Love Is Like a Braid

The problem with a famous person quoting a less famous person is that, when you look up the source of the quote, you can only find the famous person having said it... not the person they quoted.

So when Simon writes: "Love is like a braid, some say," I cannot find, now, who that "some" is. Every reference to the expression I see online is a reference to this selfsame song. 

And I can see how relationships are like braids, in that they are interwoven-- the same person may be a parent, a child, a spouse, a friend... their one life interwoven with many others. Even the connection between computers is called the Internet or the World-Wide Web. 

But even one love, one relationship, has many layers of want, need, interdependency, trust, vulnerability, and so on, all interwoven. So in that sense, love can be plaited and braid-like.

This braid is then ornamented, he suggests, like hair can be-- with cowrie shells (those small shells that are also used to make a gourd rattle called a "shekere") and jade combs. That one is typically African and the other Asian is the point; our culture, whatever it is, "decorates" our relationships, beyond its own characteristics.

The song takes a turn here to focus on the story of one life. "I lived a life of pleasant sorrows," sounds like an oxymoron, but it is just a set-up. These sorrows may be pleasant in that they are the downsides of a generally positive thing, like the mixed feelings of pride, hope, fear, and loss experienced when a child leaves for college or gets married.

They are a set-up, though, for "the real deal," which "broke him like a twig." Biographically, I do not know what sorrow this refers to, but it was significant, even life-defining; depending on its outcome, either "all is lost, or all is well."

It involved a period of uncertainty: "A jury sat deliberating." This could be a real courtroom jury or any group of a decision-making people, such as a cadre of doctors discussing a patient's treatment options. 

This period was marked by both "prayer" and "reason," and that resonates. In times like these, we try to face facts, but we also hope to bend fate in our own favor.

The next verse holds some clues as to the event in question. The "real deal" may very well have been an illness or death of a parent. Coming "home," he is "shocked" to find: "I'm a child again, entwined in your love." You think you are an adult. You even have your own children. And then, when you lose a parent, you remember being their child, and for a while you are one again.

Simon's father and mother passed away in 1995 and 2007, respectively. But in approaching his own death, he undoubtedly thought back to theirs. 

And... there is our metaphor again. We began with the image of a "braid." We seemed to have dropped it for two verses. But no, that was just to get us to here, where we find it again, in the word "entwined." 

The word "doorstep" may be significant; the only other songs I know of to use the word are ones of hope. One is is "Three Little Birds" by Bob Marley. In it, three birds come to his doorstep to sing "Don't worry about a thing/ Every little thing/ Is going to be all right." Such assurance might be welcome in a sad hour like this.

The other is "The Sunny Side of the Street," which urges: "leave your worries on your doorstep/ Just direct your feet/ To the sunny side of the street." 

The speaker now presents another dichotomy. We have had "pleasant sorrows," "prayer [active] and waiting [passive]," "doubt and reason," "all is lost [or] well."

But in each of those pairs, one is good and one is bad. Remembering the parent? All was good. Either he was in the parent's "light" or their "cool summer shade." In this case, the opposite of "light" is not an ominous "shadow," or a hopeless "darkness," but their protective "shade."

I once interviewed a rising singer whose father was a very famous singer himself. I asked if she felt she was performing in his shadow. "No," she replied, "in his light."

The song ends with yet another good/bad dichotomy: "The garden keeps the rose and thorn." Life has both good and bad in it, he decides, but there are choices. And, even if you chose wrong and picked a thorn,  "what's left is/ Mending what was torn."

Life has both pleasantness and sorrow, both roses and thorns. So does love. 

And maybe those are what is braided; maybe that is how love is like a braid. It contains both the good and bad in ourselves, in those we have relationships with, and of the relationships themselves. 

You may love someone without loving everything about them. Maybe they snore, or lack punctuality, or have a morbid sense of humor. But you're not perfect, either... and they love you anyway, also. 

You may love someone, but not love the idea of losing them. But you love them anyway. 

The thing about braids, though? They are much, much stronger than individual strings. Which is kind of what you would want, and hope, from something like love. 

Next Song: My Professional Opinion

Haven't You Hurt Me Enough?

[Note: according to liner notes in a CD I came into possession of after having posted this, the writer is "unknown."]

I admit I expected less from this song. It seemed like it might be another whiny "woe-is-me" number about a man suffering at the "cruelty" of a woman who doesn't love him back. And now, she's-- what, seeing guys she does like? And he's taking it personally...

Nope. This song is about a man suffering the at the cruelty of a woman who is actually being actively cruel.

At least he has not internalized her meanness and blamed himself. He even tries to analyze her behavior.

It starts with her breaking it off, and breaking his heart. Still, he is willing to move on and "forget." All healthy behavior on his part-- you mourn, then you move on.

But she is not content to leave it at that. She actively torments him: "Last night just for a joke/ You called to say hello... You call just to tease me/ And tell me about the other guys you see."

As former US First Lady Nancy Reagan said, there is a name for people like this, and it rhymes with "witch." There is really something wrong with someone who adds insult to injury, rubs salt in wounds they have inflicted... and keeps kicking the person they have already, as we used to say, kicked to the curb.

She knows this hurts him-- "You knew that every word was breaking my poor heart"-- and he starts to realize that this is her motivation: "Does it make you feel good to know that I'm feeling blue?"

The German word for this is "schadenfreude," happiness at someone else's pain. In this case, it's coupled with sadism, happiness from inflicting that pain.

Through his tears, our sensitive man keeps working on understanding her logic, warped as it is: "I know you don't love me/ Why do you want me to keep loving you?"

Then it dawns on him that the answer is in the question: "Your pride's too strong to let me go." By continuing to torment him, she continues to revel in her strength, and her power over him.

He tries to appeal to her compassion, although he already knows she has none: "It's all a game to you/
But I'm the one who cries." And so the song ends as it began, with our victim still in tears.

Verbal and emotional abuse, stalking, and other such bullying has since migrated from the telephone to the worldwide party line that is the Internet.

And men do suffer such abuse, even physical abuse, at the hands of women. A recent video showed two actors demonstrating this by arguing in a London park (search on YouTube for the channel "POZAPAPO"). First, the man shoves the woman. Instantly, women accost him and protected her. In the second scenario, she shoves him into the same fence. Women watched... and some even laughed. (The men in the park avoided involvement in both cases.)

Then the video ends with this statistic: "40% of domestic violence is suffered by men."

Far from being a whiny song about a man who imagines that a woman's disinterest is a personal slight, this is actually a very brave song about the difficulties of dealing with abuse. How do you defend yourself without coming across as the bully? How do you stop someone from calling night after night? What do you do with people who never hurt you "enough"?

Decades after this song was written, society continues to struggle with these issues.

