MacArthur Park

Personally, I've always heard this song with the lyrics "sweet 'cream' icing flowing down," but it really doesn't matter. Green, cream, it still works. "Spring . . . ran one step ahead . . " What does "spring" mean when you have a guy and girl in the same sentence? Love, of course. Running "one step ahead /As we followed in the dance," seems to be a clear reference to Shakespeare, maybe "A Mid-Summer's Night Dream." The rest of the first stanza and the third stanza seem to be about the wedding of our unlucky couple. The "parted pages" could be the wedding album and the striped pants certainly remind us of a groom's tuxedo. If that wedding were held on the grounds of McArthur Park, with the admittedly unconventional bride wearing a flowing "yellow cotton dress" (think Marilyn Monroe in that sexy scene where she passes over a sidewalk vent and her dress "foams like a wave"), then the day could easily end with the park "melting in the dark." What are the scenes that he remembers on that fateful wedding day in the park? He could easily deify his lady and imagine her in a goddess-like pose with birds in her hands, or even in a more realistic scene with doves being released as a symbol of their love. Not everyone in that huge park, however, was celebrating their wedding: our luckless singer was probably struck by the people on the periphery doing what they normally do in the park, namely the "old men playing checkers by the trees." But, as is so tragically common, the marriage dissolved and our jilted lover imagined his wedding cake melting in the rain of his depression. Is that so hard to fathom? I don't think so. Rain and depression go together; wedding cake as a representation of that delightful day in the park when they were married--it seems natural to melt the cake in that rain as their union melted. "I don't think that I can take it," . .. well, who hasn't felt that at the initial stages of loving breaking? And since we are using the metaphor of a cake to represent the marriage, then how do we represent all the time, effort, expense, and mental stirrings of the courtship? Well, we say that we "baked" that wedding cake. And what if we can never imagine going through this courtship/love/marriage/divorce trauma again? We say that we will "never have that recipe again." "Oh, no!" he cries in grief--the universal grief of the brokenhearted. Then there is the instrumental break and that break represents time . .. time to reflect, time to heal, time to see a more optimistic viewpoint of life and love---but, not too much time. Just enough time to imagine another woman (another "song") and to have some optimism (another dream) about the future. But, our hero is not healed yet, for he is still drinking the wine while it is warm and not aged, and he will still "never let you catch me looking at the sun," which is to say, "you will never see me blinded to the wiles of a woman again." Because, through it all he is still in love with the girl in McArthur's Park and "You'll still be the one." He will throw off the depression and take charge of his life ("I will take my life into my hands and I will use it"), but he is still a scarred man who is going to punish womanhood by using and abusing the image of the woman who cast him off ("I will win the worship in their eyes and I will lose it /I will have the things that I desire /And my passion flow like rivers through the sky"). And then we are reminded that all the troubles he creates for her sisters is because of her: "I'll be thinking of you /And wondering why." The song ends with the lament of the vampire with a conscience, "Oh, no! /Oh, no /No, no /Oh no!!" Is it a dark song? Maybe, but perhaps just the initial stages of a lover in the process of healing. We can hope so, but if nothing else, we can all identify.

bruno