Trail of Volcanoes

The Jonny Cash song "Ring of Fire" was not the first incident of that expression, It was initially used, as early as 1906, to describe the somewhat circular series of volcanoes that dot the shores which ring the Pacific Ocean.

A different trail of "volcanoes" is meant here, though.

The opening verse-- of just four-- refers to carrying one's guitar "down to the crossroads." In the lore of the blues, this is where one meets the Devil, to sell one's soul to him in exchange for talent and success in a Faustian bargain. This is how Robert's Johnson's seemingly miraculous mastery of the blues guitar in a mere three years was explained; Johnson died at 27, making him one of the earliest members of the grim "27 Club." 

The list of musical references to crossroads is as long as the Devil's tail, and includes the title of Eric Clapton's box set; every act from Cream to Rush to Lynyrd Skynyrd to Dylan has covered Robert Johnson's "Cross Road Blues."

Simon says he carried his guitar "down to the crossroads," but then, "over the sea." This is likely a reference to his first trip to England and the beginnings of his folk music career... but also to everywhere in the world he has toured and recorded, from South Africa to Brazil.

We know this because the next verse is global in its scope: "Now, those old roads/ Are a trail of volcanoes."

Except they do not erupt with lava. These are "explosions" of "refugees." A rundown of sources of refugees as of this 2023 writing: Syria and Afghanistan in the Middle East, Ukraine in Europe, South Sudan in Africa, Myanmar in Asia, and Venezuela in South America. Pretty much every continent.

But, in a larger sense, Simon says, aren't we all refugees? Wasn't he one, sort of, when he left his declining pop music career in the US for a folk music career "over the sea" to the UK? 

Lastly, he speaks of volcanoes, refugee crises, and his own life, saddled with two kinds of regret at once. One, that he did so much "damage" at all. And, two, that now there isn't enough time to sweep up the ashes, reassemble the scattered communities, or make "amends" for all the eruptions he has caused.

Maybe he was a refugee of a kind, but what kind of refugee crises did he cause? Whose lives did he uproot, whom did he make to flee in panic? And, realizing now that he may have done so, there is not even time enough left to apologize, repent, heal, or make reparations. After all, this year he will turn 82 in the fall. 

Next Song: The Sacred Harp

Your Forgiveness

The first four verses of this song end with the words "Your forgiveness," meaning God's. And we know it is a capital Y-Your not because it starts a new line but because of the fourth verse and what comes after.

But let's deal with the verses in order. "Yesterday's boy is gone" means someone was a boy yesterday, but not today. Where did he go? "Driving through darkness." The idea that God's forgiveness is to be found by driving aimlessly along nighttime roads is harrowing, but it seems like that used to be the process.

Next, music was tried, but it was a song that was born out of "sorrow." If there was a loss to be mourned, a common reaction is to think, "It must have been a Divine punishment. I must ask God's forgiveness." A beautiful song often comes out of this impulse.

Maybe there is a formula? A "homeless soul" tries to use a computer, a "digital mind," to crack the code.

Then it turns personal... but first, we have to pause to have a lesson in Jewish thought and practice.

The last prayer of the Yom Kippur service imagines that the gates of Heaven are closing and that this is one's last chance to atone while the prayers still have Day of Atonement status (The name of this lyrical service is "Ne'ilah," meaning "locking"). The prayers have been in the plural for most of the service but now, at their end, many synagogues have a practice of the congregants lining up in the aisle, each taking a turn to approach the Ark (an ornate cabinet where the Torah scrolls are displayed) for their own personal atonements and prayers.

"And I, the last in line/ Hoping the gates won't be closed/ Before your forgiveness."

Wait. The Y is lowercase. So this was just a use of Day of Atonement imagery for a case of human-to human forgiveness. Well, people still close their gates and lock them, denying the opportunity for forgiveness. 

Then the song stops this thread... and turns to water imagery: "Dip your hand in heaven's waters" and "All of life's abundance in a drop of condensation."  And it is amazing to think that all of the life forms we know, and are likely to know for a while, are on this ball of, mostly, water. In cosmic terms? Earth isn't even the largest planet in our own solar system. 

The line "two billion heartbeats and out" refers to the fact that a human life of 70 years, at the rate at which a human heart beats on average, includes 2 billion heartbeats. So, that many, and then death. (Simon is 81. He has a pretty strong heart.) 

And then "A white light eases the pain." Likely, this refers to the idea that when someone dies, they see a bright, white light and a rush of serenity; many having "near-death experiences" report experiencing these sensations, brought about-- science maintains-- by certain happenings in the brain and its parts as it dies. Steve Jobs' last words were a repeated: "Oh, wow!" 

Further, what does "heaven's water" mean? Rain? Clouds? Can you "dip" your hand in these? And is everything just "God's imagination"?

But the real question is... how is this one song? The first half is about seeking God's forgiveness. But the second half wavers between on the one hand, the smallness of Earth and its human next to the eternality of God... and on the other, defiance of all that.

"I have my reason to doubt/ There is a case to be made," and "Waving the flag in the last parade" are words of defiance. "Two billion heartbeats and out"? Is that all there is? Is that all a human is? Is death the end or "does it all begin again?" This is some real "Rage against the dying of a light" material. 

In the end though, even this defiance is swallowed by the vastness of infinity. The "Dip your hand..." line is repeated seven times. "God's imagination" three times. The line "All of life's abundance..." is also repeated three times, and it's how the song ends. 

In the first song, it's: "Man plans, and God laughs." In the third, "Man opines, and God sighs." And here, in the fourth song: "Man rails, and God forgives." 

Next Song: Trail of Volcanoes

My Professional Opinion

Did you ever realize that our opinions are only worth half as much as we think they are? After all, when I offer you my opinion, I say, "Well, here're my two cents."

But when someone asks for my opinion, they say, "Penny for your thoughts."

You think your opinion is worth two cents. They would only pay, however, one cent. Half as much.

In interviews about the Seven Psalms album, Simon explains that he was routinely awakened by dreams, very early in the morning, with inspirations for these songs. 

So when he writes, here, "Looks like you haven't slept all night," he may be talking to himself, or at least about himself. There has got to be a mixed feeling for an artist, on the one hand being grateful for inspirations... and on the other wishing they waited until he'd had his morning coffee instead of rousing him when only crickets, owls, and bats are awake. 

Which could be the source of his name "Mr. Indignation."

In any case, he is in his 80s and does not work a job where he has to punch a clock, so for him to "go back to bed" as the song suggests, after jotting his "vampire hour" inspirations is just fine.

If the speaker feels that the person he is addressing is "Mr. Indignation," he admits "I'm no more satisfied than you are." He also admits that he does not have a solution that would resolve the given indignities, as he is not a "doctor" or a "preacher" and doesn't even have a "guiding star"-- say, a Scripture or philosophy-- that might suggest a solution.

On the other hand... what is there to be indignant about? "Indignation" comes from the same root as "dignity," and no one has any dignity to begin with, really: "Everyone's naked, there's nothing to hide." (This echoes Simon's observation in the song "Old" from You're the One: "Take your clothes off-- Adam and Eve.")

The next verse also has a reference to religion. In an echo of the spiritual "Down by the Riverside,"-- "Gonna lay down my sword and shield/ Down by the riverside"-- he writes, "Gonna carry my grievances down to the shore/ Wash them away in the tumbling tide."

There you go-- no more indignities! The idea that immersion in water provides rebirth is held by many of the world's faiths. Physical cleansing can become spiritually cleansing. 

So far, the title line, "in my professional opinion" is said twice. Once, it's to say, "You're exhausted because you are exhausting yourself." The second, it's to say, "You have troubles? So does everyone." 

Now, we the opinion offered that all cows must bear the blame for one specific cow insulting another. This seems... sarcastic. I suppose the point may be that even cows must suffer indignation.

But also, what is this guy's profession, that these are his "professional opinions"? It seems that the profession is, itself, the offering of opinions. If one spends any time on the Internet, one realizes that this may be the most popular profession today.

In the next verse, Simon synopsizes the situation: "So all rise to the occasion/ Or all sink into despair." Better than "all" would be "each," as each of us must rise and address our own indignities-- either by confronting them or "washing [them] away." But "each" doesn't sing as well as "all." The other option is to "sink into despair," dragged down by our indignities.

Here, his opinion is simply: "Don't go there." Why raise an issue only to dismiss it? This professional does not seem very good at... whatever their job is. 

The song ends with admission that, yes, our professional opinions are worth about one cent, even if we are professionals at offering them. Because ultimately, only God's opinion matters.

But it would take another whole blogpost to unpack the last verse. It says that God did three things to us with "His opinions": "He became us/ Anointed us and gamed us."

How did God "become" us? In the sense that God became human in the form of Jesus? In the sense that He made us "in God's image"? Wouldn't that be us becoming Him?

Kings, priests, prophets, and the messiah are, in the Bible, anointed. So which does Simon mean we are, when God anointed us? Or are some of us kings, some prophets, and so on? 