Next Song: Funny Little Girl

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

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

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

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

Dance to a Dream/ Quality

Has Hernandez, The Umbrella Man, become the only influence in Sal's life? What about Bernadette, and his role models for a solid relationship, Carlos and Yolanda? As this song shows, they are both still couples.

The song mostly belongs to Carlos and Yolanda, as they dream of a life together, away from the barrio. We have heard this type of song before in musicals, from Annie's "Easy Street" to Little Shop of Horrors' "Somewhere That's Green."

Here, the "desire" is material, too, at least in part, Yolanda sings: "I have always imagined a better life/ Far from the barrio's gutters/ We could manage a club as a husband and wife... A restaurant, white tablecloths/ And maybe some live Spanish music."

She has also envisioned their home. Together, they could "build a house, paint the shutters... There are lawns and flowers on a Westchester street/ Maples that sound like a river." She clings to this desire like a lifeline: "It's my dream, and I don't want to lose it."

Carlos' "desire" is, originally, less material, and more immediate: "Come on, Yolanda, I just wanna see..." But  of course he wants to provide a good life for her: "A place for our children that's restful and sweet/ I promise you some day, we'll live there."

Young Sal has less mature ways to impress Bernadette: "What you wanna bet/ I can fly like the guys in the comic books?/ You know how magic this cape is." (Ah, so he did acquire the cape... somehow! Later, he mentions a salary, but...). Bernadette is incredulous of the cape's powers, but sure of her feelings for Sal: "I'll bandage your wounds with my kisses."

Both women and Carlos join for the chorus: "You can dance to the dream of a summer's night/ As you drift to the edge of desire/ Guided by love's mysterious light/ Set the stars in heaven on fire." Since before Shakespeare, something about a midsummer night has set lovers to dream.

"Quality" is the sixth track on the soundtrack album. It's a simple 1950's-style pop tune, and it also marks the differences between what the women hope for and what the men (or boys) do.

The women sing: "Are you my beautiful young boy/ Or just another love/ Passing through my life... And maybe one day soon/ Will I be your wife?"

Carlos is not part of this number, but Sal sings lyrics typical of the age... and his own age: "Come on, Baby, let's go downtown/ You sure look good to me... Don't be shy/ Step in the light so I can see... Let's rock some more/ I want to spend my salary... The way you move/ It's got quality." He's so pleased with life, he even sings this about himself, that others see that he has quality.

Adult Salvador steps in at this point, sighing: "Who can stop the setting sun/ Who can raise the dead?/ I feel the shame of what was done/ See how the stain has spread." With one act, which we will soon see, all of Sal's and Bernadette's dreams and desires are rendered meaningless, as are those of his mother and stepfather.

But first, young Sal gets in one more verse of "Quality," just to show, exactly, what he will lose: his youth, his hope, his exuberance, his freedom... maybe not his life, but everything good in it.

Next Song: Manhunt/ Can I Forgive Him?

Can't Run But

The song begins, uncharacteristically, with its chorus. The speaker seems frustrated with his progress, even acknowledging his limitations in this area: "I can’t run but/ I can walk much faster than this."

Then come three seemingly unrelated verses. The first is about the nuclear power plant disaster in Chernobyl, Ukraine, in April of 1986. It was one of the worst disasters in the history of such facilities, contaminating wide swaths of populated territory with toxic radiation. It was unequaled until the tsumani/earthquake-provoked nuclear catastrophe in Japan in 2011.

The verse summarizes the event's, well, fallout. The "rain" was "new" in nature due to the high levels of radioactivity, and everything from "trees" to "umbrellas" were used to shield the populace from it. Everything had to be analyzed for radioactive contamination, from the "soil" of what had been a Soviet breadbasket region, to the "food"-- now more "contemplated" than eagerly consumed-- to the "water" that had to be purified. Boiling water was supposed to free it of bacteria; if anything the radiation would have taken care of that, as radiation is used to kill, for example, cancer cells. Meanwhile, I doubt even boiling temperatures would affect uranium or plutonium radioactivity, given how this was itself spread by burning smoke.

The picture is one of overall incompetence, and the government's inept attempts to cover it up. The idea that umbrellas and boiling water would protect against nuclear fallout reeks of the same population-pacifying pablum as the films American schoolchildren used to watch, explaining to them that in the event of an atomic-bomb attack, they should "duck and cover" under their flimsy desks.

Next, the song turns to a description of the speaker's dream, possibly about his lover. It may have been brought on by drinking, given the mention of "bottles." (In the In the Blue Light version, the line "in the bottles and bones of the night" became "after the long goodnight." I feel this line is weaker and more cliche. Also, it says that the relationship was a desirable one, so why then afterward dream about pain?)

In the dream, he feels "a pain in [his] shoulder blade." His guesses? "...a pencil point? A love bite?" Both seem unlikely-- why would someone stab someone else with a sharpened pencil? And aren't "love bites" ("hickeys," in American slang) usually given higher, around the neck (and does that mean people lied about hickeys by saying a vampire had bitten them?) The two guesses seem to equate the pain of writing with the pain of love. And why the "shoulder blade"? Maybe his subconscious is telling him that he has been stabbed in the back. Perhaps he senses some infidelity or other betrayal. (Or maybe he fell asleep while writing and was jolted awake when he rolled over onto the pencil.)

Also in the dream, there is another couple: "A couple was rubbing against us/ Rubbing and doing that new dance." So first, we realize that the initial couple-- the speaker and his lover-- were dancing, in the dream. Then, this other couple is not accidentally brushing against them as they shimmy on the dance floor-- the word "rubbing" is used twice. In the dream imagery, this is to show that this couple is somehow connected with them.

My feeling is that they are them-- a manifestation of this same couple as they could be. They are doing a "new dance" and so are "hip" and in sync with the times. The man is somehow both formal and casual at once-- "wearing a jacket and jeans"-- elegant, yet relaxed (ostensibly a combination the speaker has not himself mastered). The woman is "laughing in advance," probably in happy anticipation of where the night would lead (ahem). He feels this other couple could be what they themselves ought to be.

Taken together, the two verses are images of frustration. In one, a country believes itself to be advanced and sophisticated, only to learn it is not, when it counts. In the next, a man dreams about his ideal relationship and realizes that his real one falls painfully short. Also in both, someone realizes he is being told something less than the full truth, and is being merely appeased instead of actually helped.

The last verse is as free-flowing as the "river" that forms its thin cohesion. The verse begins with the image of the river winding, then it getting "wound around a heart." Is the river somehow emotionally important to the speaker, that his heart is wrapped up in it? (In the In the Blue Light version, this verse is introduced by the words "The legend is," so perhaps the river/heart image comes from a folktale.)

