," "doubt and reason," "all is lost [or] well."

But in each of those pairs, one is good and one is bad. Remembering the parent? All was good. Either he was in the parent's "light" or their "cool summer shade." In this case, the opposite of "light" is not an ominous "shadow," or a hopeless "darkness," but their protective "shade."

I once interviewed a rising singer whose father was a very famous singer himself. I asked if she felt she was performing in his shadow. "No," she replied, "in his light."

The song ends with yet another good/bad dichotomy: "The garden keeps the rose and thorn." Life has both good and bad in it, he decides, but there are choices. And, even if you chose wrong and picked a thorn,  "what's left is/ Mending what was torn."

Life has both pleasantness and sorrow, both roses and thorns. So does love. 

And maybe those are what is braided; maybe that is how love is like a braid. It contains both the good and bad in ourselves, in those we have relationships with, and of the relationships themselves. 

You may love someone without loving everything about them. Maybe they snore, or lack punctuality, or have a morbid sense of humor. But you're not perfect, either... and they love you anyway, also. 

You may love someone, but not love the idea of losing them. But you love them anyway. 

The thing about braids, though? They are much, much stronger than individual strings. Which is kind of what you would want, and hope, from something like love. 

Next Song: My Professional Opinion

The Lord

In his first original song on the first Simon & Garfunkel album-- "Bleecker Street"-- Simon refers to the many Psalms that use the imagery of sheep-herding. The "fog," he wrote, "hides the Shepherd from his sheep."

But here, the sheep are abandoning the Shepherd: "Noon and night they leave the flock."

Simon has been writing religious songs, or at least songs that reference religion, all his career, but lately they have been appearing with more frequency.

"The Lord" starts with a reference to, we think, the "Great Migration." a demographic and geographic shift in US history (roughly 1910-70) involving the migration of Blacks from the rural South to the industrial North.

But he does not capitalize the term, so it is another kind of "great migration" that he means. And if it is a religious-- or anti-religious-- one it is not a migration toward somewhere like an Eden or Promised Land, necessarily. It could be to either soft, inviting "meadow grass" or uninviting "jagged rock."

This is what happens when you leave the flock. You gain free will, but the outcome becomes uncertain.

What happens if you stay? The outcome is certain, but you lose free will: "The Lord is my engineer... the earth I ride on." This can be the engineer who steers the train, the electrical engineer who wires the system... or the engineer in the music-studio control room (later, we have "The Lord is my record producer") who determines what the song ends up sounding like, since they control how the sound is recorded and manipulated.

"The Lord... is the path I slip and I slide on," Simon writes, referencing his earlier song "Slip-Slidin' Away." He likely means us to recall its final verse: "God only knows/ God makes His plan/ The information is unavailable to the mortal man/ We... believe we're gliding down the highway/ When in fact, we're slip-slidin' away." 

Yes, he has been wrestling with the free will/determinism issue for decades. 

In the next verse, he sings of astronomical things: comets, stars, night, moons, daylight, and sunset that "now turned the evening rose." Astronomy-- and its earlier form, astrology-- impress upon us that Nature/Fate is the clockmaker, and we are but cogs in the machine.

"The Lord is the face in the atmosphere," he tells us. God is the order and system in the seeming chaos, and the way we, well, interface with it. 

Then he turns to sociological phenomena: tribes, age, "celebrations," songs-- concluding, "the endless river flows." Even if we say, "it's not nature, it's nurture" is that not still a form of determinism? Whether God or society shapes our fate, the end is the same: our fate is shaped for us.

The chorus returns but a new one is added, and now plant imagery is introduced, and a new role for God. The Lord. we are told, is both the forest and the forest "ranger" (personally, I find this a rather forced rhyme with "stranger," but let's work with what we have). More plant imagery arrives soon...