Most unnerving is the idea that God "gamed" us, conned us. How? And why would He want to do that? What would be the fun for an omniscient being to trick a mere human-- who after tens of thousands of years of getting rained on can only say, "There is a 40% chance of rain tomorrow"?

Lastly, what is the whole concept of God having opinions? Isn't God all-powerful, too? Doesn't God's thinking something make it, you know, not opinion but fact?

In my professional opinion, whatever the specifics of Simon's meaning, his general thread is the same as in his earlier song "The Lord": "Man plans, and God laughs." Only here, it's more "Humans opine, and God sighs." 

Next Song: Your Forgiveness

Fast Car (Wyclef Jean feat. Paul Simon)

[Note to Readers: This is a 2007 track that was co-written by Simon. With most such collaborations, I assume that Simon is the primary songwriter, and that he has invited others to work on the track with him-- to add their expertise in a particular genre, language, etc. In other words, they are collaborating with him.

With this song-- which appears on Wyclef Jean's album Carnival II: Memoirs of an Immigrant-- the primary songwriter seems, to me, to be the same as its primary singer, Jean. The song is attributed to seven songwriters, including both Simon and Jean; Wikipedia lists Jean first... and Simon fourth. So here, he seems to be collaborating with them.

On the one hand, how much input could one writer have among seven? On the other, if that one is Paul Simon, would the others second-guess or gainsay him? Even so, Simon does not seem to be the type to be an ungracious guest, and would likely allow his host's literary voice to be the most prominent.

When I sub-titled this blog "more or less," I mean that the list of songs discussed would be as comprehensive as possible, knowing that "every single song" was a very intense promise. I did not mean that the songs would be "more or less" his. But here we are, and this song, while certainly weighing in on the "less" side, is a Paul Simon song, and so we're going to discuss it.]

"Fast Car" was already the title of another song; it's the one that put Tracy Chapman on the map back in 1988. It went to #6 and received two Grammy nominations (it lost Song of the Year to "Don't Worry, Be Happy.")

Wyclef's song is full of many other references as well. Even before the song starts, Wyclef mentions "Jersey Boys," the musical about Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. In the first line, he mentions Kanye West's song "Jesus Walks" from 2004. He then compares Kanye's being revived after being in a coma-- after his 2002 car accident-- to Jesus' rising from the dead.

This introduces the image of a "fast car," as in the one whose crash Kanye survived.

In the next verse, Wyclef mentions two movies starring Will Smith--  Wild Wild West (itself a reimagining of a TV show from the 1960s) and Bad Boys. Smith, now best known as an actor, began as a rapper. While Smith was never in a car crash, all I could find that related was a rumor that he and his son were killed in one... but the rumor emerged in 2019-- more than 10 years after this song was released. 

The line "some mystery, the killer get away," is true in general, but the video explains this is a reference to the still-unsolved murders of The Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac Shakur. 

Yes, the line "some of us are outlawed" plays off of the "outlaw" trope from the historic Wild West, but also acknowledges that much hip-hop music is censored or even banned, and rappers themselves often run outside the law. 

But we would know that Biggie and Tupac were meant anyway... since "Outlawz" is the name of a hip-hop group of which Shakur was a member... while "Bad Boy" is also the name of a record label (founded by Sean Combs) for which Biggie recorded. 

In the Chapman song, the "fast car" is an escape from poverty to a more comfortable life. Here, it seems that any life-- even that of a superstar millionaire-- sometimes needs escaping from: "Livin' this isn't the end of the day... jump in the fast car."

The next line seems to substantiate this, with a sentiment that goes back at least as far as the Beatles saying "money can't but me love." Here, this thought is expressed: "You don't gotta be no billionaire/ To get a ticket up to the Moon.... I'm right here." The idea of billionaires with tickets to the Moon likely refers to Elon Musk's Space X project, selling flights to outer space and someday the Moon.

Then we get another musical reference: "see clearly now." This line clearly evokes the big hit of reggae singer Johnny Nash (who passed away in 2020), with its famous line: "I can see clearly now, the rain has gone."

The next verse puns the word "shots" meaning both "shots of alcohol" and "gunshots." The scenario framed is driving home after a "bachelor party" having had more than "51 shots." This high of a number of gunshots, however, likely refers to the death of Amadou Diallo." In 1999, he tried to enter is own home but was falsely seen as trying to break in. When he reached for his wallet to prove he was, in fact, at his own house, the police assumed he was reaching for a gun, and shot at him 41 times. That Jean adds 10 to that number may mean that Diallo was just one of many such victims of police... zeal. 

The case is seen as emblematic of the idea that black men are always suspect, even when innocent. The story is also told by Springsteen in his song "American Skin (41 Shots)."

And what kind of car was the partier about to drive? A "fast one."

[Note: An astute reader has informed me that another case of a police shooting, involving 51 bullets, was in fact the one Jean was likely referring to, instead. The victim was named Sean Bell, and the incident happened in 2006, just a year before this song dropped; Bell was in his car. The details are in the comments below. But wow... how sad that there are so many such stories that we can actually get them confused with each other...]

It is at this point that Simon begins to sing. He sings this bridge twice in the course of the song. Now, the "fast car" does not seem to be a means of escape at all, but the vehicle of the Angel of Death (compare this with Emily Dickinson imagining Death picking her up in his "carriage" in her Poem 479). 

Here, Simon sings: "When that fast car picks you up/ You will have no choice... You will weep and smile." And where is the car heading? "You will... see Heaven in the headlights." 

The next two verses confirm this. The lines about "TLC" and "Honduras" tell us that that the verse is about Lisa Lopes, a member of the R&B group TLC, who was killed, while doing charity work in Honduras, in a car accident.

The last verse is also about a car-accident victim, this time a 16-year-old who was killed crossing the street by a drunk driver in a "hit-and-run." This may refer to a famous case as well, but one I am at this point unfamiliar with.

So... putting this all together? Kanye was almost killed in a car crash, but Lisa "Left-Eye" Lopes was.
While neither Biggie or 2Pac were killed in car crashes, cars were involved, as they were killed in drive-by shootings. Amadou Diallo was killed by police shooting from behind their (parked) cars, but he was on his front porch. 

Maybe the message is that one should not put one's faith in a car to provide an escape. Cars-- and other material trappings of success-- can kill as surely as they can transport one safely. 

Instead, one should depend on God, and on people: "You don't gotta be no billionaire/ To get a ticket up to the Moon/ We all know Somebody up there" and "You need a helping hand?/ Look, I'm right here."

Next: Seven Psalms

Like to Get to Know You

Simon's current marriage to Edie Brickell is his longest by far, of his three. However, the course of true love never does run smooth, and the couple had an argument in 2014 that-- largely due to the fact that they are a celebrity couple-- made headlines. To show the public that they were fine after this bump in the road, they released a duet titled "Like to Get to Know You." (Thanks to my readers for spotting this one!)

This simple, Everly Brothers-style song is about a longtime couple who, despite their years together, seem frustrated that they still don't know each other well. At first, this is a source of frustration-- how can this be? Yet, they re-frame it is a positive: Well, it'll be like a new relationship, then!

"You share my heart/ you share my kids and my dogs," one sings, "But I swear I don't know you at all." They other responds: "You see my face/ Every night, every day/ But I swear you don't see me at all."

Echoing the classic "They Can't Take That Away From Me," with its intimate, personal observations about the way the other wears a hat and holds a knife, they sing: "I know how you like your coffee/ I know how bad you drive."

Meanwhile, they see other couples "in the movie line" or they "check out people in the checkout line." Those other couples seem very comfortable in their intimacy. They are "holding hands and laughing," and "exchanging loving glances." Unlike this couple, who seem estranged.

Still, they "wouldn't trade places" with those couples, even so. Why not? "I'd like to get to know you again."

In the title track to his 2016 album, Stranger to Stranger, Simon wonders if they would have gotten together had they met now: "Stranger to stranger/ If we met for the first time... could you imagine us falling in love again?"

He answered this question, in a way, years before. In 2014, they each said "I don't know you at all," but that they'd "like to get to know" each other now.

What's the difference, really, if the "stranger"-- the person you "don't know at all"-- is someone you meet on the street... or in your own bedroom?

Next Song: Fast Car

Carlos Dominguez

The song is not about Carlos Dominguez, the current CEO of Cisco systems, who is 55, and the same-named Spanish footballer, a.k.a. Carlitos, is only 38. We can know this because this track was written in 1962 or '63, under Simon's alias Paul Kane; it was the flipside of the 45 of "He was My Brother."

[Yes, last week's song was written later, and my intention has been to post these songs chronologically when I know the dates. I also knew that this was to be my last post, and I just didn't want to end the blog, after eight-and-a-half years, writing about Nixon's relationship with Cuba, of all things.]

This song is about a modern-day Diogenes, on a perpetual psychological search. Unlike the ancient Greek, Carlos seeks not for an honest man but for... many things.