The noose of the river tightens, but the heart is not strangled; instead, the river breaks-- its "waters part." The image of parting waters immediately calls to mind the parting of the Red Sea in the Exodus story of the Bible (although the river that turned back on itself to let the Israelites across was the Jordan, as told in The Book of Joshua).

However, the term "muddy waters" recalls something else: iconic bluesman McKinley "Muddy Waters" Morganfield. This is not an accident; the next image is of a "blues band" arriving at the banks of this river. (Performing a song with a "Muddy Waters part"?)

Last comes a dig at the music industry: "The music suffers/ The music business thrives." The idea is that the music was getting worse and worse, while the studio coffers overflowed more and more (this was before Napster, of course.) Now, the Muddy Waters story is a typical one of musicians suffering at the hands of rapacious studios, since the start of the recording industry. But--the implication is-- at least the music itself was worth stealing back then.

In the In the Blue Light version of the lyrics, however, the blues band has become a more au-courant "D.J." And, instead of a slap at the music industry, we get this review of this D.J.'s performance: "The sub-bass feels like an earthquake/ The top hand cuts like knives." Perhaps Simon wanted to seem more "with it," or perhaps taking shots at the music industry just felt like it took the song in a mean-spirited direction.

This last verse is a free-associative stream-of-consciousness. A river winds... it is wound around something... its waters are muddy... Muddy Waters played the blues... Muddy Waters is from Mississippi... the Mississippi is a river nicknamed "The Big Muddy"... the blues are played all along the river (there is a song titled "The Big Muddy," about the river)... the blues (the emotion, not the music) were made worse by the very industry that (like a river) carried the blues (the music) to the world. Compare this to the headline in the satirical Onion newspaper: "Affluent White Man Enjoys, Causes the Blues."

Why are things not better? Why, if you want to provide power for thousands, must you risk poisoning them with it? Why can't we be like that happy, dancing, laughing couple over there? Why does the music business succeed by destroying the very thing that sustains it?

By now, bemoans the speaker, I expect human progress to be slow. But slow is one thing-- I could even walk faster than this!

Musical Note:
On guitar is J.J. Cale, a bluesy performer from Oklahoma (not to be confused with the Velvet Underground's John Cale). He returns later in the album as well.

Cale's songs have been covered by Eric Clapton, Kansas, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Captain Beefheart, Carlos Santana, and Widespread Panic.


Next Song: The Coast

Crazy Love, Vol II

The title immediately provokes the question: "Was there a 'Crazy Love, Vol I?'" A brief glance at an alphabetical listing of Simon's songs reveals none.

Perhaps, then, this is response to another songwriter's "Crazy Love"? Van Morrison had a song by that title; so did soft-rockers Poco. A quick online search reveals songs with that title by everyone from Sinatra to the Allman Brothers. So which "Crazy Love" is this the supposed sequel to?

I think it is none of them, specifically... and all of them in general. More to the point, it might not be a sequel to a song at all, but to the kind of love the songs are about.

What really happens to that crazy kind of love? Joan Rivers explains that romance is like running up a grassy hill. "And do you know what's on the other side of that hill?" she continues. "A basket of laundry, full of socks to be matched."

This song is about the discovery of that basket of laundry, and what happens after. It is the heretofore unsung "Vol. II" that must follow all such blissfully madcap crazy love stories after the credits roll.

The song begins by introducing a man with two nicknames. One is "Archangel," which implies he is a being of some importance and weight. The other (later to be revealed as more recent) is "Fat Charlie," also connoting a being with some weight, but this time the kind doctors discourage.

(We must take a moment to applaud the Wallace Stevens-esque opening line: "Fat Charlie the Archangel sloped into the room." That is not a line that could have remotely been conceived by any other songwriter, living or otherwise.)

Charlie is full not only of eclairs but ennui. He has "no opinion" about anything. He is aware of his "sad" mental state, telling his friends: "I don't claim to be happy" about things, even the things he just sad he had no opinion regarding. They do notice that he is as "sad" as a deflated "balloon," in contrast to his inflated shape-- just as his being "lonely" contrasts with the fact that he is married (which, again, is revealed later).

He is sure, however, on one point, which he repeats with great insistence: "I don’t want no part of this crazy love/ I don’t want no part of your love."

Charlie has come, perhaps to a bar, to gripe about his marriage. As often happens, he starts with, "Do you know what she said? Listen to this! She says the joke is on me!"

One of his friends replies, we imagine: "Oh, yeah?! What'd ya tell her?"

He is so apathetic, or perhaps so beaten down, that even this affront is met with, "I have no opinion about that." Then with terrible self-knowledge, he admits: "And I have no opinion about me."

Even if Charlie can no longer muster enough self-respect to be angered, his friends are distraught on his behalf. "Charlie," they tell him, "You're in trouble, friend! And, given your Archangel position, everyone knows it!" Simon phrases their response thus; “Your life is on fire! It’s all over the evening news.”

This exchange does seem to stoke Charlie's ire a bit; he unleashes another barrage of "I don't want no part of this crazy love."

And then Charlie takes action. The joke is no longer on him, because he is the one who "files for divorce."

Like the weighty personage he is, he takes stock and plans for the future: "Well, this will eat up a year of my life/ and then there’s all that weight to be lost." This indicates that he was not heavy before the marriage and let himself go during it. Now that he is going to be "back on the market" he plans to work to become as attractive as he once was.

Also, Charlie is now giving as good as he gets: "She says the joke is on me/ I say the joke is on her!" Not the most original of retorts, but at least a "Hah-- So there!"

But then he undercuts himself. "I said I have no opinion about that/ We'll just have to wait on confer." Wait, what? He has no opinion about what he himself just said? And now he wants to "confer" and arbitrate as to whom the joke is on? Oh, dear.

How will Charlie end up, now that he is single? Will he regain the fierce gravitas that earned him the rank of Archangel? Or will he, even now, still worry about what she thinks, since he has been so trained to?

The love was "crazy," and like all intense flames, burnt itself out. Now Charlie himself is burnt out. The damage seems to be deep, but we don't know how lasting. We do know that he was powerful before, and that he has friends who care enough about him to tell him the truth and encourage his return to emotional health.

Also, his last tirade-- again against his ex-wife's "crazy love"-- gives us hope that he has learned his lesson and stays away from "crazy love" in the future. And that there is no "Vol III," but a whole new story.

"Sane love" might not sell books, movies, or songs... but at least Charlie will be able to afford those entertainments again once he has finished paying off his divorce attorney. If he even wants to listen to such songs again (which he probably shouldn't).