But now we have The Lord as a philanthropist as well. He is a "meal for the... poor," and a "welcome door to the stranger" as well as the one who protects forests from pollution and fires. God takes care of those who cannot care for themselves-- and, in a snide jab at the rest of humanity-- who are also not cared for by those who can afford to do so. 

Aside from forests, we are now shown "flowers" and "seeds." "Tears and flowers/ Dry over time," and what seem important now is not, in the Grand Scheme. "Memory leaves us/ Melody and rhyme," and this has been shown to be true-- those with Alzheimer's, for instance, will remember songs when they have forgotten much else. So are melodies and rhymes but dried-up tears and flowers? 

The plants don't only die, though... they live anew in "seeds": "The seeds we gather/ from the gardener's [or should that be capital-G "Gardener's"] glove/ Live forever. So, songs made by humans are dried flowers in a scrapbook, but things made by God are eternal.

Then comes the last chorus of the song, which blames God for both plague and climate change, and quotes "The Battle Hymn of the Republic." In that hymn, God "loose[s] the fateful lightning/ of His terrible, swift sword." Here, the Lord is the sword! 

In the free will/fate debate, it seems that fate wins, because it is true whether you believe it or not, whether you try to subvert it or not. "The Lord is... a simple truth surviving."

Is... is that the simple truth?

Too soon to tell-- it's not really the last part of the song. The song picks up again after the album's third song... with no new text, ending again with the same verse. 

But then, the continues again after the sixth song. And this time, there is more, new text. And this time, the Lord is less threatening than plagues and natural disasters: "The Lord is a puff of smoke... my personal joke... my reflection." God now, is reduced to... one's thoughts of God. 

Then, at nearly the last second, a third possibility occurs to our thinker: Not us deciding what happens, or God doing so, but random chance! "Are we just trial and error/ One of a billion in the universe?" This thought, however, is waved away. 

And we are right back to "The Lord is my engineer... my record producer."

But now, that fate is at least personal: "The Lord is the music that I hear." This whole time, you have to wonder how such a successful person as Simon could say that everything in his life was predetermined. He's probably been wondering that, himself.

So this is what he lands on. He has, his whole life, followed the music he heard. It has led him around the world. But now he wonders what power presented him with that music, which seemed to materialize just as he was ready to, or needed to, hear it. "The Lord is the music that I hear."

Up to now, this repeated line has been "The Lord is the earth I ride on." Now, after the Lord's being referred to again as an "engineer" in the music studio sense just 5 lines before, we have: "The Lord is my engineer/ The Lord is the train I ride on." [emphasis mine]. So we do have the other meaning of "engineer" acknowledged-- and the idea now is that once we are aboard the train, the track is laid out for us, and we are not even driving.

Then one last image: "The Lord is the coast, and the coast is clear." Let's forgive the pun for now and recall that one of Simon's relatively recent song is titled "The Coast." It would take another post to fully compare the two songs, but here it's enough to note that in that song, the coast is only described as being "injured." Here, "the coast is clear."

And what is The Lord, in the end? "The path I slip and I slide on." We are on a path, and it will take us where it is going, and any effort on our part to wander off it will result in us slipping and sliding... so why not just submit? Get on the train, and enjoy the ride. 

Next Song: Love is Like a Braid

 

Seven Psalms (album), and its instruments

In May of 2023, Paul Simon released a new album titled Seven Psalms.

Structurally, it takes two forms at once. On the one hand, as the title indicates, there are seven distinct songs here, each with its own title. On the liner notes, they are presented as discreet songs.

However, there is only one track on the album-- and Simon has said it is a suite, meant to be listened to all the way through, all at once, as if it were a piece of classical music.

Further, the first song, "The Lord," is used as a motif, and returns a few times throughout the suite-- sometimes with the same lyrics and sometimes with new ones.

Nevertheless, for the sake of clarity, each song will be dealt with individually, in its own blog post. All verses of "The Lord," even if they appear further along in the suite, will be considered part of that song, for the sake of analyzing its lyrics. 

