In The Presence Of That Evening

So, I have loved this song ever since this album first came out (wow, it really was a long time ago; I'm old), and had always been curious about the lyrics. I always interpreted it as being from the point of view of a man either already tried, convicted, sentenced to death, and filled with so much rage that they they felt only their death could bring them solace, OR from the perspective of somebody who was so enraged they were going to commit a crime and then attempt to die via suicide by cop. Turns out, neither of those are correct. I just came across an article about this Netflix movie called The Stranger, which led me to looking into Albert Camus' novel The Stranger, and lo and behold, the explanation for the lyrics presented itself. Our narrator in the song is the main character of The Stranger, named Meursault, and he has just had his final confrontation with the prison Chaplain at the end of the novel. The Chaplain implores Meursault to turn himself over to the Christian God, but Meursault finally loses his temper and eviscerates the Chaplain's reasoning. Meursault eventually realizes he is, in fact, happy, and feels a strange kinship with his now-deceased mother who died in a nursing/retirement home in the beginning of the novel. "In the presence of that evening, charged with meaning, and with stars..." Meursault is awaiting his execution for murder, and has just come to a great realization after telling the Chaplain off. "I opened for the first time to the tender indifference of the world..." In true absurdist fashion, Meursault tells the Chaplain that no matter what, all of us are going to die someday, meaning life is pointless, and this act empties him of any wish to escape death while simultaneously opening him to the true nature (tender indifference) of the universe, making him feel as if he is a part of it. "As if my great anger had...emptied me of hope..." Losing his temper frees him from the baser emotions. "I withheld beauty so that all would be complete, so I could whisper a new song, and fell less alone..." By holding back any empathy or emotion for the whole novel, Meursault didn't allow himself to be played or frustrated by the universe (rational man vs. irrational universe), leading him to this new acceptance of happiness and kinship with his mother, who he believes must have felt the same as she lay dying in the nursing home. "...that there will be many smiling people looking on the day of my execution..." Now feeling like he belongs to and in the universe, Meursault hopes a crowd of people who hate him will wait for him on his execution day, much as they surrounded him in life, and this will bring all to a consummate end. If you are interested, read the wikipedia article on The Stranger by Albert Camus, it's where I got most of this information. I haven't read The Stranger in years, probably twenty or more, but as soon as I started reading the wiki it started coming back and it made absolute sense (to me at least).