Next Song: "That Was Your Mother"

Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes

Conspicuous consumption is not something one would expect to hear lauded by a graduate of the 1960s Greenwich Village folk-song scene. Yet, here we have a celebration of decadence-- a person  possessed of so much wealth and ostentation that she can even walk, not merely in Cinderella's comparatively shabby crystalline footwear, but with "diamonds" embedded in "the soles of her shoes."

(Even if you could afford this, I would recommend against it, or you would need all of your diamonds to pay your podiatry bills.)

This song sort of takes off on the idea of "You don't feel you could love me/ But I feel you could" discussed in "Gumboots." Here, the divide is economic. We have seen how wealthy this woman is, while her beau is "empty as a pocket." That last word evokes Duncan, who was "destituted as a kid could be... without a penny in [his] pocket." (Also, we hear echoes of The Boxer and other downtrodden characters from Simon's earlier work.)

At this point, the song's pronouns shift, indicating that now the "poor boy" will narrate. And how does he feel about her outrageous display of wealth? He's philosophical about it: "Well, that’s one way to lose these walking blues." If you have to walk, you might as well do it in style, right?

At least, that's what he says openly. As they are walking, they lose physical contact until she slips her hand into his empty pocket (with his "car keys"? Then why are they walking? Maybe they have parked and are now walking to the door.) She senses that he is upset, and she is too.

"She said, 'You’ve taken me for granted/ Because I please you/ Wearing these diamonds.'" Well, that makes no sense-- if she pleases him, then by definition he is pleased by her and does not take her for granted! Maybe he's taken her for granted because she has diamonds and can pay for things, but it's not clear that he is pleased that she wears her diamonds this way.

"And I could say, Oo oo oo/ As if everybody knows/What I’m talking about/ Talking about diamonds on the soles of her shoes." It seems to me that he feels stuck. It's not his money and he has no right to tell her what to do with hers. But it's got to be a constant thorn in his side to see her waste money like this when he's so broke and would use that money so much more prudently if he had it. If anything is being taken for granted here, it's her money! Anyway, he can't say anything openly, but even his interjections give him away-- everybody knows that his sighs and groans are about this issue. Well, except her, it seems.

"She makes the sign of a teaspoon/ He makes the sign of a wave." The sign language for "spoon" is two fingers on the right hand spooning up imaginary food from an imaginary bowl in the left hand. And a "wave" is shown by undulating both hands palms down on a mimed roller coaster, much like a hula dancer might. So those are not the "signs" meant here.

I think that the average person, untrained in sign language, would indicate a spoon with an upturned, cupped hand (as if asking for something)... while wave would be a cupped hand, too, but palm down (as if telling someone to calm down). The two hands would compliment each other, like a yin-yang symbol. But if she is asking for something with an upturned palm, he's replying, with a downward-facing palm-- "Please ask for something I can actually provide-- keep your expectations low and realistic."

In any event, they prepare for an evening out (and the narrator takes back over). The man tries to gussy himself up "to compensate for his ordinary shoes." She seems already ready to go.

She is still attracted to him despite her earlier comment, calling him "Honey," and asking him, in fact, for something realistic: "Take me dancing." This is a lovely gesture on her part-- even though she knows he's poor, she is giving him the honor of being the one doing the "taking." She does not say, "I can get us into this posh club," or even "Let's go dancing," but "(You) take me."

Somehow, instead of a dance club, "they ended up by sleeping in a doorway." Not even the doorway to either of their buildings, but merely "a" doorway. What happened? Did they get drunk and pass out?

First, we learn what town they are in: New York City. They "ended up... by the bodegas and the lights on Upper Broadway." "Bodega" is the Spanish word for a small grocery or convenience store. And "Upper Broadway" is not the famous downtown theater district, but farther north, at which point the street gives way to residential areas populated by people of varying backgrounds. So these are not the dazzling "lights" of marquees but the gaudy neon of bars, shops, and small hotels.

And then a pronoun changes the story altogether: "...wearing diamonds on the soles of their shoes." So that's what they did instead of going dancing. They went and made his "ordinary" shoes much less so. It must feel wonderful to have someone waste money on you, instead of making you watch them spend it only on themselves.

Now, the poor boy closes out the song, letting everyone know what he feels about this new development: "People say I’m crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes/ Well, that’s one way to lose these walking blues." Now he is playing it off like it's no big deal-- he's just trying to make walking more enjoyable. OK, sure.

I remember a story that came out of the Hurricane Katrina mess-- one family took the restitution money they received for losing their home to the floods and went grocery shopping... in a limousine. At first, this upset me-- how dare they waste money like that, in their situation! Then I remembered that limos are not necessarily that much more expensive than cabs. And that if you have a large family and a lot of groceries, you might need more than a sedan-size car.

And if you finally have enough money for once and had never been in a limo before, this might be a fun, memorable way to cheer everyone up for an afternoon. After all, going to the grocery store is hardly fun. But if you do it in a limousine... well, that could be one way to lose those shopping blues.

Musical Note:
While they get much more to sing later on "Homeless," this song is the first time most people got to hear the powerful-yet-tender vocals of Ladysmith Black Mambazo. More about that amazing ensemble when we reach that song.

The track itself was remixed as a dubstep number, called "Diamonds Dub," by Todd Terje.

Next Song: You Can Call Me Al

Gumboots

This track, sent to Simon as an instrumental by a friend, was what sparked his whole Graceland odyssey.

First, the title. The "gum" in question is not chewing gum, but rubber. In some parts of the world, "rubber bands" are called "gum bands." "Gumboots," then, are rubber-soled boots, as opposed to leather-soled ones. The title came with the instrumental, and so bears little if any relationship to the song itself; if anything, it might reflect the bouncy rhythm of the tune.

The chorus of the song is the meaning: "You don’t feel you could love me/ But I feel you could." Each verse discusses a potential relationship that one party feels is possible and the other one... not so much (That second person could be right, though!).

The third verse's couple is easiest to parse. The man is "walking down the street" when he is greeted by someone who seems, shall we say, surprised by the obvious; by her observation, we see that she does not appear to be the brightest bulb in the lamp, even if she is gregarious and charming. But his response reveals a rich vocabulary, with words like "astute" and "institute." He is possibly multilingual, as he addresses her as "senorita." A relationship between two such mismatched intellects is a non-starter, right?

Not necessarily. While we might assume that the swifter one might dismiss the slower one, it is he whom we find reassuring her: "You don't feel you could love me, but..."

In the first verse, we have two friends talking in a cab. At first, it seems like the friend with the breakdown is not necessarily in the car, but then the word "you" makes it clear that he (or she) is, and is also the one he is "having this discussion" with.