Next Song: The Lord

MUSICAL NOTES:

Over the course of this blog, when an unfamiliar instrument was employed on a given track, I mentioned it.

Here, however, the liner notes don't specify which track used which instrument, so I will list and explain them now.

The more unfamiliar ones-- and all of these are acoustic-- include:

The gamelan: This is less one instrument than a set of them, from Indonesia, that includes mostly percussion but also some winds and strings.

The gopichand: A one-string instrument from Southeast Asia. It is shaped like a tall isosceles triangle, with a hollow gourd as the base.  

Cloud-chamber bowls: This is an array of large, glass half-bottles, designed by Harry Parch. Both their top halves and inverted bottom halves are arranged on a frame and struck, as with chime-style bells. (The bottles were originally designed for physics experiments involving radiation, in what scientists call "cloud chambers.")

[Note: More about Parch on the Musical Note section of the "Insomniac's Lullaby" entry.]

The Chromelodeon: An adapted reed organ that plays a 43-tone-per-octave scale. Another Parch invention. As the name implies, it is a variation on the melodeon, which is a reed instrument played with keys, that looks like a piano and sounds something like an accordion. 

The hadphoon: A toned percussion instrument made from metal. Sort of a circular marimba, or flat steelpan, it is placed on top a drumhead, and its metal tines (each a different width, and therefore a different tone) are struck.

The hadjira: A large, tambourine-like frame drum.

The gran cassa bass drum: Similar to the largest drum one might see in a marching band.

Almglocken: The liner notes explains these are "Swiss tuned bells." They are metal, with handles on top and no clappers inside. They have been compared to cowbells but are more bell-like in sound; they "dong" rather than "clunk."

The Chalumeau: a Baroque reed instrument considered an early form of the clarinet.

The therobo: This is to the lute what a bass guitar is to a guitar. It has a rounded back and a very long neck. 

Fast Car (Wyclef Jean feat. Paul Simon)

[Note to Readers: This is a 2007 track that was co-written by Simon. With most such collaborations, I assume that Simon is the primary songwriter, and that he has invited others to work on the track with him-- to add their expertise in a particular genre, language, etc. In other words, they are collaborating with him.

With this song-- which appears on Wyclef Jean's album Carnival II: Memoirs of an Immigrant-- the primary songwriter seems, to me, to be the same as its primary singer, Jean. The song is attributed to seven songwriters, including both Simon and Jean; Wikipedia lists Jean first... and Simon fourth. So here, he seems to be collaborating with them.

On the one hand, how much input could one writer have among seven? On the other, if that one is Paul Simon, would the others second-guess or gainsay him? Even so, Simon does not seem to be the type to be an ungracious guest, and would likely allow his host's literary voice to be the most prominent.

When I sub-titled this blog "more or less," I mean that the list of songs discussed would be as comprehensive as possible, knowing that "every single song" was a very intense promise. I did not mean that the songs would be "more or less" his. But here we are, and this song, while certainly weighing in on the "less" side, is a Paul Simon song, and so we're going to discuss it.]

"Fast Car" was already the title of another song; it's the one that put Tracy Chapman on the map back in 1988. It went to #6 and received two Grammy nominations (it lost Song of the Year to "Don't Worry, Be Happy.")

Wyclef's song is full of many other references as well. Even before the song starts, Wyclef mentions "Jersey Boys," the musical about Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. In the first line, he mentions Kanye West's song "Jesus Walks" from 2004. He then compares Kanye's being revived after being in a coma-- after his 2002 car accident-- to Jesus' rising from the dead.

This introduces the image of a "fast car," as in the one whose crash Kanye survived.

In the next verse, Wyclef mentions two movies starring Will Smith--  Wild Wild West (itself a reimagining of a TV show from the 1960s) and Bad Boys. Smith, now best known as an actor, began as a rapper. While Smith was never in a car crash, all I could find that related was a rumor that he and his son were killed in one... but the rumor emerged in 2019-- more than 10 years after this song was released. 

