Love

"You've got the cool water/ When the fever runs high," Simon wrote in the song "Something So Right." He returns to that imagery many years later, in this languid song, which begins "Cool me/ Cool my fever high."

Here, the speaker continues "Hold me when I cry," indicating that love can be passionate, but also compassionate. 

"I need it so much/ Makes you want to get down and crawl like a beggar/ For its touch," Again, the desire is so intense, that, like an illness, it makes one lose one's inhibitions and dignity.

The irony, of course, is that this wonderful, fever-reducing, anxiety-erasing "drug" is "free as air!" It costs nothing-- nothing material, anyway-- to love someone. "Like plants, the medicine is everywhere," refers to the idea that many of our most common healing agents, from aloe to aspirin, come from plants (aspirin comes from willow bark). In this sense, love as as available as something that grows naturally from the earth.

Well, that's what happens when you don't have love. What about when you do? "Makes you want to laugh out loud when you receive it/ And gobble it like candy." It's so easy to find, and hard to get, that if we do, we tend to overindulge and make ourselves sick on it!

"We think it’s easy/ Sometimes it’s easy/ But it’s not easy." This three-stage realization is key. When we are not in relationships, it seems like everyone else is. What we forget is that, when we are in relationships, life is not necessarily any less complex. And when you have love, the question is how to keep it. "You’re going to break down and cry," it seems, either way.

Those who give love, knowing how much the other '"craves" it, can use it to control the other, telling them that they are "not important" and that they "should be grateful." This puts the beloved in a seat of power. When I have what you want, you will do what I want to get what I have.

In the In the Blue Light version of the lyrics, Simon softens the idea of unimportance a bit. Instead of being unimportant in the eyes of others, subjectively, we are all objectively unimportant-- transient and mortal: "We're only here for a season of sunlight." 

So far, Simon does not paint a very happy picture of love. It is almost a drug, creating self-destructive, but coercive, desires. Unlike most love songs, it does not celebrate the emotion as much as lament it. 

But until this point, his focus is on interpersonal relationships. Then he shifts to geopolitics and history. Oh. he sighs, how high is "The price that we pay/ When evil walks the planet/ And love is crushed like clay."

The last lines use the imagery of the Nazis, who called themselves the "master race" and the Jews, the "chosen people," they committed virulent genocide against. But by speaking of these elements in plural, Simon broadens the concept of genocide to all throughout history who have declared themselves master races and lashed out against others in their imagined superiority. 

"The burning temples," are those of the Jews destroyed during Kristallnacht, the city-wide pogrom that initiated the Holocaust. But they are also all those from the Holy Temples in Jerusalem sacked by the Babylonians and Romans to the synagogues, churches, mosques, and ashrams that have been set fire to over all of human history. Very early in his folk career, Simon even wrote a song called "A Church is Burning," about a spate of arson attacks of black churches in the American south in the 1960s. Even today, houses of worship are regularly targeted by hateful violence.

The last words, "the weeping cathedrals," might refer to the response, over the years, by those who were not targeted (this time), but who said only that "this is a terrible tragedy" and that "something must be done."

However, in the In the Blue Light version, Simon eschews this whole historical retrospective, and replaces it with a self-help-ish affirmation: "When daybreak's hopes have come and gone/ Just love yourself, and pass it on." Pain comes from expecting love from others and being disappointed when it does not materialize, he seems to day. Instead, rely on yourself and be a giver instead of waiting to receive. 

This song, despite its title, seems not to be about "love" but about its absence. On a personal level, a lack of love can drive a person to despair and desperation. On the global level, a lack of love leads to an inhumane, and inhuman, attack on one's fellow humans. Such killers see the other as less than human, while they themselves are the ones who have abandoned their claims to humanity.

Next song: Pigs, Sheep and Wolves

Further to Fly

Before we analyze this song, it is important to note the many allusions in it to other Simon songs:

The image in "Can't Run But" of a couple dancing return thus:
"Effortless music from the Cameroons
The spinning darkness of her hair"

while the "pencil-point/love bite" stab in the "shoulder blade" from that song is here softened to:
"...a love/ Who falls against you gently as/ A pickpocket brushes your thigh"

The "Dangling Conversation" reappears here as:
"A conversation... going nowhere"

The opening line to "Call Me Al" is now rendered:
"Sometimes I’ll be walking down/ The street and I’ll be thinking/ Am I crazy"

And the man who, in "Boy in the Bubble," said "Don't cry, Baby, don't cry" now tells the listener to:
"Take it up with the great deceiver/ Who looks you in the eye/ Says, Baby, don’t cry."

Lastly, a plant that we just encountered in "The Coast" returns, namely "The Rose of Jericho."

That taken care of, we can now turn to the song itself and consider it on its own merits. The song seems to be about desire and the many ways and reasons it can go unfulfilled. There is always, it seems, "further to fly" in order to reach such goals. (Also, the breathy alliteration of this phrase sounds a bit like feathery wings.)

The first verse returns to one one Simon's major themes: weariness. One reason desires remain unfilled is simple exhaustion. Some dreams seem to take so long to become realized that the dreams themselves seem to beg for euthanasia-- "Give me up already!" they moan.