We are introduced to him by someone who is concerned enough about this obviously "unhappy man" to ask him two questions: "[You are] always running away/ What are you searching for?/ Why do you cry every day?"

Carlos explains that he searches every day because he "cannot find" the objects of his search. Overall, he seeks "a way I might find piece of mind. Why does he run? "I'm lost." Why does he cry? "I'm afraid."

In the chorus, the questioner repeats himself. This time, Carlos is more forthcoming. "I search for a truth, all I found was a lie/ I look for eternity, but I find all men die/ I'm looking for answers, but I find only fate/ I'm searching for love, I find in this world is hate."

Carlos is having a major crisis. He feels, with Yeats, that entropy is the only rule: "Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold." There is nothing reliably good, not even anything reliably... reliable.

Those in his mindset have a few options. Some find solace in religion. Some turn to science or some political ideology. Some try therapy or some forms of... self-medication. Some even turn to crime and other forms of selfish stuff-gathering.

And some follow the path suggested by the original version of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," and "muddle through, somehow." They stop looking for the One Big Thing that ties up reality in a nice big bow and instead decide what matters to them, and then work on that.

Viktor Frankl-- a psychiatrist who continued to counsel his fellow Jews even though they were all in the same Nazi concentration camp-- suggested that there is no universal "Meaning of Life," but that each of us must find meaning in life. It's not about asking the Universe "Why are we here?" but asking oneself "Why am I here?"

Poor Carlos is not there yet. He is searching for the Grand Unified Theory and... not finding it in anything created by humans or found in nature. He has yet to stand still and look inside himself.

Perhaps there is no "truth"... but he can be true. There is no "eternity," but he can live a full life, and contribute to eternity through his works and children. There may be no "answers," but there is more than "fate"-- there is self-determination. There is free will. And even if there is no abstract "love" out there, he can still love. He can find love, or make it.

Musically, the song is Simon on a solo acoustic guitar, playing Spanish style, very well. As we have seen, Simon was fascinated with the wide world of music since his youth, ages before Graceland.

As for the lyrics... Simon, well Kane anyway, was at most in his early 20s when he wrote this, and it sounds like it. It sounds like a college-age person who has read the news and decided all humanity is lost. The song ends with the same questions with which it began, and its hero no closer to fulfilling his quest.

It is not inappropriate to, in this case, confuse the writer with his character, an earnest idealist and seeker after truth.

It is 1963, at the latest, when this song is published. The following year, 1964, will see Simon continuing to explore these same themes of yearning in another poetic, acoustic-guitar song. That song, and the themes of despair and hope that it explores, will not only launch Simon on his still-continuing career...

...but will be treasured by billions as one of the best, truest, most important songs ever written:

"The Sounds of Silence."


Next Song: The Mission

The Shine

Paul Simon is listed as the third writer on this track. The first, naturally (this is on his album), is Harper, is son with his first wife, Peggy Harper. The second? His second wife, Carrie Fisher. With three writers' ideas involved, this is the longest track on the album (it's also in 3/4 time, appropriately enough).

It's incredible that these three people are able to write a song together, given their tangled histories. But perhaps not so surprising that the song is a break-up song full of regret, a number of the "how did we let it fall apart?" variety.

It begins with the idea of twilit space, "between waking and sleeping/... where the land meets the sea" (shades of "Scarborough Fair": "...find me an acre of land/ between the saltwater and the sea strand.") There, speaker says, "the shadows are keeping/ the shine that you once kept for me."

It's an interesting idea, taking the idiom "she's taken a shine to you" and imagining that "shine" as an entity of its own. The time between wakefulness and sleep is also the time of stars and moons, which also shine, and which appear in the next verse. Their shine is outside, however, while his former lover's, from her "sun" has "abandoned [his] room."

There's a line in the film The Philadelphia Story in which a man tells his would-be lover: "You're lit from within," and that idea mirrors the next set of images: "Your luminous smile.../ glows from your bones deep within/ Auroras were born on your skin." Women have been described a "radiant" before, but this woman is almost radioactive in her intensity.

Next, we have some technological imagery, relating to the speaker's regret. He wishes to "rewind our lives" as if it were a videotape and "erase the danger with a magnetic pen." This verse loses the light-based metaphor of the previous verses, but perhaps there is no way to convey a return in time with such imagery. Light is light, yesterday as today.

The next verse has a very simple, but very poignant couplet: "Maybe I didn't love you the way that you wanted/ But I've never loved anyone more." Well, we found the "danger," then, didn't we. This relationship was doomed from the outset; while the amount of love was never in question, the way the love was conveyed was not what its recipient required.

"It dazzled from your sun to mine," is how that love was transferred. Perhaps that was the problem. A sun does not need to receive light, and so both participants in this relationship were so busy "shining" love forth from themselves, they did not stop to receive any of it from the other. "I've never loved anyone more" sounds wonderful, until you realize that too much light is not necessarily illuminating but, after a point, a blinding light (compare to a "deafening noise").

The speaker concludes that he needs some, as we say today, "alone time," now that he realizes that "nothing I say seems to change your mind." Again, perhaps what he should be doing, instead of saying anything, is listening.

Unfortunately for a song that has been fairly lovely to this point, it ends on an unsavory joke. The dismissive expression "(stick it) where the sun don't shine" tells the listener to please deposit his opinion in a part of the human anatomy that is, shall we say, rarely in need of sunscreen.

Had the song ended, "Everywhere I look is just a canyon/ Where the sun will never shine," well, fine then. It would have been sad-- and fitting, since the bulk of the song was about being in his lover's "shine," and now he is relegated to the shadows.

Instead, the last line is about a canyon "where the sun don't ever shine." This "don't," I'm sure, is meant to merely sound casual, which was a wrong choice on its own, given the lovely poetic language we have had thus far: "The stars are all laughing and twinkling/ In a language they share with the moon." Sadly, instead of simply being colloquial, the word conjures up the above colloquialism.

Up to this point, the song is as pretty a break-up song as they come, a lullaby a heartbroken soul sings to himself as he fitfully drifts off to sleep, alone in the dark, after the shine has worn off.

Next Song: The Girl For Me

[Note to readers: This concludes Simon's current output to date. As was discussed, when this point was reached, this blog will circle back around to Simon's first, 1950's-early 1960's work... and progress forward again until his first official Simon and Garfunkel album, Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M., until the promise in the blog's title-- Every Single Paul Simon Song-- is fulfilled.]

Ha Ha

This is a country waltz that examines three ideas on the nature of, as the title indicates, comedy. But it is a waltz, a dance for two, and we see how well a jesting joker (to mix my metaphors) dances with a queen of hearts.

One of the ideas of comedy is that of "schadenfreude," laughter at another's misfortune. As Mel Brooks put it: "Tragedy is when I cut my thumb. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer." The other is the truism: "Laugh and the world laughs with you; cry, and you cry alone." The third ties them together, the idea of laughing at oneself-- of getting amusement out of one's own misfortune, which means the others are "not laughing at you, but with you."

The song begins with the first idea: "You'd think it's funny/ if I got a pie in the face/ One's man's disaster is another man's laughter."

In the chorus, the speaker explains, "laughing is all I do." However, the listener might think this is a reaction to his being single: "You've only known me since I've been lonely/ So you don't believe it's true." When attached, we assume, the speaker might be more serious; he assures us that no, he laughs even while in a relationship. Hmm.

The next line tweaks a saying by adding the word "an." The saying is "I don't know you from Adam," the Biblical primogenitor standing in for any random human.

He speaks to the listener, whom we now know is a woman, as he says he doesn't know her from "Eve." His pick-up line is: "We've only got boredom in common/ Why don't we... leave/ And go... laughing all over the town." A cheap date, to be sure.

But then he makes a counter-assertion to the one above. He repeats the idea that she might assume he is different when in a relationship... but this time confirms it: "I'm different when I'm fooling around." Well, not that different, if that is the expression he prefers for intimacy, and the level of intimacy (simply physical) that his is capable of achieving.

The next line is worthy of Shel Silverstein: "One time I laughed all the way/ From Flagstaff, Arizona to Baton Rouge," which not only rhymes on the beat instead of at the end of the line... but finds the two American cities named after, of all things, poles ("Baton Rouge" is French for "red stick"). He continues this shaggy-dog story by saying this trip wearied him so greatly that, on arrival, he slept, Rip van Winkle-like, "for nearly a year." This laughing-all-the-way story may have a double meaning-- it may represent a series of performances on tour, a series of dalliances during a journey... or both (not all groupie stories are untrue).

Now that he has made this confession, he also confesses his affection for the woman he is addressing: "I could have been dead," he says, at least emotionally, "But I met you instead/ Now everything's perfectly clear."

Uncharacteristically, we wind up with "the moral of the story," which is: "Laugh, or the joke's on you." (Would that Fat Charlie the Archangel, from "Crazy Love Vol II," would have learned this lesson so young!)