As he is "rearranging" his position on his friend's nervous breakdown, which implies he had made a decision about it, but is now reassessing that "position." His question reflects this ambivalence. "Breakdowns come and... go" implies "OK, so it's over now, whatever," while "what are you going to do about it?" means "How are you going to make sure this doesn't happen again-- therapy, medication, yoga, what?" and indicates ongoing concern. He is so unsure about what to make of his friend's panic attack that he is at once dismissive and almost pushy-- "...That's what I'd like to know!" As if the other person's breakdown unresolved response was now his problem!

Usually, if someone has a nervous breakdown, people are hesitant to enter into (or ramp up) relationships with them right after. And yet the very next line is: "You don't feel you could love me, but I feel you could." This might be a nervous response on the part of the speaker, perhaps rushing in to fill the void in his friend's life. In this case, reassurance is taken a step too far, and "You know I'm here for you" might have been a less provocative, more appropriate response to the breakdown.

The second verse is the most abstract. How does one "fall into a phone call"? Perhaps the person who answered was not the person for whom the call was intended, but a conversation is struck up anyway; this often happens to me when my wife's friends call-- I end up chatting for a moment before passing the phone on. In any case, "falling" indicates surprise, as in "falling in love" or "falling for a trick."

"Believing I had supernatural powers/ I slammed into a brick wall." Everyone has overestimated his or her abilities at some point; a quick glance at the videos on failblog.org reveals this malady is especially common in teenage males. Somehow, in the course of this unexpected phone call, the speaker tried to solve a problem and be a hero, but ran into an unexpectedly immovable obstacle (much like the earlier scene in which he tries to solve a friend's breakdown with a come-on.) Say my wife's friend called to vent about a personal matter and I, instead of commiserating briefly and passing her on, dared to offer my own opinion. I would definitely hit a brick wall (or have one dropped on me).

OK, first the phone call itself was thrust upon the speaker, then his attempts to help were rebuffed, and now he's just upset: "I said, Hey, is this my problem? Is this my fault?" Well, it wasn't... but now he has inserted himself into the situation and, characteristically, is blaming everyone else for not appreciating his compassionate genius-- "If that’s the way it’s gonna be/ I’m going to call the whole thing to a halt!” Imagine instead of just apologizing, "Sorry, I was out of line," I said to my wife's friend, "Well, that's the last time I try to help you!"-- as if anyone has asked for my help to begin with.

Just as quickly, our speaker sees the error of his hubris and protest that, in fact, he is really a decent guy: "You don’t feel you could love me/ But I feel you could." This time, the sentence comes across as pure arrogance: "Come on, I was only trying to help!"

And so we come back to the third verse. The speaker-- having failed to be helpful with a friend's psychological trauma and then having failed by helping when his help was not requested-- now meets a simple-minded, friendly woman. Maybe they will end up together, maybe not. But at least this time, when he acts out of hand, she might be too slow to catch it, and he might be able to correct himself before she notices he should. And maybe he will learn that, despite his intellectual superiority to her, she is able to take care of herself now just as she was before she met him.

Maybe.

Next Song: "Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes."

I Know What I Know

This song records the kind of vapid conversation, disguised as witty repartee, that occurs at cocktail parties.

It starts with a man realizing he is being, as they say, "checked out" by another party-goer. He can tell by her assessment that she is only approaching him because he is one of the least unappealing people in a roomful of people with limited appeal altogether. He uses the shrugging words "guess," "thought," "all right," "limited" and "off-night."

This is hardly the response, say, the Caribbean Queen has to the speaker of the Billy Ocean song of that name at another get-together: "She said I was the tiger she wanted to tame."

The woman in question here, seeing no tigers worth taming, opts for our speaker and leads with a version of, "Haven't I met you someplace before?" In her case, it's the more sophisticated version: "Don’t I know you from the cinematographer’s party?" (A "cinematographer" being someone expert in the technical aspects of film-making, possibly also with an eye toward their artistic possibilities).

Now, our speaker may or may not know a cinematographer. He may or may not have been to this party, and he may or may not have met this woman there. Even if he did, he may or may not remember her. But he can't tell her this. And anyway, it doesn't matter-- she knows him now.

If I say "no," he thinks, the conversation is over. But I can't give a definite "yes," either. So he obfuscates. He says something like, "Sure, why not just say so, if it means we can talk?" But in this case he opts for the more poetic, more off-handed, "Who am I to blow against the wind?"

The woman knows this is an obfuscation, so she sets him up by insulting him somewhat, and vaguely: "There’s something about you/ That really reminds me of money." Now, there is no way this a good thing, but he is unsure in which way she means it as a bad thing! Does she mean he is materialistic? Opportunistic? Elitist? He knows he is being insulted, and so thinks: "She is the kind of girl who could say things/ That weren't that funny." But he doesn't know how he is being insulted.

Trapped, he has no choice but to ask for clarification: "What does that mean..?" To which she shoots his own line back at him: "Who am I to blow against the wind?" now meaning both, "Hey, that's the way it is, I can't control how I feel about you," but also, "How does your own medicine taste, mister?"

He is stung, but impressed at her wit. Also, she seems very lithe: "She moved so easily/ All I could think of was sunlight." (And isn't that a beautiful line!) But he can't say anything that overtly sensual at this point. So instead he compliments her intelligence, asking “Aren't you the woman/ Who was recently given a Fulbright?”

A Fulbright scholarship is an extremely prestigious honor. It means that you are so excellent in your field, so innovative, that you are being sent by a Presidential panel to study and teach at a key institution or research station somewhere in the world. It is like being a Rhodes scholar.

She brushes off the question, responding that she is sure she knows him from that other party. He still refuses to answer her directly with either, "Yes, in fact, and I'm glad to have run into you again," or "Actually, no, but I'm glad I met you now." He replies again with, "Who am I to blow against the wind?"

The chorus is much more straightforward than all of this bandying about, but it gives a clue to this hesitancy and around-the-bush verbal dance the speaker is doing. He is certain of something-- that all things end.

Decades after the closing verse of "Leaves That Are Green" was written, Simon is still saying "Hello, hello.../ Goodbye, goodbye.../ That's all there is." Only here, he says it more succinctly: "We come and we go."

Life ends. Relationships end. There will be a "goodbye," a "go"-ing, no matter what. So the "hello" had better be worth it. If I am going to spend some of my limited time on Earth with you, he implies, I want it to be something that has a long and good time until the "goodbye."

On the one hand, she is attractive, or at least graceful. And she's not entirely unintelligent, as she did sting him back with his own barbed comment.

But there is something unattractive about being someone's "you'll do." ("Weird" Al Yankovic has a very funny song about this called "Good Enough for Now.") Read the opening lines again-- she doesn't truly want him, and will leave as soon as someone better shows up. Wouldn't it be better if he treated her fairly coldly and she just left him now, before the heartbreak and break-up?