The line "some mystery, the killer get away," is true in general, but the video explains this is a reference to the still-unsolved murders of The Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac Shakur. 

Yes, the line "some of us are outlawed" plays off of the "outlaw" trope from the historic Wild West, but also acknowledges that much hip-hop music is censored or even banned, and rappers themselves often run outside the law. 

But we would know that Biggie and Tupac were meant anyway... since "Outlawz" is the name of a hip-hop group of which Shakur was a member... while "Bad Boy" is also the name of a record label (founded by Sean Combs) for which Biggie recorded. 

In the Chapman song, the "fast car" is an escape from poverty to a more comfortable life. Here, it seems that any life-- even that of a superstar millionaire-- sometimes needs escaping from: "Livin' this isn't the end of the day... jump in the fast car."

The next line seems to substantiate this, with a sentiment that goes back at least as far as the Beatles saying "money can't but me love." Here, this thought is expressed: "You don't gotta be no billionaire/ To get a ticket up to the Moon.... I'm right here." The idea of billionaires with tickets to the Moon likely refers to Elon Musk's Space X project, selling flights to outer space and someday the Moon.

Then we get another musical reference: "see clearly now." This line clearly evokes the big hit of reggae singer Johnny Nash (who passed away in 2020), with its famous line: "I can see clearly now, the rain has gone."

The next verse puns the word "shots" meaning both "shots of alcohol" and "gunshots." The scenario framed is driving home after a "bachelor party" having had more than "51 shots." This high of a number of gunshots, however, likely refers to the death of Amadou Diallo." In 1999, he tried to enter is own home but was falsely seen as trying to break in. When he reached for his wallet to prove he was, in fact, at his own house, the police assumed he was reaching for a gun, and shot at him 41 times. That Jean adds 10 to that number may mean that Diallo was just one of many such victims of police... zeal. 

The case is seen as emblematic of the idea that black men are always suspect, even when innocent. The story is also told by Springsteen in his song "American Skin (41 Shots)."

And what kind of car was the partier about to drive? A "fast one."

[Note: An astute reader has informed me that another case of a police shooting, involving 51 bullets, was in fact the one Jean was likely referring to, instead. The victim was named Sean Bell, and the incident happened in 2006, just a year before this song dropped; Bell was in his car. The details are in the comments below. But wow... how sad that there are so many such stories that we can actually get them confused with each other...]

It is at this point that Simon begins to sing. He sings this bridge twice in the course of the song. Now, the "fast car" does not seem to be a means of escape at all, but the vehicle of the Angel of Death (compare this with Emily Dickinson imagining Death picking her up in his "carriage" in her Poem 479). 

Here, Simon sings: "When that fast car picks you up/ You will have no choice... You will weep and smile." And where is the car heading? "You will... see Heaven in the headlights." 

The next two verses confirm this. The lines about "TLC" and "Honduras" tell us that that the verse is about Lisa Lopes, a member of the R&B group TLC, who was killed, while doing charity work in Honduras, in a car accident.

The last verse is also about a car-accident victim, this time a 16-year-old who was killed crossing the street by a drunk driver in a "hit-and-run." This may refer to a famous case as well, but one I am at this point unfamiliar with.

So... putting this all together? Kanye was almost killed in a car crash, but Lisa "Left-Eye" Lopes was.
While neither Biggie or 2Pac were killed in car crashes, cars were involved, as they were killed in drive-by shootings. Amadou Diallo was killed by police shooting from behind their (parked) cars, but he was on his front porch. 

Maybe the message is that one should not put one's faith in a car to provide an escape. Cars-- and other material trappings of success-- can kill as surely as they can transport one safely. 

Instead, one should depend on God, and on people: "You don't gotta be no billionaire/ To get a ticket up to the Moon/ We all know Somebody up there" and "You need a helping hand?/ Look, I'm right here."

Next: Seven Psalms