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

The Growing Up Years

This is a special song if only for the fact that its arrangement consists of just Simon (sorry, Landis) and his semi-acoustic guitar. It's also a thoughtful rumination on adolescence.

George Carlin said that he resented being told to "Have a nice day." It put pressure on him, he fumed: "Now I've got to go out and somehow manage to have a good time!"

Our speaker feels the same sort of pressure to go find a party or something. "People all say, 'Laugh and be gay!/ Youth is the time for fun and pleasure.'" The adults around him wish to live vicariously through his winsome exploits, no doubt. But his mind is on more serious (ahem) matters.

Then another adult, one in more immediate authority, tells him to only focus other serious matters. "Dad tells me we can't go steady." His father tells him to limit his attention to schoolwork... and not to get too involved too young: "Don't try your wings before you're ready."

Faced with this intractable fate, our speaker does resigns himself, and breaks up with his girlfriend. "Now you and I must say goodbye/ There's nothing else we can do."

However, there is still a longing-- "How can I ever live without you?"-- and with it comes a resistance to his father's ironclad rule.

After all, time is on his side. While "long are the growing-up years," on the one hand, they will eventually result in his... actually growing up. And "strong is the ache in my heart." This convinces him to play the long game, and consider the break-up a temporary status, one to be reconciled once he reaches adulthood. "...when we're grown, you'll be my own," he vows, "Never, no never to part."

Now, we adults know that this is unlikely. Yes, there are cases in which high-school sweethearts wed. But in general, once college keeps two young adults in separate time zones for four years, such passions cool. Since they can't be with the one they love, as the CSN song goes, they love the one they're with.

"Youth is wasted on the young," sighed Shaw, sounding like one of the adults in the song urging teens to sow their wild oats. But this teen doesn't even have time for that. He's making some very grown-up commitments that he can't even keep because of his schooling.

It's a shame that his father can't see that his goal-- preparing his son for adult life-- is being done in a limited way. Yes, part of being an adult is getting a degree, finding a job, and making a living.

But another major part is making a life! The relationship he's being deprived of would mature him in other, equally important ways.

Chances are good that his serious young man will seriously pursue the young woman he is so serious about, once he gets the freedom to do so. This might be one of the times high-school sweethearts weather the storms of college and do end up together.

For now, maybe he should have his dad talk to his mom. She'd set the old man straight.


Next Song: I Can Feel It Happening to Me

She Moves On

(Before I begin the analysis, I have to say that I am exceedingly disappointed with the Lyrics book here. The line is "Down in the maroon light," an evocative description of a sunset. The liner notes and website agree with this, which is what Simon's voice clearly says on the track. But the book has it as the simple, cliche "Down in the moonlight." Did anyone read this book before it was published? What's the point of having a book if its words cannot stand as THE definitive versions of the songs? All the book's editor needed to do was copy and paste from the website. Really! Not that this is the best move either-- the last word of the song, "on," is left off of the website version. Come on, people! Who's in charge, here? Listen to the songs, look at the liner notes, and get it right-- it's your job. I'm doing this in my spare time and I'm finding mistakes all over. OK, rant complete.)

The title says it-- She moves on. Ah, but he doesn't. He thinks he does. He thinks he did!

The song even starts: "I feel good/ It’s a fine day." He is at an airport, it is sunny, and "a cloud shifts." Since gray skies are gonna clear up, he's putting on a happy face. What happened? "She moves on."

Better to have loved and lost and all that. And he is OK with it. Well... sort of...

The speaker had really depended on her for a sort of salvation. He was "lost" and love "found" him (shades of "Amazing Grace"?). But when things change, and when he leaves the stage and "the song ends," well, "She moves on."

He feels happy just to be alive and to have survived having been left. But she just keeps... leaving! "She is like a top/ She cannot stop."

If, for example, "a sympathetic stranger" (himself, maybe?) um, "lights a candle in the middle of the night," or starts to spark something, she can't even handle that meager level of commitment and leaves again. Why a candle and not say, a torch? A candle is a religious, pure light.

She calls him her "storybook lover," perfect, and so too good to be true. She even warns him: "You have underestimated my power." This is not a candle, she says-- it's a stick of dynamite.

More worship imagery: "Then I fall to my knees/ Shake a rattle at the skies." He is now praying for her to stay, so he doesn't revert to being "lost" again; "I’m afraid that I’ll be... Abandoned, forsaken." Interesting that her eyes are like "coffee" only in their color-- they are not warm at all, but "cold."

Then, an interesting development. This woman, so insistent on keeping her distance and freedom, is somehow affected by him: "She can’t sleep now."

"The moon is red"-- this does happen, when certain particulate matter is in the atmosphere, or during a lunar eclipse. It is also a sign of the Revelation: "The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the great and awe–inspiring Day of the Lord comes."

So it's the end of the world! For him, because she does not want him. For her, because she does.

She can't sleep, she is so aroused and befuddled by him: "She fights a fever/ She burns in bed." This image of a feverish dream also appears in "How the Heart Approaches": "In a fever/ I distinctly hear your voice/ Emerging from a dream, the dream returns... I dream we are lying on the top of a hill... And your voice is the heat of the night/ I’m on fire."

So "she needs to talk." And instead of brushing this off as a case of "storybook" romance, she confides (in the "maroon" light of the "red" Moon, by the way!): “Maybe these emotions are/ As near to love as love will ever be.” This is as far as she has ever gone, emotionally, she says, and as far as he thinks she can go. But at least she was nice enough to tell him. What can he say? "So I agree."

Then "the moon breaks" (this may be sunrise) and the moment is over. "She takes the corner, that’s all she takes." While I am unclear if there is an expression "to take the corner" (British, maybe?) it is clear that she is not able to take any more than a small piece of him with her, again-- "that's all she takes." And... "she moves on."

The pain is a s bad as he had expected. Not just pain-- frailty, without her love there to prop him up. This time, he does not fall to his knees in worship, but in weakness: "I grow weak, I go slack." He can't "catch" his "breath," because she has "captured" it. He has had the wind knocked out of him.

But by the next morning, as he watched her plane lift off, he is fine. Before her, he was lost. Then he thought that, because she found him, he was found. But then she left... and remarkably, he didn't go back to being lost again!

So maybe he needed her... to show him that he didn't need her. Or anyone.

And she? She was just the catalyst for this reaction. Did she change at all, because of him? If so, not that much. She... well, as always, moves on.

MUSICAL NOTES: Raymond Chikapa Phiri-- Ray, for short-- one of the guitarists on this track, was the founder of Stimela, a gold and platinum-selling band from South Africa. He was one of the first artists, along with Joseph Shabalala, whom Simon worked with on the Graceland album.

Vincent Nguini, the other guitarist, is from Cameroon, but first worked with Simon on this album. He arranged the guitars for this track, and also "The Coast," and "Cool, Cool River," as well as the horns on "Proof."

Next Song: Born at the Right Time