Paul Simon, Constantine, and spirituality.
Eusebius of Caesarea’s Vita Constantini, a panegyric honouring the life of Constantine the Great, describes a religious vision the Emperor had before the Battle of Milvian Bridge in 312 CE. ‘He said he saw with his own eyes, up in the sky and resting over the sun, a cross-shaped trophy formed from light, and a text attached to it which said ‘By this conquer’ (Vita Constantini, 1.28). Eusebius emphasised that he was told of this dream by the Emperor himself. Constantine’s forces won the battle the next day, and Constantine went on to issue the Edict of Milan the year after, providing legal status to Christianity within the Roman Empire.
In 2023, Paul Simon released his fifteenth solo album Seven Psalms. New York Times reported it as ‘possibly his last’. After retiring from performing in 2018, the announcement of the album a half-decade later surprised fans and critics alike. In his trailer for the album, released on Youtube, Simon stated that ‘On January 15th 2019, I had a dream that said “You’re working on a piece called Seven Psalms”. The dream was so strong that I woke up and I wrote it down.’ He followed that he subsequently had more dreams, and regularly woke up in the middle of the night to record his memory of them. From its first reveal, Simon cemented Seven Psalms as soaked in spirituality.
Paul Simon was 81 years old in 2023. Following the serious threat that the Covid-19 pandemic posed to older adults, Seven Psalms is accordingly engaged with mortality and death. In the final leg of the record, Simon cries ‘Wait / I’m not ready / I’m just packing my gear’. Wailing over an unforgiving, descending chord progression, his voice is fearful of the end – an end represented metaphorically by the end of the album. This fear is cyclical – the haunting bells at the end of the album flow almost seamlessly into the same bells at its beginning. As he questions on ‘Your Forgiveness’: ‘The white light eases the pain […] or does it all begin again?’. For Simon, mortality is inseparable from spirituality. As he questions his future, he questions his own faith, and whether that ‘white light’ is worth believing in. Seven Psalms articulates the internal conflict he feels in a moment of global crisis. One minute, he sings ‘It seems to me / We’re all walking down / The same road / To wherever it ends’, but then admits that ‘I want to / Believe in / A dreamless transition’. Desire for an easy answer overrides his scepticism.
The structure of Seven Psalms evokes Simon’s spirituality – or questioning thereof. The album was released as one thirty-three minute track, intended to be listened to in one sitting. The motif of ‘The Lord’ recurs in three distinct sections over the half-hour, as if Simon’s ‘psalms’ are constantly sidelined by his need to question: what is ‘The Lord?’. Interrogating his own spirituality, The Lord is simultaneously ‘a puff of smoke’, ‘a meal for the poorest of the poor’, and Simon’s ‘record producer’. Most notably, The Lord is ‘the Covid virus’ and ‘the ocean rising’. Simon forces the listener to consider how a higher being must simultaneously represent both suffering and benevolence. The sequencing of the album and its ‘one song’ structure forces the reader to share Simon’s hope and despair at his pace. Even in the album’s very last moments, his wife, Edie Brickell, sings ‘Life is a meteor / Let your eyes roam / Heaven is beautiful / It’s almost like home’. Her warm, bright voice juxtaposes Simon’s fearful ‘wait’, but even in this moment of hopeful reprieve, Simon still suggests a scepticism towards the afterlife. Heaven is not home, just ‘almost like’ it. Nonetheless, he gives in at the last moment. ‘Amen’; the album ends.
Historians debate as to whether Constantine’s acceptance of Christianity was solely caused by his sudden spiritual conversion. Harold Drake has argued that Constantine’s broad acceptance of all religious views in the Edict of Milan, alongside Christianity, was a ‘shrewd and statesmanlike move’ intended to achieve the political goal of ‘imperial unity’ (Drake, Constantine and the Bishops, 2000, p. 205). Eusebius’ tale of Constantine’s vision masked this political aim, whilst emphasising the Emperor’s piety. Returning to Seven Psalms this year, I found that the tracklist on streaming services was changed from one thirty-three minute track to seven distinct ones. Evidently separating the album into seven distinct songs allows for them to be returned to more easily, added to playlists, and streamed more often. I can only imagine that Owl Records and Legacy Recordings – a subsidiary of Sony Music – wanted more revenue from streaming services. Perhaps spirituality is second to reality.
Edward Clark
