Stranger to Stranger

The title track to this album is a love song, and a lovely one, at that. Simon married singer-songwriter Edie Brickell in 1992, so this song comes nearly 25 years into their marriage.

He asks if they would fall in love again if they met now: "If we met for the first time/ Could you imagine us falling in love again?" The language echoes his song "Old Friends": "Can you imagine us, years from today/ Sharing a park bench?"

(Side note: in that song, he muses, "How terribly strange to be 70." The year this album was released, Simon was 74.)

This song continues: "Words and melody... fall from the summer trees," he says, "So the old story goes." I have never heard the story of songs falling from trees... if any of my readers have, I hope they share that story with me.

Why is this here? Perhaps he means to say that he and his wife pair as well as words and melody, and as naturally as leaves falling from trees.

In any case, how wonderful and amazing that, after two decades and more, he still awaits her very "walk[ing] across his doorway." He is "jittery" with "joy," even. She is like a drug to him: "I cannot be held accountable for the things I do or say," when she is near.

He finds their relationship an "easy harmony," and it must be something when two such great singers actually do harmonize. And when there is a problem, the "old-time remedies" still work.

And oh, problems do happen. Some can be compared to repetitive-stress injuries: "Most of the time/ It's just hard working/ The same piece of clay / Day after day." The "clay" represents the banality of life... or, seeing as how Adam was made of clay, the banality of people.

Other problems lie not within the relationship, but its individual members: "Certain melodies tear your heart apart/ Reconstruction is a lonesome art." Some losses, like the death of a parent or a career downturn, affect one of them more than the other.

What else? "All the carnage." Again, this could refer to death or illness, but also fighting and saying hurtful things, separations and silences-- psychological damage. But these things are discreet and definable.

Others are more effusive and evasive: "All the useless detours." A couple could spend five years in a house neither likes, because each thinks the other one likes it. A couple could take years to decide to get married, or divorced, and just be living in a limbo of inertia.

But despite all these thing, he still believes: "Love endures." The song ends with Simon repeating "I love you" over and over in waltz time, then: "Words and melody/ Easy harmony." When they are in tune, what a beautiful song.

"I love to watch you walk across my doorway," he tells her-- still crazy about her, after all these years.


Musical Note:
This is one of the four songs Simon spiced with flamenco on this album; the others are "The Riverbank," "The Werewolf" and "Wristband." In this, some of the rhythms are actually recordings of the dancer's steps.

Some of the guitar was done by Cameroons native Vincent Nguini, who has been with Simon since Rhythm of the Saints.

Next Song: In a Parade

Let's Make Pictures

This dreamy, breathy melody is prescient of "Cherish" by the Association, or perhaps that was a throw-back to this earlier sound. (Again, the author is "unknown," but the song is on a CD of Jerry Landis reissues.)

The song opens with a chorus of women singing what sounds like an ad for a vacation: "Sunlight shining on snow-capped mountains/ Lovers strolling by sparkling fountains."

But the speaker then reveals that this is a vacation he takes in his mind... when he is in the embrace of his beloved. "Close your eyes, I'll close mine/ Kiss me/ Let's make pictures, pretty pictures tonight."

With his eyes thus closed, he anticipates the serene scenes he will imagine: "One by one, soon they'll come/ I see pictures when you're holding me tight."

So intense are these images that he prefers them to both visual reality and any sort of auditory input: "Don't wanna hear bells ring, bird sing/ Like some other lovers do."

Lest the person kissing and holding him feel left out, thinking perhaps his flights of fancy are solo excursions, he clarifies: "I just wanna see those pictures of my future with you."

The other notable feature of this song is that Simon/Landis speaks some of the lyrics, as in the Righteous Brothers' "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'." This was not a precursor to rap, as the lyrics are not read rhythmically, but simply read, the way an actor might read his lines.

The song portends to sophistication, but is clearly the work of a teenager trying to sound mature. But that's the case-- he can't afford to take his girlfriend to Tahoe to see sunlight glinting off snowy peaks, let alone to the famous fountains of Tivoli near Rome.

All he can do is visualize being able to take her to these resplendent romantic vistas. Luckily, he has a vibrant imagination and the poetic gifts to express it. Also, a girlfriend appreciative that he wants to take her to such pretty places, and might have the ambition to pull it off.

Every success begins with a dream, and she inspires him to lavish dreams. Maybe they will only make it as far as Coney Island or Niagara Falls. But wouldn't you rather be there with someone who thinks that it's just grand... than someone who grouses their way through Paris, muttering about prices and waiters and traffic?

Maybe this couple grew up into the one in Simon's song, "America," imagining their way down the highway from Michigan to New York on a Greyhound: "Laughing on the bus/ Playing games with the faces."

Even now, while they are just making out on the couch, he is able to transport them to the Riviera. So, it's only in their minds-- where, after all, is their love?


Next Song: One Way Love