The comment about her receiving a Fulbright wasn't a compliment-- it was a test. Of course she didn't receive a Fulbright; she doesn't even know what one is. When she doesn't answer directly, he thinks, "...Aaaand that's what I thought." Now he doesn't have to feel bad about not being good enough for her looks-wise... because she's not good enough for him brains-wise.

At all times, "in the back of [his] head," he remembers that things end. It's a good thing to keep in mind, because it stops him from beginning things that have the seed of their end before they even start.

And so he should only start up with people who are worth his time. Maybe he'll find one at the next cocktail party.


Next song: Gumboots

Hearts and Bones

Before we get into the song, it is important to note some dates. The song was copyrighted 1982, and the album on which it appeared was released in 1983. Paul Simon married his second wife, actor/author Carrie Fisher, in 1983, and they divorced in 1984, one month shy of their first anniversary. (True, they had dated since 1977, but still.)

So, while it is tempting to say that the song is about this couple and the dissolution of their marriage, Simon wrote it before they were married and released it before they were divorced. So it's about some other couple, or an imaginary one. Either that, or Simon predicted the ending of the marriage before he even proposed.

The opening line certainly lends itself to the speculation that the subjects are Simon and Fisher. Simon is Jewish; Fisher is Jewish on her father's side, which some count as only being "half Jewish," since Judaism is traditionally a matrilineal (passed down through the mother's side) religion.

The couple, whomever they are, are "free to wander wherever they choose" (which may be a riff on the idea of the "wandering Jew," and perhaps even the idea of the Jews being "the chosen people.") But then, during a trip to New Mexico, they choose differently from one another. (The Latinate guitars and drums of the region are heard throughout the song.)

It is significant that they are in the Sangre de Christo mountains. As the song itself explains, the range is named for the blood of Jesus, the ultimate martyr. Someone here feels that they are sacrificing themselves.

The journey is supposed to be ending; it's on its "last leg." The "arc" of their relationship is compared to a "rainbow," which is both beautiful and illusory. They are "high" in the mountains, where the air is thin and hallucinations are possible. Also, while there must have been rain for there to be rainbows, the area is a "desert" and bereft of the practical needs to sustain life. "Mountain passes," or pre-cut trails, are also becoming "stone," and more difficult to navigate. As pretty as things appear superficially, they are in fact bad and getting worse.

Then the man begins to wonder when the trouble started. He recalls a wedding that was somewhat scandalous-- "The act was outrageous"-- and the bride may have gone through with the wedding even though she was ill. She was "contagious," and she "burned" with a fever.

Either that, or her fervor caused his girlfriend, with whom he is travelling now, to catch the wedding bug: "These events may have had some effect/On the man with the girl by his side." Wait, what was the effect on him? Did her passion stir his, in turn? "His hands rolling down her hair/Love like lightning, shaking till it moans," is a very evocative phrasing (and it's better than what Simon came up with in "How the Heart Approaches": "I roll in your arms/And your voice is the heat of the night/I'm on fire.")

And then a question from her jerks our man back to now. They are already in New Mexico, so she asks him; "Why don’t we drive through the night? We’ll wake up down in Mexico.” After all, they are "free to wander," and it's just across the border.

The next bit of the conversation is muddled, at least for me. This is how I have always heard it go:

She: "Why don't we... wake up down in Mexico?"
He: "I don't know nothin' about no Mexico. And tell me why won’t you love me for who I am, where I am?”
She: “'Cause that’s not the way the world is, baby. This is how I love you, baby."

To me, this makes sense. She says, let's go. He says, I don't want to, "AND" [emphasis mine, as it seems to indicate a further thought by the same speaker] why do we need to keep moving, anyway-- love me here! She says, that's just the way I am. Take it or leave it, sorry.

Now, according to both Simon's website and the liner notes on the original LP, it goes like this:

She: "Why don’t we drive through the night? We’ll wake up down in Mexico.”
He: Oh, I don’t know nothin’ about, nothin’ no Mexico.
She: “And tell me, why won’t you love me for who I am where I am?” [Why is she asking this? She's the one that wants to love him somewhere else! Namely, Mexico! He does want to love her where they are, and not go to Mexico.]
He said: “Cause that’s not the way the world is, baby. This is how I love you, baby."

(The words "He said" are on both the site and the notes; the quotes are as depicted at the site.)

So you see my problem with this. The difference in the reading is critical. It goes to the whole point of who was not accepting, who is inflexible. In my reading, she wants to go and he wants to stop; he asks her why they keep moving and she says "just 'cause."

In the official reading, she both suggests they go and then demands to know why they should go. Which I hold makes no sense. And if she is making no sense, why does he accept the blame for being inflexible about going when she is the one who wanted to go?! Instead of saying, "But you were the one who wanted to go!"

Anyway, they break up. They "returned to their natural coasts." If this were about Simon and Fisher (which it does not seem to be), he would go back to New York and she would head back to LA. In any case, they "resume old acquaintances" and date other people. Again, if this were about the couple people think it is, the line "speculate who had been damaged the most" would refer to her novels and his songs, each of which are at least semi-autobiographical and mention the other.

The line "easy time will determine if these consolations"-- their friends, dating, and artistic pursuits-- "will be their reward" reminds me of line in a Shawn Colvin song, about what her friends say after each breakup: "At least you got a song out of it."

And is it over? No. The "arc" that began in rainbows and peaked in sensuous lovemaking is now a broken bridge "waiting to be restored."

And now, on the last leg of this song's journey, we learn what the title and refrain are about: "You take two bodies and you twirl them into one/Their hearts and their bones/And they won’t come undone." The idea of "hearts" being an image of love is popular enough... but Simon adds "bones."

"Bone of my bone," Adam calls Eve, and indeed she is made of his bone. "I feel it in my bones," is a deeper, more intuitive sense than "I know it in my heart." Under all of the "flesh and blood," the very core of your physical being is bone. (How bad is George Thorogood? "Bad to the bone.")

It's not just "hearts" and emotions here. It's physicality and bones that are intermingled, and inextricably so.

This is one of Simon's prettiest and saddest songs. It is about how each love and loss shapes a person, potentially forever.

"Didn't it work out all right in the end?" Ozymandias asks Dr. Manhattan in the graphic novel The Watchmen. "End?" the supernatural superhero replies. "Nothing ever ends."


IMPACT:
The song did not chart, but the album did make the top 100 in the US and throughout Europe, and even Japan and Australia. It reached #3 in Norway, the Top 20 in Sweden, The Netherlands, and France, and the Top 40 in Switzerland, Japan, the UK, and the US.

Next Song: When Numbers Get Serious

Hearts and Bones

Before we get into the song, it is important to note some dates. The song was copyrighted 1982, and the album on which it appeared was released in 1983. Paul Simon married his second wife, actor/author Carrie Fisher, in 1983, and they divorced in 1984, one month shy of their first anniversary. (True, they had dated since 1977, but still.)

