| If you don't know Paul Simon's Surprise, listen to Outrageous before proceeding. While blog software shows the posts from most to least recent, you have to read this blog as it was posted, earliest first. The fully cracked explanations are in the comments, not in the blogs (for those who want to do their own cracking). |
Yesterday was Thanksgiving. Two hour drive in the morning, early. Three hours in the opposite direction (after an epic feast) gave me five uninterrupted hours with Surprise. I alternated between listening to the whole thing and endless repetitions of the first two songs. I finally started to crack "How can you live in the Northeast?"!
It started with the line, "How can you eat from a rice bowl,
The holy man only breaks bread?" That's just wrong. Lao Tse (Taoism founder) must have eaten from a rice bowl. Confucius ate from a rice bowl. The question is posed by a character with a narrow, Western view of religion. Once you see the questions posed as questions coming from a Simon-created character, then things begin to fall into place. My previous suggestion that Simon inherited his father's name and religion is also germane.
But more of that later. Today I'll devote the cracking to "Wartime Prayers." This song is so straightforward that I'm not sure the word "cracking" should be used. I did not see the simplicity at first, but now it is perfectly apparent. If that's not enough to point you in the right direction, the attached comment explains the simplicity.
2 comments:
Got that First-Time visitors box fixed! Now, on to "Wartime Prayers."
"Wartime Prayers" is a song about prayer. Simon explores the variety of reasons people pray. In times of peace, "...silent conversations.
Appeals for love or loves release, in private invocations."
He also has an unkind word, one presumes directed at those who profiteer from Christian fundamentalism. "People hungry for the voice of God hear lunatics and liars."
Wartime prayers are, "For every family scattered and broken."
People also pray for wisdom and personal spiritual improvement. "I'm trying to tap into some wisdom. Even a little drop would do. I want to rid my heart of envy, and cleanse my soul of rage before I'm through."
(The lyrics enclosed with the CD are written in prose style. I'm faithful to the printed lyrics in preserving the boldface that emphasizes every reference to water.)
Is Simon referring to himself here? It's possible. "... cleanse my soul of rage" ties directly to "Outrageous" (wherein the character's soul is anything but cleansed). Also, and equally certainly, the speaker may be a Simon-created character. What we can be sure of is that some people do pray for wisdom and spiritual improvement.
You can also pray for relief from pain. "But when the wounds are deep enough, and it's all that we can bear, we wrap ourselves. In prayer." (Yes, the printed lyrics make the last two words a separate sentence.)
Finally, there is the mother comforting her children. "To drive away despair she sends a wartime prayer."
Is this an anti-war song? Is it specifically against the war in Iraq? You can certainly hear it this way, but the lyrics are clearly about prayer in general with the title, and ending focusing on wartime prayers.
Just read a Simon interview in which he says he wrote "Wartime Prayers" shortly before the war in Iraq, when people saw the war coming.
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