But maybe, you will find a love... only it will present itself so gently you will miss it. It will breeze by and be gone before you even realize you should have tried to catch it, and like a "pickpocket" victim, you won't understand until later what you have lost.

There will be sweet "music", yes, and the hypnotic "swirl" of her hair in the "crowded room,"-- perhaps a bar, dance floor, or reception hall. But the "conversation" will frustrate and "go nowhere." (The Cameroons, today simply called "Cameroon," is a West African nation).

"Desire," the speaker insists, is insatiable, like an "open palm" that holds nothing, but keeps needing to be filled. It "wants everything," because it is always empty.

The futility of endless wanting ends up feeling like either madness-- "I’ll be thinking: 'Am I crazy?'"-- or some sort of cosmic sarcasm-- "'Is this some morbid little lie?'"

Desire is not only for things yet to be gotten, but for things once had and now lost. The next lines seem like a description of dementia or Alzheimer's disease: "A recent loss of memory/ A shadow in the family." The "shadow" is both the genetic reality of the illness in the whole "family," and the almost literal sense of "absence"-- the person is absent because he or she does not even remember being part of the family. The specific memory itself is also in "shadow," as it can no longer be seen clearly.

"The baby waves bye-bye" can mean several things. (This is clearly "baby" in the age sense, not "Baby" in the romantic one; all sources agree the word is not capitalized.) One is that childhood is lost as one matures; the "baby" is one's own infancy. Another is that one's children grow up and leave; to us parents, they are still our babies. Sticking with the Alzheimer's idea, whole family members can leave the awareness of the victims and fade into forgotten-ness and "shadow," another sort of farewell. Or perhaps, the Alzheimer's patient is the baby, since he is as helpless as one.

As for the speaker, he pleads, "I’m trying." If there is "further to fly," well, he's "flying" as hard as he can, and has not given up.

Knowing that things lost are desired, the speaker bemoans the idea that he might lose the things he still has, from his relationships to his sensibility. The image is of "falling backward" into a soft-yet-smothering blackness, a "velvet night."

The "open palm" now wants contradictory things (well, "everything" would presumably include opposites). It wants "soil as soft as summer"-- an easy life, in which no effort is required to flourish. It also wants "the strength to push like spring." Few things push as strongly as excited new growth; roots and shoots break stone and cement, and "spring" itself pushes away the drifts and floes of seemingly intractable, implacable winter. So the "palm of desire" wants strength, but the luxury to grow without it. No wonder it is never satisfied!

"A broken laugh," is a rueful thing, but "a broken fever" usually is a hopeful one, as in "I hope her fever breaks soon." For it to be another disappointment, this would have to be the "fever" of the type Peggy Lee sings.

And this is when the speaker calls the "Boy in the Bubble" speaker on his reassurances. Only a "great deceiver" would say "Baby, don’t cry." There is always a reason to cry, and something lost or not attained worth crying over. (It seems this is the "Baby" of the other song, since it is capitalized, but it would be wrong not to explore the possibility of it being the baby mentioned earlier in this song.)

"The Rose of Jericho," again, is a plant that may seem dead, yet can be revived. This may symbolize the endlessly regenerating nature of desire.

The last line, however, seems to finally express what is truly desired-- the ability to fulfill the desires of others, even if that means one's own desire is thereby unfulfilled: "The strength to let you go." It would be weak indeed to give in to one's own selfishness at the expense of the needs of another soul.

The song, in short, starts with the second line of the Serenity Prayer-- "the courage to change the things I can" and ends with the first: "the serenity to accept the things I cannot change." Except this time, it's never going to be "serene" once his love is gone, which she eventually she will be, no matter what. And for that, he's going to need the "strength" to continue to "fly further" toward the ever-retreating horizon of contentment.

In a way, this song is a more mature version of "The Impossible Dream" from "Man of La Mancha," and a more jaded version of Keats' "Ode on a Grecian Urn":
"Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal – yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!"

For Keats, having "further to fly" means always having a reason to fly, and isn't flying fun? For Simon, flying is exhausting, never reaching the goal is frustrating, and knowing that he will lose his love in the end no matter what is devastating.

He is "tired," the conversation goes "nowhere," and the whole thing might be insanity or a "morbid lie" of Fate. Yet, he flies... and hopes for, at the end, the strength to stop.


Musical Notes:
The flugelhorn here is played by Hugh Masekela, one of Africa's greatest jazz players. He had an instrumental horn hit in the US-- right around the time of Herb Alpert and Chuck Mangione-- called "Grazin' in the Grass" (1968), which went to #1 and went multi-platinum. Masekela later played on some Byrds cuts. He had left Africa in 1960, following a massacre of unarmed protestors. Years later, Masekela joined Simon onstage at his Graceland concert in Africa.

The trumpeter is Randy Brecker, with a long list of sessions with greats from Springsteen to Mingus. He is Michael's brother, they have recorded as a duo.

The notes that sound like a wood flute are Michael Brecker's EWI.