Then the song ends with that same assertion: "You've only known me since I've been lonely/ So you don't believe it's true." The antecedent of "it's" is unclear; she doesn't believe what's true? Is he saying that she doesn't believe in not taking oneself seriously? But what would that have to do with when she met him?

Or is he saying that she doesn't believe that he has absorbed this lesson, and that he feels that knowing her has been valuable? This must be what is meant. On the one hand, if one doesn't take anything seriously, how could one learn anything? On the other, if one doesn't take anything seriously, one doesn't take oneself seriously, either-- and so he did not need her to learn this insight at all; he already behaved that way.

He does try to assure her that he is different in relationships, but he falls short, by admitting he only sees them as a chance to "fool around." While she may feel glad that she has had somewhat of an impact on this speaker, and she is probably attracted by someone who can be self-deprecating, she should still be wary of a relationship with him.

After all, he has said outright and repeatedly that he takes nothing seriously: "Laughing is all that I do." If so, how could he take her, or their love, seriously? If it's true, it's nice for him that he has learned from her to laugh at himself. But that isn't the basis for anything... serious.

Musical note:
Sean Lennon, son of Paul Simon's contemporary John Lennon-- and so Harper's musical cousin of sorts-- plays celeste on this track.

Next Song: The Shine

Tennessee

Simon's first wife was Peggy Harper, and they had a son in 1972 whom they named after her maiden name. In 2009, Harper Simon cut an eponymous album, and he invited his father to participate. Together, they wrote three songs, and the first one on the album is this one.

It's autobiographical, from the speaker's standpoint, although in the third line, he adds the caveat: "Most of it is true."

The first line, however, is "Howdy," and in the country-flavored song, the speaker describes how he identifies more with his mother-- he's "proud [his] mama comes from Tennessee"-- instead of New York City, where he was born and raised. (Harper himself was born and raised in New York, but I was unable to determine if Peggy was from Tennessee.)

He says she is, specifically, from Newport, "a place of moderation, common sense, and decency." While he has moved to her home state, he hasn't achieved that style of behavior, just as yet: "It's nothing like the way I am/ But it's how I'm gonna be."

So, how has he been, then, thus far? Well, he was "kicked out of" several schools, received many "incompletes" and finally "bought a C," by which he means bribed his teacher to give him a passing grade, or perhaps paid a student to take a test for him. (At this point, we know the song is not autobiographical to Harper, at least as far as he left out the part where he attended the prestigious Berklee College of Music.)

Next, the speaker says he"rambled around/ from Slumberville to Lonesome Town," which might be the locale of the Heartbreak Hotel.

At some point, he got bitten by the musical bug. He "joined a band" which proved unsuccessful but, undeterred, "booked some time on Nashville's Music Row." He tried to use music to connect to his Southern roots: "Don't want no electric guitars in the background."

Now, this plan is a work in progress. "I got issues/ I got pain," ("issues" being typically New York word) he admits, "There's a lot I can't remember/ Even more I can't explain" (this couplet is pure country, however).

See, he's "trying to concentrate on how you find serenity/ When you're born in New York City/ But your mom's from Tennessee." He feels that the bustle and shallowness of New York might be what has made him feel aimless, so his theory is that if he can-- through music-- reconnect with his traditional past, perhaps he can find both physical and emotional stability.

Perhaps by connecting with his roots through roots music, he can finally feel, well, rooted.

Musical note:
Paul sings harmony on this track, and played guitar on others on this album.

Many "ringers" were brought in as backups. A very good list is available at Harper's Wikipedia page; ones from the rock world include drummer Steve Gadd, and Steve Nieve, one of Elvis Costello's Attractions. It can be assumed that Paul was responsible for the presence of some of them, but Harper had been playing professionally for some time and it would be unfair to assume he had made no musical friendships of his own. In fact, there seem to be at least three generations of musicians here.

Next Song: Ha Ha

So Beautiful or So What

“There are only two ways to live your life," Einstein once opined. "One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”

Simon more succinctly puts this: "So beautiful, or so what."

This driving song starts off with the speaker describing the "chicken gumbo" he is making, then shrugging "life is what you make of it." You have certain ingredients, but the choice of how to combine them is yours.

His next example is a "bedtime story" he tells his children, which may or may not have a happy ending. In either case, the moral remains the same-- the story is the work of the storyteller.

He continues with a gush of humility-- he is "just a raindrop in a bucket," one nameless, indistinct entity among many. He is but "a coin dropped in a slot," a means to an end. "An empty house on Weed Street," even.

Next, we have a musing on "the way we're ignorant," going so far as to "seek out bad advice." Why? We will "jigger it and figure it," rationalizing our (mis)behavior anyway. Even better if we can blame our misdeeds on the urging of others. 

Worse, even though "life is what you make of it" and you can, therefore, actually make something of it, we "play a game with time and love/ Like a pair of rolling dice"... and leave major life decisions up to chance!

The last verse is a major shift-- to a famous photograph of the men who pointed to the direction from which Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s fatal bullet originated. The speaker adds the idea of the responding police siren singing the spiritual "Savior, Pass Me Not." 

Why this historical reference here? Dr. King taught that justice was up to us, as individuals, in the ways we chose to treat each other. His own life story embodied the idea that a person could make his life be the way he wanted it to be. So we choose to make of his death what we will-- a warning to not get involved, or a call to get involved and carry the torch he passed us, spreading the light.

The theme of this song is stated outright several times. But the placing of this song as the last on the album serves to somewhat dismiss the spiritual, divine musings that permeated the rest of the album. We're never going to know, ultimately, what goes on in Heaven. And, since we couldn't affect it even if we did know, our best bet is to focus on the world we do have and can shape.

This echoes a teaching from the Talmud. The giving of the Torah at Mt. Sinai, at the Revelation, was not just a spiritual event. It had practical, even legal, ramifications. God gave the Bible to the humans... and it is ours now. "It is not in Heaven" anymore, say the rabbis. It is here, and it belongs to humanity.

Hopefully, this is only Simon's latest song, not his last. But it marks a culmination of a lifetime of theological pondering. In  the very first song we covered, "Bleecker Street," Simon noticed that seems to be a "fog" hiding God from humanity. All these years and songs later, he has stopped trying to pierce the fog with his eyes. 

He is resigned that "life is what you make of it," and that your own attitude, while it is all you can control, is all that matters anyway.

Musical note: 

The unusual instruments this time are...

the bansuri, a wooden flute from India, 

the croatles, a set of tiny tuned cymbals arranged on a rack and struck with mallets

the saz, a Middle Eastern string instrument with a round back, resembling a long-necked lute

the resonator, a guitar with a steel plate over the sound hole, sometimes called a dobro.

Next Song: Tennessee

Love & Blessings

The first thing we have to deal with is the official title of this track. The album's notes and cover use an '&,' but the website uses "And" (yes, with a capital 'A'). The Lyrics book, meanwhile, uses "and," with the grammatically correct lowercase 'a.' As there is no agreement, I am going with the &; because the album is the original document, and the one most listeners will encounter.

"Love & Blessings" is the last in the triptych of "Love" songs on this album (the others being "Love and Hard Times" and "Love is Eternal Sacred Light.").

The song seems to be about a revivification of an entire country or area. "Love and blessings/ Simple kindness/ Fell like rain on a thirsty land." This image seems to follow that of the second verse of "Boy in the Bubble": "the dry wind" "desert" "dead sand/ Falling." Here, "Fields and gardens.../ Came to life in dust and sand."

Relationships were revived as well: "as if old love was new." And business boomed, too-- along with, not in exploitation of-- this phenomenon: "Banker's pockets overflowing with gold and money."

Then the song shifts to a series of call-and-response phrases. A gospel choir sings "bop-bop-a-whoa," and the speaker replies "Ain't no song like and old song, Charlie," in reference to the fact that this is a sample of a song from 1938, at least (see the Musical Note below).

Who is Charlie? Is it Fat Charlie the Archangel from "Crazy Love, Vol II"? No, Simon uses this name to set up the next line: "Ain't no time like a good time, Charlie." A "good-time Charlie" is a "life-of-the-party" sort of fellow, so this line is a pun.

This, in turn, shifts to "Ain't no times like the good times, Charlie." The good times being, it seems, those filled with "love and blessings," "simple kindness," romance, and full granaries and coffers, all as described above.

Back to "bop-bop-a-whoa," a phrase that proves the link between gospel and doo-wop, two of Simon's favorite genres and ones referred to many times on this album in particular. But here, it seems a shorthand for... something. "Everybody [is] working for" it and one "Can't get enough of" it. But what is it? Money? Sex? Maybe it is different things for different people, the thing that makes them excited.

Tonally, we now shift back to the start of the song, with its imagery of nature and its effects on people. "If the summer kept a secret/ It was heaven's lack of rain." This is ambiguous at best. If it said, "If the summer kept a secret/ it was heaven's rain," then we would assume that the rain was held back, like a secret unspoken, and there was a drought. But "secret... lack of" is double negative of sorts. So... there was little rain, but the heavens didn't tell us about it? I think we would know how much or little rain there was, in any case! We would be the ones who were wet or dry.

