It all builds up, needless to say, to the final moments, when police manage to reach the top of the tower and put an end to the sniper's conversation with the world. But for the sniper himself, the point is moot: In killing him, the world has given him the answer he sought. "I was," he thinks to himself in triumph as the bullets rip through him, "I am, and now, I will be." As though just now waking up to this transcendent fact--the fact of his immortalization through the damage he has done, and through the legend he has become--the sniper repeats the last three words once more: "I will be." The music soars and resounds and, like blood or gunsmoke, slowly flows away.
I thought about this song a lot around this time last year. The circumstances were different, of course: These new murders were mobile hit-and-runs rather than a massive attack. And they ended up being more different than we'd thought: A pair of killers, with Islamic terrorism mixed in as a motivation, rather than (or at least in addition to) the deranged loner with Oedipal rage. But put aside some of the specifics, and the tales told are nearly identical: of men so incapable of communicating their anger that they come to see murder as their only acceptable means of expression, of media that feed parasitically on death and those who produce it.
That listening to a song afforded me insight into and understanding of a human struggle makes it art. That that struggle involved an unblinking, unrepentant killer makes it horror.
Sean T. Collins flies so high when he's stoned. He blogs at Attentiondeficitdisorderly Too Flat, where this post originally appeared.
Article comments
1 - Eric Olsen
Great job Sean - who would have thought Harry Chapin?? Just shows you you never know and art can instruct and edify when we least expect it.
2 - Hazy Dave
I've evolved a grudging respect for Harry (and his backing musicians!) over the years, but I'm more familiar with Kinky Friedman's "Ballad of Charles Whitman", which takes a very different approach to the narrative. There's still a lot of Eagle Scouts around...
3 - John
I always liked "Sniper," but could never figure out the title of the album "Sniper and other love songs." Sniper is about love, or lack of it. And Harry did that specifically, just like his album "Verities and Balderdash," which is basically "truth and fiction." If you are a dedicated Harry Chapin fan, you will understand how Harry takes a true story and relates it to every day life, and people. One of the best songs Harry ever wrote was "The Mayor of Candor lied!" There are so many twists and turns, at the end of the song, everything comes together, and it all makes sense. Just like in Sniper. At the end, you realize that the shooter only wanted fame, and not "fame and fortune," because he knew he would die at the end. His mother never loved him, because he says, "Mama, won't you nurse me?" and them screams, "I hate you!" One can only assume that he only had one parent, which also shows lack of love, as a child, and as a young adult in school, "I didn't really know him, he was kinda strange. Always sort of sat there, he never seemed to change." This song can be disected line by line, and that is why Harry Chapin had so much talent, but was never given the appreciation he desearved! He was given the "Congressional Medal Of Honor" for his efforts to stop "World Hunger," but was not ever recognized as the truly great "singer-songwriter" that he was!
4 - Silent Bob
I'm glad to see that I am not alone in my deep appreciation of Harry's writing styles and in particular, his ability to communicate the raw emotion of a lonely killer in this great song. I have never been able to listen to it once and move on, programming "repeat" and listening to it over and over is standard procedure for me whenever his CD makes it into my player. Lately I've dug it up, quite out of coincidence, and have not been able to stop thinking about it. The more you listen to "Sniper" and the more you pay attention to the words, the more you appreciate the talent this man possessed and the more I wish there were more talented song writers out there with the same distinct sense of what makes "art"-ful music. The song paints a vivid picture of a man who never had an identity (A lover that's never been kissed, a fighter who's not made a fist, if I'm alive then there's so much I've missed, how do I know I exist?! Am I?) as well as the path his life had taken to get him on top of that tower. Harry screams in this song, something he never does in any of his other songs, making it really stand out among the rest of his catalog. I love any music that can communicate to me an emotion, whether it be love, hate, sadness, whatever. At the point in the song where the Sniper screams at the city "Are you listening to me?!?!" has got to be the part I can appreciate the most. Harry sings it in just such a way that it makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up straight, sounding exactly as the Sniper probably felt: depraved, resentful, angry, helpless, desperate. Something I'm sure many people could relate to. God Bless you, Harry.
5 - Antfreeze
I saw Harry once and was totally amazed by how freakin LOUD they were. I went in expecting folk songs and love ballads and they actually ended up blowing up the right channel of the PA until it was cutting in and out and pretty much ruined the show.
6 - Kierin
I love Harry's lyrics to: "Circle" and "W.O.L.D"
and also "Cat's In The Cradle". I miss Harry alot. The people on our "home" planet Earth misses Harry to. Harry is the world's maginifcent musician who ever lived. Dear god please pray for The Chapin Family as the loss of Harry please help them remember Harry's songs that he had written.
7 - Jet in Columbus
Wrong Harry's best lyrics are contained in the song "Taxi"
8 - Ken Girard
Thanks for the great breakdown of the song. I heard it today and it made me think of my mother. She always had Harry and other story telling song writers playing on the record player. I think it is one of the reasons I could never really get into music that didn't really have something to say.