(There is another error in the liner notes. The guitar is not played by "Ringo Star" and this is not a misprint of the Beatles' drummer's name. It's actually an understandable misprint of the name "Rigo Star.")

The song was covered by folk songbird Holly Near.

Next song: She Moves On

How the Heart Approaches What it Yearns

The word "approach" is in the title, but mostly what happens in the song is the "yearning" part.

In this love song, it is unclear whether the speaker has broken up with the woman in his "dream," or if they have never had a romantic relationship to begin with. He does know her-- he can "distinctly hear" her voice, and is perhaps a friend. (In the version on In the Blue Light, the line becomes "I can hear your secret voice," implying intimacy, not simple acquaintanceship.)

But whether they were a couple before or not, they are not, now. And this is making him both "blue" with disappointment and "feverish" with desire.

The song is rich with the imagery of places. It begins in a motel room. The speaker is probably lying on his bed with the TV on, but he is not watching it. He is lost in thought, "wondering" how to "approach" what he "yearns" for. Then the song moves to "the side of the road," "the top of a hill," and a "phone booth at a local bar-and-grill" (in the In the Blue Light version, it becomes a "downtown bar-and-grill.")

There are even abstract places, like a "fever" and a "dream."

The song is also replete with the image of heat. First, the television passively "burns." Then, he has a "fever"-ish dream, from which he cannot wake. In the dream, there is "heat" and "fire."

After the speaker tells us about ignoring the TV and having his intense dream, the song shifts focus to another character, "a bone-weary traveler." Is this an actual person, or a dream image? Is the traveler the speaker himself? We know that he is in a hotel, so he is himself traveling. But he is not "by the side of the road," he is safe in a hotel bed. Unless he feels like he is "waiting by the side of the road."

About this man, the speaker wonders, "Where's he going?" If it's the speaker, we presume that he is in a motel as a stop-over on the way to a known destination. So if the question is metaphorical, the "where" could refer to where he is going in life-- toward his dream-woman or away from her.

Incidentally, it is "after the rain." This water image counters the hot images found elsewhere.

Now, we get to the dream. He does not dream that he and his would-be lover are marginalized "by the side of the road. Quite the opposite-- they are "lying on top of a hill," and are evidently making love. Again, the imagery is of heat: "Your voice is the heat of the night/ I'm on fire." (The In the Blue Light version eliminates the "I'm on fire" line. While this line predates the Springsteen song with this title by four years, that song is much more famous and Simon might have felt he would sound like he was quoting Springsteen instead of vice versa. Or maybe he just thought it was cliche.)

Notably, the entire line "I dream we are lying on the top of a hill" is not sung in the In the Blue Light version. The lack of this line, however, means it much less clear that the "rolling" business is only a dream. It could be an extension of the line "emerging from a dream, the dream returns" but there is a whole bridge about a "traveler" in between now. That, coupled with the knowledge of the "secret" voice, seems to imply the woman in question was a close friend or even a former lover, not just a passing acquaintance.

Enough "yearning"-- time to "approach." He calls her on a pay telephone at a bar. He does not get through, and his coin returns. He "approached," but so far he has not "reached."

He is in a state of coolness and passivity except when thinking about this woman. Aside from the cold/hot images, we have various verbs relating to passivity, lack of movement. When fantasizing of her, he "wonders," he "hears" (he never speaks to anyone in the course of the song), the traveler "waits," and he "rehearses," (but again does not get the chance to speak or perform).

But when he imagines himself with her, he becomes more active, and sees himself "rolling" in her arms. Ultimately, even in the case, he does not see himself as active-- he is in her arms-- she is holding and encompassing him, in his conception of the embrace, when presumably they would be holding each other. Alternately, the line could be "I roll you in my arms," in which case he would be the active one.

Two verbs more are repeated. One is the word "returns." First, the dream-- the one so intense he cannot wake from it-- returns (in the In the Blue Light version, her "voice" returns). Then when he tries to call his dream lover, his coin returns as well. He is moving in circles, returning and returning and never progressing-- yearning and approaching but never attaining.

Then the line "headlights slide past the Moon" is repeated in its entirety. Both the headlights and the Moon are round and yellowish and glow in the night. As enormous as the Moon is, is can appear as small as a headlight in perspective.

So we have the contrast of one light staying still, and a set of two lights moving "past" it and leaving it behind. This might be a symbol for his situation and desire. If he is one light, like the Moon, he stays in place-- wondering and waiting "by the side of the road." But if he were paired with her as headlights are, the two would "slide"-- with no friction-- on the "interstate," right past such a lonely moon... or roadside traveler.

Even the roadway itself is different to him when he sees himself with her. When one is "waiting on the side," it's just "a road." But to those "sliding" along it together, it is a sleek, wide "interstate."

Ultimately, he is no further along at the end of this series of events than when he started. The question is, now that his coin has returned, does he return to the phone booth to try her number again? Has his courage been permanently raised?

Well, there is no more imagery of heat, or movement, in this verse. Even the bar is "some local" one. So has this simple disappointment brought him back down to the level of despair again? Yeah, that's more likely the case.

In the version

Next Song: Oh, Marion