| If you don't know Paul Simon's Surprise, listen to Outrageous before proceeding. You have to read this blog as it was posted, earliest first. Start with "Cracked 2 More" ('06, Nov.) and then work your way up the list. The fully cracked explanations are in the comments, not in the blogs (for those who want to do their own cracking). |
Finished the annotations. They're all on www.CrackingTheSimonCode.org and the color coding is great for showing the complex structures Simon creates. Seeing the structures puts any thought of randomness to rest. These tracks are rigorously built.
Got into the car (where Surprise has been in the CD for months now) and heard something in the bass that I hadn't heard in my office. When my old office Panasonic died (how old? turntable and dual cassette deck) I replaced it with the cheapest boombox that Walmart had. (When I listen to music I use the quite good electronics in the family room.) Without thinking, I'd used this boombox for the annotations. The new line in the bass made me think about it.
So to Best Buy and acquire top-of-the-line Bose head phones. Carefully replay and correct some eggregious mistakes. The heartbeats in (where? need to build the whole album version of the annotations where I could Ctrl+F "heartbeat") are bass, not drums, for example. Now I was hearing everything and there's more to the music than I knew. I like the way Simon sings left of center and puts the other instruments in other places.
If you've finished your cracking, or if you're just looking for the answers, the comment here will tell all I know about "I Don't Believe."
3 comments:
"Maybe and maybe and maybe some more." I don't believe that you can really be sure if the songpoet isn't at all sure. It turns out, though, that the songpoet is sure about some things, and that gives us a handle on this complex track.
To begin, religious faith can be consoling. To a Christian or Muslim, death is the entry to heaven, which is certainly consoling if you lose a relative or friend. But our songpoet, or the character created by our songpoet (maybe and maybe...), does not believe, and therefore is not consoled.
It is not the fairytale forest in which disbelief is expressed. It's the view that acts of kindness are beneficial, "like breadcrumbs in a fairytale forest," (simile, here). Our character or our songpoet leans closer to the fire, but is still cold. This is an echo of a primitive time when fire meant heat. Maybe. Or it's a purely psychological chill, triggered by disbelief and the fire is in a well-appointed mansion. Maybe. Both work.
Then we learn that the earth was born in a storm, and that "'the universe loves a drama,' you know." (Line credited to an unnamed "E. B." Simon is married to Edie Brickell.)
Prehistory yields to contemporary life with head-spinning speed when the broker calls. (As noted at http://www.CrackingTheSimonCode.org/lyrics/i3.html the music is unchanged between prehistory and the broker's call.) This introduction of the broker is necessary to set up the broker's second appearance, where his mission is realized.
Returning to the original music ("Acts of kindness, ...") we see what Simon does believe: he believes in children, love and familial happiness. Let's fast forward to the return of the "born in a storm" music and then rewind to the guardian angel.
For a long time I was confused by the "heart is part of the mist" line. Then I slid into my car seat to run an errand. The mountain I live on (well, big hill - 540 feet above the valley floor) was fogged in. You couldn't see. I drove half a mile to the end of my road, said "to hell with it" and returned home. On the way home, a big head-slapping "How obvious!" came to me.
Substitute "fog" for mist (sorry about messing up Simon's poetry - this is only for explanation). "Maybe the heart is part of the fog." It's part of that which prevents you from seeing clearly. Maybe the confusion is all that there is or that could ever exist. Maybe this is about religious faith. Maybe the author is an agnostic, wrestling with the question of God's existence. It is this wrestling that has him asking his guardian angel to stop taunting him. Maybe. (From "Everything About It Is a Love Song," "Sit down, shut up, think about God, ...).
So there's the broker on the line. He blew it. "Maybe some virus or brokerage joke" (there's that word "maybe" again) "And he hopes that my faith isn't shaken." Our songpoet has challenged himself to look at these topics from all angles. Here he points out that faith applies to far more than religious concerns. You can have faith in your acountant, broker, carpenter... I have faith in my Linux computer (last booted two months ago).
Faith in religion can be consoling. Uncertainty in religion can be troubling. Having faith in secular things, whether that is a loving family or a broker, is also a good thing. The title, "I Don't Believe" points straight at the subject matter. Belief is another thing that happens somewhere in the mind.
For me, I still don't believe that I've figured out the final line. Won't someone help out? "To pantomime prayers with the hands of a clock." What?
To pantomime prayers with the hands of a clock - I believe this to be a reference to the "sign of the cross" in Catholicism.
The hands move mechanically...like a clock.
My take on "I don't believe we were born to be sheep in a flock/To pantomime prayers with the hands of a clock":
sheep, the flock, the shepherd are important metaphors in Judaism and Christianity (and I'm betting Islam), as sheep are the herd animal of the middle east where all three religions have their roots. Pantomiming prayers according to the time sounds like saying prayers at specified times of day, which all of these religions have done, and do, though Muslims seem to be doing this en masse more today. (Someone mentioned the Catholic sign of the cross, but consider also the Muslim gathering to kneel and say prayers at the mosque. So in brief, I think the speaker in the song is rejecting the herd aspect of organized religion and prayer at prescribed times.
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