In Celebration of Casimir Pulaski Day (Part Two)

To continue the Weeklings article, this is where the author breaks down the song: 

First verse:
Goldenrod and the 4H stone 
The things I brought you when I found out
You had cancer of the bone 

 The unusual and useless items hint at the narrator’s age—probably 12 or 13, on the cusp of puberty—when he finds out she has bone cancer.

Your father cried on the telephone
And he drove his car into the Navy yard
Just to prove that he was sorry

The most cryptic passage in the song; chronologically, the last event that happens (see below).

In the morning, through the window shade
With the light pressed up against your shoulderblade
I could see what you were reading

He’s walking by her house. This tells us that they’re neighbors. The exact nature of her reading material is never revealed; it could be the Bible, or perhaps a love letter—something that was special to the two of them.

All the glory that the Lord has made
And the complications you could do without
When I kissed you on the mouth

The first line will be repeated several times throughout the song; this is its first appearance. There is the whiff of irony about its use, but its meaning is still unclear now. What is not unclear is how he feels about her: not just love, but romantic love, probably the first time he’s felt it.

Second verse:
Tuesday night at the Bible study 
We lift our hands and pray over your body 
But nothing ever happens 

We know she died on a Monday, because Casimir Pulaski Day is observed as a holiday in Illinois on the first Monday in March (see below). “Tuesday,” then, is a week before she died. “Bible study” tells us that they are both religious Christians, and go to the same church. This and the proximity of their houses suggests that they’ve known each other for some time. The line “nothing ever happens” not only tells us that the Bible study group has prayed for her on many occasions, but hints at the agnostic doubts that have begun to creep into the narrator’s mind.

I remember at Michael’s house
In the living room when you kissed my neck
And I almost touched your blouse

Michael is probably a friend, or perhaps the adult who leads the Bible study group. “You kissed my neck” reveals her feelings about the narrator—she loves him, too. “I almost touched your blouse” reinforces the suggestion in the first verse that the narrator is 12 or 13; any younger and he wouldn’t be trying for second base; any older and he wouldn’t mention it.

In the morning at the top of the stairs
When your father found out what we did that night 
And you told me you were scared 

My guess is that “what we did that night” was spend the night together in her bed. Not in a sexual way; in a tender, supportive, hold-me-don’t-leave-me-alone way.

All the glory when you ran outside
With your shirt tucked in and your shoes untied
And you told me not to follow you

Again, not so glorious. He screwed up. He tried to get a little further—he touched her blouse this time—and she didn’t like it. She tucked in her shirt for emphasis, but she didn’t bother with the shoes. Then we have a break in the song, and a hauntingly simple, achingly beautiful trumpet takes the melody. This represents a change in her physical condition, and his emotional one.

Third verse:
Sunday night when I cleaned the house
I found the card where you wrote it out
With the pictures of your mother

He’s in her house, not his. The hospice nurse is there (see below). Her father is with her. He’s making himself useful, tidying up, and comes across this special artifact. Her mother is not there, and the only way she wouldn’t be sitting with her dying daughter is if she were already dead. Death is no stranger to this house.

On the floor at the Great Divide
With my shirt tucked in and my shoes untied
I am crying in the bathroom

It’s the moment of truth. They know it’s almost over. The “Great Divide” is what separates the living from the dead. He notices that his shirt is tucked in and his shoes are untied, as hers were when he took it too far, and that sets him off. He finally breaks down, in the bathroom, away from the bed.

In the morning when you finally go 
And the nurse runs in with her head held low
And the cardinal hits the window

It’s the next day, Monday. She held on longer than expected. The presence of the nurse indicates a hospice situation. And no sooner does the girl die than a bird crashes into the window. Her window. The same one he used to look into.

In the morning in the winter shade 
On the first of March, on the holiday 
I thought I saw you breathing

He came into the room and saw her body. He thought she was still alive, but she wasn’t. She was gone.

All the glory that the Lord has made 
And the complications when I see His face 
In the evening in the window

Chronologically, this is a bit later, after the funeral probably. He’s reflecting on what has happened. The “complications” are his own feelings about God and religion. All that belief, all that prayer, and for what? God took her anyway. It’s not God’s face but his own that he sees in the mirror of the evening window. Message: he is alone in the world.

All the glory when He took our place
But He took my shoulders and He shook my face
And He takes and He takes and He takes

The first line—“when He took our place”—is shorthand for Jesus dying on the cross, sacrificing Himself so that we can all be saved. But the narrator is angry at Jesus, angry at God, for taking not only the love of his life, not only her mother, but also her father (“He takes” is repeated, crucially, three times).

Now the cryptic passage from the first verse makes more sense:

Your father cried on the telephone
And he drove his car into the Navy yard
Just to prove that he was sorry

Her father spoke to the narrator, tried to explain himself (Had he denied her medical assistance for religious reasons? Was there some way that he felt responsible for what happened?), and then, tragically, “drove his car into the Navy Yard,” that is, off a bridge. He committed suicide. And the narrator has lost the entire beloved family. As long as he lives in Illinois, the narrator will have no school or work on the day she died. The rest of the state will unknowingly observe her death. But the cruel irony is that she died on a day already reserved for a long-dead military man with an egergiously masculine name.

This poor little girl, recipient of goldenrod and the 4H stone, the love of the narrator’s life, will forever be associated with, and overshadowed by, the cold and manly Casimir Pulaski.

