King for a Day

When Paul Simon wrote about Martin Luther King, Jr.

In the spring of 2011, I had the pleasure of having Paul Simon take me through one of his songs, step by step.  Many artists would feel uncomfortable doing this.  The muse is mysterious, and process is sacred—how dare you, a mortal, visit where I dwell?  It happened that Simon’s new album, So Beautiful or So What, was astonishing.  He liked to talk about new work, and he had a very logical mind.  He was even enrolled in law school for a little while.  He didn’t mind taking you into the shop.  He seemed to actually enjoy it.  Before we went deep into the song, we started by talking about Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, Philip Larkin (“I can’t argue with his bleakness,” he said), and we even talked about the F train.  I was staying in Queens, a stop away from where he grew up.  He then analyzed the conversation and the twists and turns we took, the topics we could have taken further if it had been interesting enough.  All this led to talking about how he does what he does.  He was walking around Montauk with a notebook and wrote, “Life is so beautiful or so what.” 

The reason why we are here right now is because this is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, and the final verse of “So Beautiful or So What” is about the King assassination.  The song was not a planned tribute to King.  A lot of associations got him there.  The song starts with making a chicken gumbo based on an actual recipe, and he immediately busts out a lot of “ot” rhymes. 

I'm gonna make a chicken gumbo
Toss some sausage in the pot
I'm gonna flavor it with okra
Cheyenne pepper to make it hot

Then it’s time to put the kids to bed. You can tell them things like “life is what you make of it,” and they still listen.

I’m gonna tell my kids a bedtime story
A play without a plot
Will it have a happy ending?
Maybe yeah, maybe not

The song centers on a chorus that is almost an “ot” rhyme, close enough for jazz:

I tell them life is what you make of it
So beautiful or so what

There, it has gone from the notebook to the world.  Now, in a sad and lovely image, he is not just a drop in the bucket, but a raindrop in a bucket, to fit the syllables.

I'm just a raindrop in a bucket
A coin dropped in a slot
I am an empty house on Weed Street
Across the road from a vacant lot
You know life is what you make of it
So beautiful, or so what

We are here for instant, then we are gone.  It doesn’t matter how many awards you get, or how much your music will survive you, how those kids hearing the bedtime stories will grow up, into a world you will not see.  On the bridge, he takes a break from “ot” rhymes and moves to “ice.”  Some say the world will end in fire.  Some say in ice.

Ain't it strange the way we're ignorant
How we seek out bad advice
How we jigger it and figure it
Mistaking value for the price
And play a game with time and love
Like a pair of rolling dice

We think we know what’s going on, but we are idiots.  It’s a wonder we know how to breathe.  It’s all a game of chance, the house always wins, and we delude ourselves if we think we have a clue.  All of this leads to the assassination of King.  “The song needed to build in intensity,” he explained to me. “None of the illustrations compare to the life and death of Martin Luther King, who was really the personification of how life can be this extraordinary thing and he was our great spiritual leader and advisor, and he intensifies the question and tells you the choice.”  King got his Nobel at 34, got shot at 38, 55 years ago, and we still can’t live up to hm.

Four men on the balcony
Overlooking the parking lot
Pointing at a figure in the distance
Dr. King has just been shot
And the sirens long melody
Singing savior pass me not
Ain't it strange the way we're ignorant
How we seek out bad advice
How we jigger it and figure it
Mistaking value for the price
And play a game with time and love
Like a pair of rolling dice
So beautiful, so beautiful
So beautiful

I remember when I made it to 39 and couldn’t believe I was older than Martin Luther King, Jr.  I felt like he would always be older than me and I still do.  “Savior Pass Me Not” is a Swan Silvertones song, as rich and majestic as a King speech. King has become a brand, and politicians who would have been King’s enemies will always exploit his name. Leave the words of a prophet out there and someone is liable to appropriate it.  Ain’t it strange the way we’re ignorant.  Simon’s song goes all the way into the darkness, but that’s not where he wants to end.  The song ends with the refrain “so beautiful.”  He is done with “so what,” not in the sense of being done with being done with Miles Davis, but with shrugging it off.  And on this day, we should remember his beauty.  He died for it and is still misappropriated for it, but if you listen, you can hear the voice of a sage, one who wanted a better world for the rest of us.  “So beautiful” are the final words of the song.  “I’m not on the fence on that.  I’m in the so beautiful camp,” Simon told me.  So beautiful, indeed.  "We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."  This has been said a lot, but it will never be exhausted, even though it is hard to believe it sometimes.  We live in jaded times.  It is considered uncool to believe in anyone anymore.  King was no saint—he was a mild, gentle sinner like the rest of us, but he was also speaking truth.  He fought and died to make a better world.   He didn’t do it to become a stamp or a day off.  He did it to speak truth to power and be a pain in the ass, and doing everything he could to get it done.  King at 38 was older than I’ll ever be.  I first heard the “I’ve been to the mountaintop” speech in high school, and it was clear he knew the end was nigh.  The end could always be nigh.  Being a dreamer can be fatal.  Look what happened to Robert Kennedy, to John Lennon.  It’s impossible. Life is what you make of it.