From the next lines, it seems that rain was gone... but not missed, at least not by him: "Golden days and amber sunsets/ Let the scientists complain." However, the scientists soon have company in their worried grousing. The autumn leaves were "drained of color." How bad in the drought? "Ghosts in the water beg for more" (and what an evocative image!). Yet, is this true... or is it just that our "memory" was clearer?

The song ends with the speaker being "woken from [his] sleep" by "something." It seems to be the realization that "Love and blessings... [are] ours to hold but not to keep." This echoes Robert Frost's assertion that "nothing gold can stay."

Simon seems to be expressing two related themes, here. One is that the nature of abundance (and scarcity) is cyclical. The other is that people and society change in accordance with these cycles. Abundance brings warmth, which then turns cold when drought sets in. Once we become aware of this, however, we can adjust our behavior, and stay warm toward each other even when times are less kind.

Musical Note:
The "bop-bop-a-whoa" heard in the song is, appropriately for the "bridge" of the song, sampled from The Golden Gate Jubilee Quartet, specifically, their 1938 song "Golden Gate Gospel Train." (I am unsure whether the group named the song, vice versa, or if both were named for the bridge). It was BB King who pointed Simon to the group, when they met backstage at Madison Square Garden for the 25th Anniversary of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

The song itself was covered by, of all people, Vegas belter Tom Jones.

Next Song: So Beautiful or So What

Questions for the Angels

This song ranges across many spectra, from poverty to wealth, from human to animal, and then from human to divine. As the title indicates, it contains many "questions," and as they are meant for "angels," perhaps it is foolish for us to expect answers.

The central image is a "pilgrim," one on a spiritual quest. Not just a journey-- a pilgrim is headed toward a destination, usually a shrine. At this point, we do not know what this is, merely that it lies on  one side of the Brooklyn Bridge, presumably the New York side. We also know that he is poor, as we wears "torn" shoes.

It is dawn, "when the homeless move their cardboard blankets." This is how time is told in a city, not by, say, the crowing of a rooster. Image-wise, we are back on "Bleecker Street."

He has two questions on a piece of paper. The first one is philosophical: "Who am I in this lonely word?" As if his essence was defined by others-- if he was not lonely, he would know who he was. But he is lonely, and he does not. In the version in In the Blue Light, the word "lonely" becomes "frightened," so it is fear blocking his self-knowledge.

The other question is practical: "Where will I make my bed tonight/ When twilight turns to dark?" (The question mark is improperly placed, in the website and liner notes, at the end of the word "tonight." It is properly placed, in the Lyrics book, after "dark.") It is only dawn, and yet he worries about his sleeping place for the coming night. As well he should, being alone in the world.

The speaker shrugs, sighing that these questions are for the angels, and who believes in those? "Fools and pilgrims all over the world," he answers himself.

In his series of essays published as The Myth of Sissyphus, Camus posits that hope and despair are equally absurd, since the future is unknowable. Given two equally absurd choices, he chooses the one that leads to life and not, as he puts it, suicide. So he uses wisdom and logic to wind up in roughly the same place this speaker does, on the side of hope and angels, even if both know the viewpoint is not substantiated by fact and never could be.

The speaker's next question is about love-- if you lower your romantic expectations and "shop for love in a bargain store," do you have the right to be disappointed? "Can you get your money back?" The question is moot. Even if you shop for love at Tiffany's, and "you don't get what you bargained for," you not only can't get your money back, but you may have to pay an attorney additional money just to be rid of your relationship.

His next question is about the life choices: "If an empty train... calls you... can you choose another track?" This question might well be directed, instead of at the angels, toward the pilgrim, since he travels, "lonely" as he is, alone on an "empty train." Could he, instead, choose another track instead of his pilgrimage toward no shrine, even if he felt "called" to this life?  Just because we are called does not mean we have to accept, after all. (In the In the Blue Light version, the train calls its "final destination," and I think we'd all like to change trains instead of riding our last one ever to the, um, end of the line.)

The penultimate question is not rhetorical or sarcastic at all. In it, the speaker finally reveals something about himself: "Will l I wake up from these violent dreams/ With my hair as white as the morning Moon?"

Wait, what "dreams"? Or are all of these images taken from his nightmares? The lonely, poor "pilgrim," the "bargain store" for love, the vacant "train"? In what way are they "violent"-- do they have a fearsome quality that is not readily observable?

A lone, aimless quest... a relationship that lived down to its low expectations... a train void of passengers-- these may well be haunted dream images. They speak of stark isolation; no other people appear in them, at least none that are interacted with. They are as stark as Hopper paintings.

The question comes again, "Who believes in angels?" This time the answer returns, "I do." The speaker now counts himself among the "fools and pilgrims."

Speaking of which, where is our pilgrim now? He is noticing a billboard, on which Jay-Z, the rap mogul, is pictured "with a kid on each knee." He isn't selling music, however, but "clothes that he wants us to try."

The image might recall that of the Virgin Mary, with the babies Jesus and John the Baptist, one on each knee. Or it just may be an image that caught Simon off guard-- here is a man who made his money on lyrics about crime and punishment, pride and prejudice. And now he wants to position himself as a father figure and fashion arbiter.

If nothing else, this pilgrim with "torn shoes" is miles away, in many senses, from the image he sees. But this is not the shrine he seeks in any case, as he is only "passing" it.

The last "question for the angels" is this: If the human species became extinct instead of another, would a given zebra "care enough to shed one zebra tear?" Given that this meant his hide was safe from becoming a wall hanging, probably not. He might wonder where all the camera-slinging tourists and gun-toting poachers went; probably not. But you don't need an angel to tell you that.

Still, if we don't matter to zebras, and-- as the song indicates-- we don't matter much to our fellow humans either, then, well,... who do we matter to? We matter to someone, right? Must be angels, then. We need to believe in them, if only to feel that someone believes in us.

This subtle track sounds lovely, almost lullaby-like. But the images it presents and the questions it raises are haunting. Simon hasn't been this chilling since "Poem on the Underground Wall" or "Patterns," only this time instead of impending dread, the mood is eerie emptiness.

Musical Note:
One interesting instrument on this track is the celetse, a proto-piano with metal plates instead of wires. The other is a marimba, a xylophone with resonators, or tuned tubes, hung below the wooden bars, as on a vibraphone.

Next Song: Love & Blessings

Love is Eternal Sacred Light

"Man plans and God laughs" is a classic Yiddish saying. Here, Simon paraphrases that: "Mankind theorizes, and God laughs." (This is the second of three songs on this album whose titles start with the word "love.")

This uptempo song starts with the chorus, defining the opposites of "love" and "hate." The former is a "light," the latter a "darkness." The former is "eternal," but the latter is a destructive "demon that feeds on the mind."

The first set of verses summarize the theory of the universe's beginnings: "Started with a bang... stars and planets... fire... colors... Moonlight... earth." While scientifically accurate, Simon's version is poetic as well, with verbs like "sang," "flew," and "warmed."

The next verse summarizes all of human history. "Earth became a farm/ Farmer takes a wife" (this last phrase is from the children's song-game "Farmer in the Dell"). So we have agriculture, society, even religion and poetry: "Wife becomes a river and the giver of life."

The next line takes us up through the Industrial Revolution-- "Man becomes a machine"-- and then terrorism: "a bomb in the marketplace." This takes up some of the themes and images of Graceland, especially the "Boy in the Bubble."

Well, now it's God rebuttal. Creation? "Big Bang/ That's a joke I made up." How do we know it's God? He says he has "eons to kill." Sadly, we haven't figured out when He's "joking/ someday they will."

God's summary of human existence is different as well. "'Love me'/ That's the main request I receive." Does He answer such prayers? "I love all My children/ Tears me up when I leave."

[Note: in the song, Simon lowers his voice to indicate that God speaks these two verses. He then raises it to its usual pitch for the next verses, which indicate that it is no longer Him. However, in the lyrics, the first-person is not changed at this point, so from the point of view of the song as a poem-- without the clues of the performance-- it continues to be God speaking.]

The idea of God leaving is reiterated from the previous track, "Love and Hard Times." The same way that this off-hand God jokes, He also is, in the words of the Allman Brothers, a ramblin' man: "Sometimes you gotta fly down that highway... [in] a new pre-owned '96 Ford."

Of His ability to take such vacations, God mockingly quotes some human cliches: "Free as a bird, knock on wood, thank the Lord." He's not thanking himself, just pointing out that such pagan concepts as knocking on wood sit comfortably in human minds alongside religion, despite our protests to the contrary.

According to Simon, God is not a fan recent human culture, either: "...pop music station/ That don't sound like music to me." Turning the dial allows Him to comment on another human innovation: "Politics is ugly." God, it seems, is not impressed with millennia of human endeavor.