So, while it is tempting to say that the song is about this couple and the dissolution of their marriage, Simon wrote it before they were married and released it before they were divorced. So it's about some other couple, or an imaginary one. Either that, or Simon predicted the ending of the marriage before he even proposed.

The opening line certainly lends itself to the speculation that the subjects are Simon and Fisher. Simon is Jewish; Fisher is Jewish on her father's side, which some count as only being "half Jewish," since Judaism is traditionally a matrilineal (passed down through the mother's side) religion.

The couple, whomever they are, are "free to wander wherever they choose" (which may be a riff on the idea of the "wandering Jew," and perhaps even the idea of the Jews being "the chosen people.") But then, during a trip to New Mexico, they choose differently from one another. (The Latinate guitars and drums of the region are heard throughout the song.)

It is significant that they are in the Sangre de Christo mountains. As the song itself explains, the range is named for the blood of Jesus, the ultimate martyr. Someone here feels that they are sacrificing themselves.

The journey is supposed to be ending; it's on its "last leg." The "arc" of their relationship is compared to a "rainbow," which is both beautiful and illusory. They are "high" in the mountains, where the air is thin and hallucinations are possible. Also, while there must have been rain for there to be rainbows, the area is a "desert" and bereft of the practical needs to sustain life. "Mountain passes," or pre-cut trails, are also becoming "stone," and more difficult to navigate. As pretty as things appear superficially, they are in fact bad and getting worse.

Then the man begins to wonder when the trouble started. He recalls a wedding that was somewhat scandalous-- "The act was outrageous"-- and the bride may have gone through with the wedding even though she was ill. She was "contagious," and she "burned" with a fever.

Either that, or her fervor caused his girlfriend, with whom he is travelling now, to catch the wedding bug: "These events may have had some effect/ On the man with the girl by his side." Wait, what was the effect on him? Did her passion stir his, in turn? "His hands rolling down her hair/ Love like lightning, shaking till it moans," is a very evocative phrasing (and it's better than what Simon came up with in "How the Heart Approaches": "I roll in your arms/ And your voice is the heat of the night/ I'm on fire.")

And then a question from her jerks our man back to now. They are already in New Mexico, so she asks him; "Why don’t we drive through the night? We’ll wake up down in Mexico.” After all, they are "free to wander," and Mexico is just across the border.

The next bit of the conversation is muddled, at least for me. This is how I have always heard it go:

She: "Why don't we... wake up down in Mexico?"
He: "I don't know nothin' about no Mexico. And tell me why won’t you love me for who I am, where I am?”
She: “'Cause that’s not the way the world is, baby. This is how I love you, baby."

To me, this makes sense. She says, let's go. He says, I don't want to, "AND" [emphasis mine, as it seems to indicate a further thought by the same speaker] why do we need to keep moving, anyway-- love me here! She says, that's just the way I am. Take it or leave it, sorry.

Now, according to both Simon's website and the liner notes on the original LP, it goes like this:

She: "Why don’t we drive through the night? We’ll wake up down in Mexico.”
He: Oh, I don’t know nothin’ about, nothin’ no Mexico.
She: “And tell me, why won’t you love me for who I am where I am?” [Why is she asking this? She's the one that wants to love him somewhere else! Namely, Mexico! He does want to love her where they are... and not go to Mexico.]
He said: “Cause that’s not the way the world is, baby. This is how I love you, baby."

(The words "He said" are on both the site and the notes; the quotes are as depicted at the site.)

So you see my problem with this. The difference in the reading is critical. It goes to the whole point of who was not accepting, who is inflexible. In my reading, she wants to go and he wants to stop; he asks her why they keep moving and she says "just 'cause."

In the official reading, she both suggests they go and then demands to know why they should go. Which I hold makes no sense. And if she is making no sense (as people sometimes do), why does he accept the blame for being inflexible about going when she is the one who wanted to go?! Instead of saying, "But you were the one who wanted to go!"

Anyway, they break up. They "returned to their natural coasts." If this were about Simon and Fisher (which it does not seem to be), he would go back to New York and she would head back to LA. In any case, they "resume old acquaintances" and date other people. Again, if this were about the couple people think it is, the line "speculate who had been damaged the most" would refer to her novels and his songs, each of which are at least semi-autobiographical and mention the other.

The line "easy time will determine if these consolations"-- their friends, dating, and artistic pursuits-- "will be their reward" reminds me of line in a Shawn Colvin song, about what her friends say after each breakup: "At least you got a song out of it."

And is it over? No. The "arc" that began in rainbows and peaked in sensuous lovemaking is now a broken bridge "waiting to be restored."

And now, on the last leg of this song's journey, we learn what the title and refrain are about: "You take two bodies and you twirl them into one/ Their hearts and their bones/ And they won’t come undone." The idea of "hearts" being an image of love is popular enough... but Simon adds "bones."

"Bone of my bone," Adam calls Eve, and indeed she is made of his bone. "I feel it in my bones," is a deeper, more intuitive sense than "I know it in my heart." Under all of the "flesh and blood," the very core of your physical being is bone. (How bad is George Thorogood? "Bad to the bone.")

It's not just "hearts" and emotions here. It's physicality and bones that are intermingled, and inextricably so.

This is one of Simon's prettiest and saddest songs. It is about how each love and loss shapes a person, potentially forever.

"Didn't it work out all right in the end?" Ozymandias asks Dr. Manhattan in the graphic novel The Watchmen. "End?" he supernatural superhero replies, "Nothing ever ends."


IMPACT:
The song did not chart, but the album did make the top 100 in the US and throughout Europe, and even Japan and Australia. It reached #3 in Norway, the Top 20 in Sweden, The Netherlands, and France, and the Top 40 in Switzerland, Japan, the UK, and the US.

Next Song: When Numbers Get Serious

Allergies

There have been many songs that relate the emotional condition of love to a physical condition or even illness. But this may be the first to liken love to an allergic reaction.

Actually, love itself is not the allergen-- the woman in question is: "...my heart is allergic/ To the women I love." This is not just a case of society or family keeping lovers apart. It's our speaker's own body physically rejecting what his heart emotionally wants. (It has happened that someone has an allergic reaction to another person; often its that person's perfume or pet that's the culprit. But rarely, even one's body chemistry can trigger an allergic response in another.)

What about his brain? It's on the side of his heart: "My head intercedes with my bodily needs/ And my body won’t give it a break." And that makes it worse, because if he could logically determine that this is a problem, he might be able to address it. Instead, his mind is part of the problem.

Also, it's not just one woman. It's all the "women" he loves. So this isn't about one woman being wrong for him. It's all women, so the problem must lie with him.

