Bad Dream

This song could just as easily have been called "Bad Dream Blues," given the melody.

There are several sorts of bad dreams discussed in the song. After each, a question is asked, prefaced by the words "I'm wondering." 

One sort of bad dream is a nightmare-- you fall asleep, and instead of imagining riding a horse in a field of tulips, you imagine being attacked by a bear in a cave. The speaker imagines all dreams being produced in a "factory," in which the executive decision is made-- will tonight's dream be sweet, or scary?

The first bad dream we encounter is of this type. In the dream, a "giant shadow" is imagined by a child to be enveloping and smothering him to the point of suffocation. Since it was a form of darkness that was the problem, the solution was "the morning sun." 

The dream happened while he was "asleep, but still awake," which could refer to REM sleep. It could also, I guess, refer to "lucid" dreaming; generally, one in this state can direct the course of the dream's narrative, which doesn't happen here, but then this dreamer is a child who may be unaware of that option.

Since the person relating this nightmare is an adult remembering it from his childhood, the question is: "Where is the doorway to yesterday's secrets?" Frustratingly, the adult remembers the dream but not the experience that triggered it. If only he could access those memories, he could finally understand the dream.

Simon co-wrote (and co-sang) this song with Edie Brickell, his wife. She takes a turn, offering, she says, "a woman's perspective." What she says is brief, but powerful, and also remembered from childhood:

Ever since I was a little girl
They all said, "Don't go out alone at night

It's a hungry, dangerous world"

For vulnerable minorities, the world is a "bad dream" even when they are awake. Their nights are filled with waking nightmares of constantly incessant pursuit by the appetites of society. Since this hunger is inescapable and insatiable, the only solution (admittedly not much of one) is to avoid danger as much as possible. 

Her question is: "Where is the shelter for runaway angels?" Pure innocence is, sadly, one of the most attractive targets, but where can true safety be found? It is as elusive as an inaccessible memory.

The final scenario is also brief. A "backwoods" man crashes a rodeo, carrying many bibles, then wailing. This is a "dream," also, but whose? Notably, while the other scenarios were followed by the words "a bad dream," this one is followed by just "It's a dream." Meaning that, for some, this could be a good dream-- someone messianic bringing order (religion) to chaos (a "rodeo"), not someone unwelcome imposing restrictions on revelry. 

Is this a "bad dream"? Depends who you ask. 

This time, the question is "Where is the country I promised my children?" Clearly, Simon is of the camp that sees this "backwoods" character as a wet-blanket killjoy. Simon is, famously, one of the voices of the Civil Rights movement (see "A Church is Burning," "He Was My Brother," "The Sound of Silence," etc.) and this song was written when the US was dealing with the MAGA movement. 

There is a structure here that may seem familiar to Simon's fans; we saw it years ago in the song "Slip Sliding Away." The first verse, there, was about a man, the second about a woman, and the third about a father. (Interestingly, Springsteen's "Glory Days" is the also same, structurally: verses about a man, then a woman, then-- in a "missing" verse-- the speaker's father. The final, familiar, verse is about he speaker himself.)

In this song, we have a man remembering his childhood nightmare, a woman remembering the fear instilled in her as a girl... and then a verse about society at large dealing with a figure who is a harbinger of doom to some, but a herald of salvation to others. 

The three kinds of "bad dreams" delineated are the sleeping kind, the waking kind... and the kind that people will tell you wasn't a nightmare at all. Having your own perceptions questioned, and even suspected, sounds pretty nightmarish, too.