Except... "At the end of the dial there's the gospel show." While Simon is no secret fan of such music, it is interesting that he thinks God might be, too. Yes, it is beautiful and powerful and harmonious, but it also praises God endlessly. Seems that while God gripes about how all the humans want is for God to "love" them, He's not above soaking up some admiration and adulation Himself.

At this, God pulls off the highway. Why? "There's a blizzard rolling down off the banks of Lake Michigan." Wait, can't God stop the storm? Or divert it only away from Himself?

Sure... but why? God, being omnipotent and beyond time, is in no rush. He also has no real reasons to interfere with the weather patterns He set in motion. Lastly, he seems glad for the excuse to "rest."

Throughout the song, the chorus repeats. Love is light, hate is "sight without sight." As Simon said long ago in in "Sound of Silence," "talking without speaking" and "hearing without listening" lead to despair and idolatry. So "sight without sight," or "looking withing seeing" is a result of hate-- you see the person's skin or clothes, not the person.

Regardless of which is true-- the Big Bang or The Good Book (or even the Big Bang being the "how" of Creation, and the Bible being the "why")-- love is eternal, and eternally good. And hate is evil and destructive, the opposite of creative.

This is the second song on the album so far to deal directly with the idea of Heavenly love, and here that seems the focus, love as a concept, not a romantic relationship. We shall return to the triptych a few songs hence.

Musical note:
The musical referents on this song show that, while Simon has explored the world's music, he is still an aficionado of American roots music.

The background vocals are done by Doyle Lawson and Quicksilver, a bluegrass act we met in the earlier song "Dazzling Blue."

The harmonica solo is performed by blind harpist Sonny Terry, a folk-blues legend. He played Carnegie Hall back in 1938, made recordings for The Library of Congress, and accompanied Leadbelly and Woody Guthrie. He even had a two-year run on Broadway as part of the musical Finian's Rainbow. In the 1950s, he turned to R&B, then back to folk when that wave swept through the '60s. His recordings with guitarist Brownie McGhee are acoustic classics, prized by fans of both folk and blues music. He passed away in 1986, at age 74.

There is also a sample of a 1929 song called "Train Whistle Blues," a Jimmie Rodgers... track. Known as "The Singing Brakeman," Rodgers was a country singer specializing in train-related songs. This particular song is a standard-style blues number about a penniless man hopping a passing train. It is used in the background when the radio in the song reaches the gospel station.

Next song: Questions for the Angels

Love and Hard Times

This song seems to be part of a triptych, on this album, of songs whose titles start with the word "Love."

It is a curious song. Like many other of Simon's songs, it seems like two songs sewn together. At first.

The first records a visit, or perhaps a "visitation," by God and Jesus on Earth. Naturally, this happens on a "Sunday morning," when it was Sunday in the Western Hemisphere, that is. We know this because of the "cottonwood" trees mentioned.

In any case, Nature welcomed Them with "orange blossoms," and "songbirds." And the humans? "Old folks wept for His love in these hard times." God, not the Son, seems to be the antecedent of "His." Also, it seems that the "times" were known to be "hard" already, and that the Divine Presence(s) brought "love."

It was only to be a brief visit, a "courtesy call," so it soon came time to leave. After all, as the Lord says unto His Son, "There are galaxies yet to be born/ Creation is never done." Furthermore, God doesn't care much for the "slobs" of Earth who will only create a "mob scene" if They stick around. Interesting that of all the pejoratives, the Lord thinks of humans as messy; perhaps it's the way we dress, but more likely the way we spread our mess all over God's (once) Green Earth.

"But," God does note, if They "disappear," then what's left is "love and hard times." Which implies that "love" is a constant whether God is here or not, but "hard times" return when He leaves.

At this point, it is as if another song starts, a love song (and the music agrees, as more instruments are added and the melody shifts). "I loved her the first time I saw her," the speaker says, immediately apologizing, "I know that's an old songwriting cliche." He follows it with another: "The light of her beauty was warm as a summer day." Actually, that's not only a cliche, but a mixed metaphor; light is "bright," not "warm."

But then, we see the pen of a true songwriter: "Clouds of antelope roll by/ No hint of rain to come in the prairie sky." So this love at first sight gives no sign that sorrow will follow. Everything from here to the horizon is "just love." And... no hard times.

Yes, but this is Earth, not Heaven. "When the rains came, the tears burned/ Windows rattled, locks turned." Well, sure-- there was no sign of rain, so no one thought to bring an umbrella, and now everyone is soaked and miserable.

Here, the speaker offers this observation: "It's easy to be generous when you're on a roll/ It's hard to be grateful when you're out of control." So... hard times? "...love is gone."

Then "dawn" comes back into the bedroom. The house noises are keeping the speaker awake. And he is "uneasy," probably now more than before, since before he was just "out of control"... and now it seems that his relationship is suffering because of that, too!

"But then your hand takes mine." Oh, so the relationship is stronger than his unease after all. And even stronger than the turmoil and ingratitude that his unease caused. His reaction? Sheer gratitude: "Thank God I found you in time."

Excuse me? Thank whom? Or, rather, Whom? Why, God, of course. Who we thought had left. Guess not. Oh, omnipresence... right.

So it's not "love" or "hard times, but "and." We think that hard times come and go whether or not God is Present. Or that both can't co-exist without God.

But neither is true. Love and hard times are always with us. Sometimes, we feel God's love directly. Sometimes, the love comes from others. Sometimes we feel that human love is a manifestation, or gift, of Divine Love.

But love is there despite hard times. Or, for all we know, because of them.


Musical note:
The word "celli" in the liner notes does not refer to an exotic instrument; it is the formal plural of "cello." Speaking of classical music, the song was covered by opera star Rene Fleming.

(Also, there are rhymes in this song, but you have to find some of them.)

Next Song: Love is Eternal Sacred Light

Rewrite

Jim Croce's song "Working at the Car Wash Blues" is about a guy working at just such a place, after just having gotten out of jail "doing 90 days for non-support," which means not paying child support. This deadbeat dad's concern, however, is not making things right with his progeny, but being an "undiscovered Howard Hughes," who really has the business acumen to be in "an air-conditoned office with a swivel chair," not "working at this indoor Niagara Falls."

Simon's speaker here, a Vietnam vet, also has "been working at the car wash," and likewise has grander ambitions. Not on Wall Street, but in Hollywood: "I've been working on my rewrite... gonna turn it into cash."

What about the screenplay requires revision? "Gonna change the ending." You see, it was originally about this guy with kids, see, but: "...the father has a breakdown/ And he has to leave the family." Oh. Hmm.

Yes, but in the rewrite? "Gonna substitute a car chase/ And a race across the rooftops/ When the father saves his children/ And he holds them in his arms."

The satirical newspaper called The Onion mocks current events but also has reviews, and in one coined the term "Manic Pixie Dreamgirl." This is a fictional female who is winsome and cute; she exists to breathe life into the dull and cloistered lives of brilliantly creative but unappreciated and shy guys, like... oh, say, maybe some screenwriters.

Yes, but isn't that-- somewhat at least-- what art is for? To create a better world than the disappointing one we actually inhabit?

So, we can tease the car-wash guy for being twice deluded-- once that anyone would buy his cliche-soaked screenplay, and once that even if he gets rich selling it, that this will help him reunite with his kids. We can tease him...we can mourn his loss with him...

Or we can be glad at least his heart is in the right place. That, even in his frustration, he is able to find a creative (and not destructive) outlet for his emotions. If you can't have the real thing, at least you can know you want it. This is not unlike the conclusion Ibsen reached in his play The Wild Duck, about the necessity of illusion in the face of the true bleakness of life, such as that of the inventor who has been puttering on his never-finished creation for years.

There is an expression: "Fake it 'til you make it." In this case, sure, fake it all you want, car-wash guy, since we know you will never make it anyway. Who are you hurting? In fact, you are helping... helping yourself cope.

The chorus-- "Help me... Thank you for listening to my prayer"-- seems to be directed at the listener. But what is his prayer? Perhaps it is to know that, even if you won't come to see his movie, you will at least wish him luck on his rewrite.

Musical Notes:
This song features a number of perhaps unfamiliar instruments. The "glass harp" is an array of drinking or wine glasses with varying amounts of water in them, which affects the pitch produced when their edges are rubbed with the player's finger.

The "kora" is a cello-size African string instrument with a rounded body; it produces the music box-like plinking head in the song. The "djembe" is a goblet-shaped hand-drum; the smaller ones are held under the arm like a bagpipe, while the larger ones are supported between the knees of a seated player.

And an "angklung" is an Indonesian percussion instrument of ingenious design. A horizontal frame holds vertical bamboo poles of varying lengths. Sticks are placed within the hollow poles, and when the poles are shaken the sticks rattle inside, with tones differing depending on the lengths of the tubes they are in. Small versions can fit on a table, while larger variants are on larger racks resembling those for tubular bells. The overall effect is not unlike that of a vibraphone.

