X's 4th of July

One of my very favorite songs of all time is X's 4th of July from their great album See How We Are. One truth about me that only my wife knows--certain songs make me tear up, when I hear them or even just when I talk about them. And they aren't sweet, achy love songs. Songs grab me when someone gets something so right that it overwhelms me. X's 4th of July is like that. Every time I hear it--and I play it all the time (and EVERY independence day)--I get weepy.

The song is about redemption. At a more intimate level it is about the redemption of a relationship that has fallen into disrepair and hopelessness. It is clear that the lovers in the song still love each other, whatever that means, and I think it means something different for each couple. But life and unspoken betrayals or disappointments have left the couple disconsolate. They have lost that sense of intimacy, the shared space, that couples have. But the fourth of July provides, unexpectedly, an opportunity for reconnection. It offers a chance to step outside of their lives, in part because it is a holiday and the swift current of their other obligations has receded for the moment, but also because the fourth of July, in the characters' lives, as in so many other lives, carries deep-rooted memories of the joy of a summer day, and the wide-openness that a seemingly endless summer day appears to promise. The reconnection between the couple is voiced simply:

What ever happened I
apologize
so dry your tears and baby
walk outside, it's the Fourth of July.

Simple words, but when John Doe sings them, he invests an emotional uplift that is unmistakable. This is an opportunity for the couple to redeem their love and restore their relationship.

But the song is also about the redemption of America. And, like the relationship at the center of the song's tale, it's clear that, from Dave Alvin's view, America is a fucking mess. We have betrayed promises we have made one another. We are separated by a seemingly uncrossable distance. We are profoundly hopeless, and can't envision an escape. But the song locates redemption and rehabilitation in an inspired place: the children of immigrants. It is the celebration of mexican-american kids, shooting off fireworks on the sidewalk outside the narrator's apartment building "on the lost side of town" that reminds us that it is the fourth of July. Their exuberance and joy, their celebration of independence day, opens a window for the couple to find their redemptive moment. And these kids, too, represent, from the song's perspective, the source of our own collective redemption. By keeping our promises to them, by finding our way to walk alongside them, by drawing on their still vibrant, untrampled hopefulness, we can start again. Just as the couple will. And in this new beginning, we can find our chance to restore what we have lost.

As I listened to the song this independence day, I couldn't shake the feeling that we were at a crossroads in our collective tale, that Obama's candidacy is the sound of fireworks out on the sidewalk, reminding us of our promises, our threadbare and uncertain affection for one another, our hope for better things. Let's reconcile. Let's restore what has been lost.