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I love how this author explains the song. And the song is typical Sufjan: trying to make sense of tragedy and heartache. Of love and sacrifice. When I look in my own life, I have a hard time understanding, just as Sufjan does with his last line of the song, why "God" takes and takes and takes. Especially when it comes to some of us. Why is it that some people go through life with no problems whatsoever - sure, their parents day of old age, but that's to be expected - but others have tragedy after heartbreak after heartache after suffering? I've never heard any explanation that is satisfying; no encouragement that has really been a salve on my own life wounds. Perhaps I need to find my own obscure city holiday and write a song that weaves my own personal story with the story of the hero that holiday celebrates. It might not help me completely understand, but maybe it can help me through some of the questions.

In Celebration of Casimir Pulaski Day (Part One)

If you know me, you know how much I love Sufjan Stevens. I said at the beginning of this year that my favorite album of last year was "Carrie And Lowell" by him. For me, not only was the music stunning (and I'm thankful that he has gotten back to his more eclectic folky roots), but the lyrics were very cathartic for me in trying to get through the grief over my brother's death. One thing I love about Sufjan and his music is how through some of his songs I have learned new things. Also, if you know me, you know that I love knowledge. I love to know things. And thankfully I mostly remember what I learn. Especially if it's useless trivia, haha. One of my favorite albums of all time is "Come On and Feel the Illinoise" by Sufjan, and my favorite song of that album refers to a very obscure holiday that people in Chicago apparently celebrate, called Casimir Pulaski Day. Now Casimir Pulaski day was yesterday, and I was all set to write about it yesterday, but I forgot. (Although I can remember trivia, I have a hard time remembering what I'm supposed to do every day.) This song about the holiday is interesting to me, not only because I love the music, but because Sufjan talks about a childhood friend who he had some kind of romantic relationship with, who died on bone cancer later on in life. Here's the song, in case you haven't heard it and wanted to:

 

I was looking up what some of the lyrics meant, and came across this interesting tidbit about it.

 - The best (and best-known) Pulaski Day tribute comes from one-time Chicagoan Sufjan Stevens. On his album Illinois, Stevens used “Casimir Pulaski Day” to remember both the holiday and his friend, who’d been battling bone cancer. With lines like, “In the morning / In the winter shade / On the first of March / On the holiday / I thought I saw you breathing,” Stevens manages to make the somewhat boisterous but potentially icy holiday lushly reverent, something that’s not all that surprising knowing both Stevens’ history and the track’s tone.

Though Stevens repeatedly extols “all the glory that the Lord has made,” he ends the song instead possibly questioning God’s intentions, especially after his friend’s death on the track’s titular holiday. Though part of life is death, Stevens still struggles with God when, as he puts it, “He takes and he takes and he takes.” Listeners feel his pain acutely, especially as the song slides into Illinois’ next track, the instrumental, “To The Workers Of The Rock River Valley Region, I Have An Idea Concerning Your Predicament.”

Like the holiday itself, “Casimir Pulaski Day” is about remembrance—even if, years later, we might not even be sure what we’re paying tribute to anymore.

The Weeklings have an even better tribute to the song: (Come on Feel the) Illinoise, the second installment in his proposed-but-as-yet-unfinished Fifty States Project, is, for my money, the best album made in the oughts. At turns lush and spare, it features the soaring“Chicago” (the best song of the decade, it says here), the frantic “The Man of Metropolis Steals Our Hearts,” the 5/4-time title track, and the devastatingly beautiful “Casimir Pulaski Day,” known in our house as, simply, “Sad Song.”

The Weeds incident was not the first example of Stevens’ power. When my son was two, he was having a tantrum, as two-year-olds will. As he screamed and complained, “Casimir Pulaski Day” came on the iPod. He immediately stopped crying, as if a button had been switched off on his back, and walked to the speakers, listening intently, spellbound by the music. “This is a sad song,” I told him. “Sad Song,” he repeated. And so it has remained.

I’ve listened to “Sad Song” hundreds if not thousands of times. I don’t mean I had it on while I was driving, or in the background with friends over; I’ve listened to it. I hummed the trumpet part to my daughter the night she was born. I’ve sung it to her and my son as a lullaby countless times, and each time, as I sing lyrics I know by heart, some new flash of insight hits me. It’s a song that never fails to move me.

“Casimir Pulaski Day,” the seventh track on the Illinoise, concerns a young man’s memory of the week leading up to the death of his dearest friend. It is unquestionably the best song ever written about a 12-year-old girl dying of bone cancer. There is an adolescent and artless quality to the lyrics. There is no metaphor, no fancy fifty-cent words, no coherent structure. The story itself is poorly told; we must assemble and organize the traces of the narrator’s memory to deduce what happened. The music underscores this simplicity: the same four chords repeated over and over, uncluttered arrangement, none of the swirling synthesizers and female chorales and abrupt shifts in dynamics that characterize “Chicago” and “The Man of Metropolis Steals Our Hearts.” But it is this very artlessness that makes the song so moving.

“Casimir Pulaski Day” is artless in the way that The Catcher in the Rye is artless, its simplicity belying the thematic complexity lurking beneath the juvenile surface. This is a song about grief, about coping with the loss of a loved one, and, deeper still, about reconciling that death with the existence of a just and benevolent God, in Whom the narrator has grown up believing. On closer inspection, there is a distinct design to the lyrics. The repetition of key words—night, face, morning, glory, window, shoulder—suggests a sestina and hints at the larger story. The vignettes remembered by the narrator—the futile night at the Bible study, the kiss at Michael’s house, meeting her father at the top of the stairs, and so forth—are not chronological, but seem to come to the narrator as he speaks.

(this is part one)