Next Song: Love and Hard Times

Dazzling Blue

This is a jaunty song, as happy as "Feelin' Groovy" or "Born at the Right Time." It is also, if you just read the lyrics, one of Simon's finest promises of love.

The opening verse, however, is hesitant. "Silence is revealing," the speaker muses-- nothing is a secret anymore, not with the Internet and the "CAT scan's eye." There are shades, here of feeling that technology is a double-edged blade, a sense discussed earlier in "Boy in the Bubble" ("lasers in the jungle," etc.). "Now-a-days," (a word not used much, now-a-days!) the speaker continues, "everything is known." And that is somewhat good, and somewhat not, but a fact nevertheless; now we know we know what is "truth or lies" even if no one says anything.

Similarly, whether love is an "accident" or "destiny," the speaker says, "You and I were born beneath a star of dazzling blue." Are stars randomly accidental or divinely predestined? It matters not-- the star is dazzlingly beautiful, as is this love.

The next verse contains an echo of "Kathy's Song": "Worlds apart on a rainy afternoon." Back then Simon threw his hands up at creating music under such misery, saying his words "tear and strain to rhyme," so upset is he with being apart from Kathy. But now, music is the answer to loneliness: "Turn your amp up and play your lonesome tune" (a phrase that starts off like a line from "Late in the Evening.")

Another interpretation of this verse is that the couple is physically close, trapped in the living room under the same rain cloud, but "miles apart" emotionally. The line "miles can't measure distance" may imply that physical distance is not meant here.

However, the line about "the road" implies that one or the other (if this is Simon speaking, his wife is also a musician) is on tour. And, while music is the reason they are apart, it is also something they share, and that binds them, even across "miles."

The bridge is a twist on the old line "Roses are red, violets are blue." Here, the star is blue, but the "roses" are "red," and then there is the "fine white linen" of their "marriage bed." A bit more adult than "sugar is sweet and so are you"!

As important as the bed is "a wall that nothing can break through." The idea of a marriage needing a "wall" around it is not a new one. Real life assails it on all fronts, and a couple must be united in defending their fortress. (But how different a wall is this from the "walls, steep and mighty/ That none may penetrate" constructed by the speaker in "I Am a Rock," who defends himself from love!)

So many things bind this couple. The sense of being born under the same star, the love of music, the mutual devotion to protect their marriage from outside assault... and one more: memories. The last verse is about a drive on Montauk Highway, on Long Island. The couple leaves the car to walk "along the cliffs above the sea."

Together, they "imagined it was someday." Which sounds like a marriage proposal, and what a pretty spot for one. "And that is how the future came to be."

But first, "they wondered why." And no answer did they seem to find. But that, perhaps is the point. Now that we know everything... what do we know, really? We don't even know why things are to begin with-- "accident" or "destiny"?

Turns out, it doesn't matter. They found each other, and they are happy about that. Do you really need to know why the star is dazzling blue-- isn't it enough that it is?

Musical Note:
The background harmony vocals are performed by Doyle Lawson and Quicksilver, are a bluegrass/gospel group. As a pre-teen and soon after, Lawson taught himself to play mandolin, banjo and guitar. After playing in several other bands, he formed Quicksilver in 1979. And in 2012, he was inducted into the Bluegrass Hall of Fame. (Also on the track are a dobro and fiddle, traditional country instruments.)

The rhythmic background vocals are performed by Indian singers and musicians, who also play a two-headed pitched drum called a tabla, and a clay pot.

And, for good measure, Simon himself chimes in, literally, on glockenspiel.

Next Song: Rewrite

The Afterlife

Every culture imagines the afterlife as much like its own existence is this world... but better. Then there are cynics like Simon, who imagines Heaven much the same way that Albert Brooks did in his movie Defending Your Life: Heaven as a bureaucracy. Just like here. Better, perhaps only in that your impatience is immaterial-- or are you in some sort of rush to start eternity?

The speaker here, like the one in John Prine's organ-donation promoting "Please Don't Bury Me," dies at the start of the song. Prine's speaker (or perhaps just his soul) goes right up "through the ceiling," but Simon's goes home from the funeral parlor first, and is "usher[ed] in" from there.

At first the "sugarcoated" voice says "Let us begin." But, since Heaven is just like Earth: "You got to fill out a form first/ And then you wait in a line." The speaker shrugs that when you're the "new kid in school," you have to "learn the routine."

In an interview, Simon says that one of the first songs that excited him about the potentialities of songwriting was the Penguins' "Earth Angel." Now, in Heaven, our speaker see the real angel he'd like to spend the rest of his life, well, afterlife with.

So he wings his way over and lays down one of the all-time great pick up lines: "How long you been dead?" Shockingly, he immediately proposes: "you... me... baby makes three."

Well, wouldn't you know? "You got to fill out a form first/ And then you wait in a line." Relationships, it seems, are subject to the same approvals process as entry.

At least, the speaker muses, there is an ultimate democracy here-- all souls are Created equal: "It's all His design/ No one cuts in the line." Yes, even "Buddha and Moses... had to stand in the line."

And once you are in the Gates, what are you waiting for now? "Just to glimpse the divine." But, as on Earth, "it seems like our fate/ to suffer and wait for the knowledge we seek." Well, all religious leaders and prophets have certainly been known to suffer.

Now that you have made it up "the ladder of time," you get your audience: "The Lord God is near." What's it like? "You feel like you're swimming in an ocean of love/ And the current is strong."

There's only one problem. Even though you have have ages and eons to rehearse what you are going to say or ask once you reach God, when you actually do, "Your words disappear." One would hope that such an experience would be awe-inspiring, but you also end up star-struck, in the extreme.

Not wanting to say nothing after all that, you frantically search your brain for anything to say: "But all that remains when you try to explain/ Is a fragment of song." So you ask: "Lord, is it 'Be Bop a Lula,' or 'Ooh Papa Doo'?"

Now, the first is a Gene Vincent song, the other an Little Esther tune. And only someone who equally loves all forms of music would put rockabilly and R&B artist side by side and ask God to choose. And maybe only God could; while Simon probably chose those tracks for their nonsense titles, they are somewhat similar thematically, both being raucous declarations of being in love.

The last line of our song is "Be Bop a Lula," so this is perhaps God's pick. Well, one more question for the ages cleared up...

Writers have been imagining what a trip to Heaven is like since Prometheus stole fire from Olympus, or Norse warriors belted out battle epics around a table in Valhalla... or at least since 1907, when Mark Twain wrote "Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven."

Other songwriters have chimed in, too, of course. David Byrne sang that "Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens," while Dar Williams imagines it is "like a big Hawaiian party that my mother had/ ...like the worst Elvis film I've ever seen."

For Simon, the place is a place that is first like the Department of Motor Vehicles, then an audience with the Queen of England. Makes as much sense as any of the others.

Musical Note:
The guitarist on this track, the previous one, and the last one on the album is Vincent Nguini, who first recorded with Simon on Rhythm of the Saints. He was born in Cameroon.

Next song: Dazzling Blue

Getting Ready for Christmas Day

When a musician tries on a new style or sound, an excited album often results. By the time of the follow-up, the boil has died down to a simmer. But that just means more focus, not less energy, once the new techniques have been mastered and controlled. For instance, after the ebullient Graceland, Simon returned with the relatively subdued Rhythm of the Saints. Similarly, after the kid-in-a-candy-store sound of Surprise, he came back with the more contemplative So Beautiful or So What. Now, the electronics have been stirred into Simon's alchemy, along with the folk, gospel, world, and other sounds he had already added.

While this song is ostensibly about Christmas, we can expect that it will not find its way onto any Yuletide compilation or caroling songbook. That is because, as Christmas songs go, it is not only somber but frustrated and even cynical in tone. The rewrite of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" contains the line "Hang a shining star upon the highest bough," but the original line was "We'll have to muddle through somehow." Which is more the tone here.

It starts with a man bemoaning how "money matters" are "weighing" on him. The timing of this financial crisis is in line with Christmas-gift buying season. Even before he mentions the holiday, he speaks of "merry" music, then explains that "Santa Claus is coming to town," and of course someone has to buy that bagful of presents: "It all comes down to working man's pay."

Then the song takes an unexpected twist. We shift to the voice of a preacher, one Rev. J.M. Gates, in a sermon he recorded back in 1941. Based in Atlanta, Gates released some 200 recordings-- both sermons and songs-- over nearly two decades. This homily comes from late in his recording career.

For Gates, Christmas Day sounds more like Judgement Day. He says that, while you are "getting ready for Christmas Day," so are the "undertaker... jailer, lawyer, [and] police."

The workingman now returns, this time telling about his nephew, a soldier fighting the War in Iraq. In fact, he has returned to battle no fewer than three times! His uncle wryly opines that the fighter will be defending our freedom of religion while "eating [his] turkey dinner/ On some mountaintop in Pakistan." As for the war, for all of the carnage and expense, it's "ending up the way it began."

Now it's Gates' turn again. This time, he says you might be planning a trip for the holiday. However, you just as easily "be laying in some lonesome grave" by then. You never know, he shrugs, "where you'll be." You could be saying "I'm going and see [sic] my relatives in a distant land," thinking you mean that literally, when in fact that "distant land" might be Heaven... where we all have relatives.

Then the workingman has the final word: "If I could tell my Mom and Dad"-- "if" implying that he can't, as they have passed on-- "the things we never had/ Never mattered." Yes, he and his siblings never had much... but, he says, "we were always OK." But here he is, knocking himself out with two jobs to buy presents. So what is he doing?

Christmas is a time of expectation that almost never matches, in reality, the fantasy it engenders. Undertakers, police officers and soldiers work on Christmas, and at grim jobs at that. The presents received are almost immediately forgotten (or broken) no matter how long it took to earn the money for them.

Further, the "merry" music piped into the stores and our of our televisions drowns out the sacred meaning of the day. Forget the gift-wrapping, the cake-baking, and the tree-trimming-- Jesus is about to be born! How are you getting ready for that?

Musical Note:
Simon has been married to Edie Brickell since 1992, and he co-produced her first solo album, 1994's Picture Perfect Morning. However, her backing vocals here may be the first time they have been recorded singing together.

Brickell, of course, is a singer-songwriter in her own right, having scored hits with her band New Bohemians; their best-known track is "What I Am," with its famous line: "What I am is what I am-- are you what you are, or what?" She is now the lead singer of The Gaddabouts, named after its founder (and longtime Simon session player), master drummer Steve Gadd.

And in 2013, she released a song with another longstanding friend of Simon's, comedian and bluegrass banjo player Steve Martin.

In addition to the Gates sermon, the song also samples "Me Deixa Em Paz (Leave Me Alone)" by Brazilian singer-songwriter Milton Nascimento, with whom Simon has collaborated before, notably on "Spirit Voices." Literally, the title of the sampled song means "leave me in peace."

IMPACT:
Simon is still on tour for this album, as of this writing. It was very successful, reaching #4 in the US (and Sweden) and #6 in the UK (and also Croatia, Denmark, and the Netherlands), going all the way to #2 in Norway. It also hit the Top Ten in Canada, The Czech Republic, and Ireland... the Top 50 in other EU nations and Australia, and even #75 in Japan.

Critically, it was Rolling Stone's #3 best album of 2011, and received high praise all around.

Next Song: The Afterlife

Father and Daughter

Properly, this song should be labeled a "bonus track." It was not conceived or written for the Surprise album, but for an animated movie spun off the Wild Thornberrys cartoon TV show (the family in the show has the surname "Thornberry.") As the movie is set in Africa, it is understandable that Simon was approached to provide the theme song. Not surprisingly, it is closer in sound to Graceland and Rhythm of the Saints than any of the electronic-based tracks on Surprise.

The straightforward theme of the song is contained in its chorus: "There could never be a father who loved his daughter more than I love you." This "love" is presented in the song is several ways.

One is in the form of protection. The song begins with the image of a child awakening "in the mirror of a bad dream," the implication perhaps being that the subconscious mind acts as a "mirror" to what is going on in the conscious world.

The father admits that he "can't guarantee there's nothing scary hiding under [her] bed." Yet, he vows to protect her from such terrors: "I'm gonna stand guard like a postcard of a golden retriever." This is an odd locution. One can image a father comparing himself to a faithful watchdog. But why a "postcard" of one? Postcards usually depict landmarks... while family pets are depicted in photographs, and such images are not sold at souvenir stands. Further, an actual animal would provide some actual protection, even if only to soothe the child's fear of the dark.

Perhaps Simon means that, since the object of the fear is itself a dream-- a "mirror" image of reality-- only the image of a protector is necessary to defeat it. The implication, then, is that even when the child does not have her father close by, the knowledge of his desire for her safety should be soothing, and perhaps even give her the courage to face her fear alone.

The song's last verse closes with this promise as well: "You don't need to waste your time/ Worrying about the marketplace/ Trying to help the human race/ Struggling to survive its harshest night." The father vows that his daughter will not have to "worry" about business or money. She will not have to develop a "savior complex" and dedicate her life to fixing others' problems, but be able to focus on her own development. And she will not have to be frightened of having to "survive" some natural catastrophe, man-made genocide, or crushing oppression. Her father will protect her from all of that.

Following through on this protection is the promise to be protective even after the danger has passed. The father says that he will not only comfort his daughter when she is shocked awake by a nightmare, but will stay until she returns to sleep peacefully.

Another way the father shows love is through the connection of shared memories. She should know she loves her because he always has. All she needs to do is "follow [her] memory upstream"-- that is, back toward its source, its earliest point. There, she will find the recollection of watching a meteor shower with her father one night. The image of a father sharing the sight of an nighttime astrological wonder with his child was also presented in Simon's earlier lullaby, "St. Judy's Comet."

Still, for all of this involvement and shielding, the father does want his daughter to be able to care for herself. He has faith in his daughter's own good judgement: "Trust your intuition," he tells her. She should not be afraid to take chances or be ambitious; "Cast your line and hope you get a bite," he encourages.

And he knows how to hold her loosely enough to allow her room to develop on her own. "I'm gonna watch you shine/ Gonna watch you grow." He is going to invest his time and care in her... and then step back and watch her succeed and become better on her own.

"I believe the light that shines on you will shine on you forever," the father says, "I'm going to paint a sign/ So you'll always know." It is the words "forever" and "always" that give the child what she truly needs: Security. Confidence. Once she has absolute trust in her father's faith in her, she can have faith in herself.

And so we see why she only needs a postcard of a dog to protect her. That's enough to call to mind the memory and knowledge of her father's belief that he has given her what she needs. He is always there, because she can think of him whenever she needs to.

Musical Notes:
While the song is about a father and daughter, it is Simon's son, Adrian, singing backup.

Vincent Nguni, with Simon since Graceland, plays rhythm guitar here (and not elsewhere on the album).

Also, it should be noted that longtime Simon accompanist Steve Gadd was the principal drummer on the album.

IMPACT:
This pretty lullaby was nominated for the 2002 Oscar for Best Song (it lost to Eminem's "Lose Yourself").

It broke the Top 50 in Ireland and reached #31 in the UK, but did not chart in the US.

Next Song: Getting Ready for Christmas Day

That's Me

In some cases, it's clear that the speaker in a Paul Simon song is not, in fact, Simon himself. One example might be "Duncan," in which he states "Lincoln Duncan is my name." In other cases, it could go either way.

Here, Simon is very clear that this is an autobiographical effort. He announces that he is going to fast forward past "the boring parts," where he is a baby and even up through his college "graduation." The "bogus degree" is one in English. Considering he made his career as a writer, that may be unfair-- he might be one of the few to ever parlay that degree into a career at all!

He explains that he was a dreamer, not career driven: "I was more like a landlocked sailor/ Searching for the emerald sea."

The first thing of import that happens to him, that even invokes an interjection-- "Oh, my God"-- is his "first love," which "opens like a flower," then is suddenly much more intimidating: "A black bear" that "holds me in her sight and her power."

Then the metaphor shifts again. "But tricky skies, your eyes are true," could refer to the sky's metaphorical eyes, but the "you" could also to be listener, his first love. In this case, he thought the future was to be sunny with her, but the skies tricked him and instead brought forth foul weather. She did not trick him-- her eyes were "true"-- so fortune was what changed. This being autobiographical, I am going to go out on a limb and say this "first love" was Kathy, and the fortune that changed was his success.

"The future," it turned out brough both "beauty and sorrow," perhaps being both new loves, children, and recognition for his artistic efforts on the one hand, and the breakup with Garfunkel, his divorces, and other sorrows on the other.

So... does he regret his choice to leave Kathy in England and return to New York to pursue music? "Still, I wish that we could run away and live the life we used to/ If just for tonight and tomorrow." So he does wonder about it, but knows that his life now is what he would prefer. He is wise enough to know that, even if he had stayed, life would still have brought both "beauty and sorrow."

And then... we are at the present! But Simon is not resting on his many, many laurels. He still considers himself striving for better, newer heights: "I am walking up the face of the mountain/ Counting every step I climb."

As he climbs, he looks higher still: "Remembering the names of the constellations/ Forgotten is a long, long time." Perhaps this refers to his heroes, the "stars" he idolizes and idealizes, and feels that, even standing on his mountain, he will never ascend to those heights.

Plus, he may be out of time, or nearly so. He is aware of his age: "I’m in the valley of twilight." The next line, "Now I’m on the continental shelf," refers to the edge of a landmass that is usually underwater, before the land falls away and you are entirely in the ocean. Again, this is an image of near mortality.

In the last line, he perhaps summarizes his entire artistic career: "That’s me—/ I’m answering a question/ I am asking of myself." All of his songs are potential answers to the questions he has been pondering. Since he keep writing songs, perhaps he is trying to adjust to the fact that he may never know. At least he let us listen in.


Next Song: Father and Daughter