On a biographical note, this is Simon's "breakup album" upon the end of his brief marriage to Carrie Fisher. The fact that it is his second divorce might lead to the pluralization of the word to "women."

Now, an allergic reaction is an auto-immune response and is not the same thing as a parasite or infection. Nevertheless, it at least feels to him like "Something’s living on my skin."

He tries medical interventions: "Doctor, please/ Open up, it’s me again." He even seeks the care of out-of-town specialists: "I go to a famous physician/ I sleep in the local hotel." (Maybe he needs a psychologist instead?)

But nothing helps: "the people like me/ We get better/ But we never get well." As it happens, this simple thought is one the stronger lines in a relatively weak song.

Even as a novelty song, it is somewhat thin-- Simon has been much funnier ("Pleasure Machine" springs to mind). This next one-liner falls particularly flat: "Where do allergies go/ When it’s after a show/ And they want to get something to eat?" (The drum even responds with a "ba-dum-bum" sting, as if it were a joke.)

The concept that is less explored, brought up by the pun "Maladies/Melodies," might have been worth exploring on its own-- the idea that the compulsion to make music is a form of sickness.

And the idea of being physically unable to be with someone you emotionally desire is a worthwhile topic to deal with in a song. But that song is not this song. Here, the topic is raised and discussed, but never really explored.

We meet someone with a medical condition, we learn of his symptoms and treatment, but we don't get to know its mental impact. It would be like a song about a cancer patient that merely recites the chemotherapy schedule. Actually, such a song, which would reflect the patient's feeling of being reduced to a series of dates and dosages, might prove a more effective piece.

Even as a throwaway, this song does not rise to the wise flippancy of "Have a Good Time," the goofy fun of "We Got a Groovey Thing Going," or the wry shrug of "Papa Hobo."

But seriously, folks-- "Allergies to dust and grain" was not a lyric that needed to be sung.

Next song: Hearts and Bones

All Because of You

As the first musical notes indicate, this is the early version of the song that became "Oh, Marion." It even contains the idea of love being an "easy game" for others. In the original incarnation, the line read: "...another lover/ Is an easy game."

Simon begins with an idea recycled from "Run that Body Down": "I went to my doctor." While the doctor might be able to help with a heartburn or even a heart attack, he cannot help with what the speaker has, which is heartbreak: "It’s all because of you/ It’s all because of you wouldn't say 'I do.'"

The doctor is no help, so he tries the drugstore. Or perhaps, the "drugstore," because one does not generally ask a pharmacist "Do the drugs on me," but a pusher. Again, this health-care provider demurs.

"Ain’t nobody loves me/ Nobody needs my love," our lovelorn speaker laments. Not only is he not the recipient of love, no one wants to be the recipient of his. Of course, the only one he knows this for certain about is the woman who would not accept his marriage proposal. Also, it could be that other women are steering clear of someone so clearly "on the rebound."

Then Simon comes up with a line he will use later: "This my only life." This is a cosmopolitan, existential disavowal of reincarnation/resurrection, which rather than comforting him with its enlightenment leads to a sense of mortality and despair. It shows up again as a line in "The Coast" on Rhythm of the Saints as "This is the only life" (and the variant "This is a lonely life.")

Frustrated with Western medicine, our despondent speaker turns to "alternative" or "traditional" cures: "So I went to the gypsy woman." While the word "Gypsy" is today considered offensive (and perhaps always was) and the preferred term is Rroma, the image of the kerchief-topped crone bending over a crystal ball is common in rock music, from "Madame Ruth/ The Gypsy with the gold-capped tooth" in "Love Potion #9" (originally by The Clovers) to Springsteen's line in "Sandy": "Well, the cops finally busted Madame Marie/ For telling fortunes better than they do."

The psychic admits, "I ain’t got no potions and no special kind of weed," but at least has some useful advice: "Go away, take a weekend or two." Staying where he is, brooding on the breakup, is not working, so perhaps a change of scene is in order.

The bridge explains why our Romeo is so beside himself, why his "brain’s all messed up." It's bad enough that his lover would not say "I do" and seems to have either rejected his marriage proposal or, worse, left him at the altar. But she won't break up with him, either: "...you would not say we’re through."

Although one has to wonder why the marriage rejection is not seen, in and of itself, as a break-up.

Perhaps Simon realized this and decided on a thorough rewrite of the song. He saved the medical metaphors in "Oh, Marion," writing about a "heart that beats on the opposite side," and a even reference to "brains," although it now means "intelligence" instead of "emotional state." Rather than being a song about a man who is troubled by a vexing woman-- a common song subject-- it is now about being a vexing man, who at least appreciates that he might be difficult to tolerate. A much more uncommon subject, indeed.

Next song: Stranded in a Limosine

Oh, Marion

In the previous song, it is unclear who the "bone-weary traveler" is. Is it the speaker, or someone the speaker sees from his motel window and identifies with?

Here, the pronoun shifts again. In the verses, the speaker refers to a "he," some confounding person. In the verses, the song has a man speaking in first person ("I think") to his lover, Marion.

We're going to have to assume that the "he" of the verses and the "I" of the chorus are the same person, otherwise what holds the two together? The "I" becomes "he"... when other people are discussing him.

The first verse opens with a line one might hear from a teacher about a distracted student: "The boy’s got brains/ He just refuse to use ’em and that’s all." The boy’s response is a version of "ignorance is bliss": “The more I get to thinking, the less I tend to laugh.” Simon revisits this idea in the twin songs "Think to Much" on his next album.

(In a moment of lyrical weakness or laziness, Simon ends the first verse with a new rhyme-- "brains/abstains," then gives up on that couplet idea for the second and third verses.)

In the second verse, his heart beats on his right instead of his left. This is no longer just a frustrating choice that beleaguers a teacher, it is something for a scientific journal: "a strange phenomenon/ The laws of nature denied." His response this time was that it was an adaptation make in reaction to some unnamed threat: "I shifted my heart for its safety’s sake.”

He refuses to use his mind, his heart's desires are dubious, and then he employs his nice singing "voice" to be duplicitous: "his words don’t connect to his eyes."

His response is hard to parse: "when I sing/ I can hear the truth auditioning.” An "audition" is an attempt to be heard, a prelude to being allowed to act or sing before an audience. So if the truth is "auditioning," at least he is trying to convey the meaning and emotion of the song.

So here is our man, according to those who know him-- purposefully unthinking, guarded in love, and prone to hiding his feelings.

Are we all that surprised that his relationship with Marion is "in trouble"? The true surprise is that he is in a relationship altogether.

He would rather "laugh" than "think." He hides his heart. He sings (to quote "Kathy's Song) songs he "can't believe." His entire life is lived as if he wants all of his experiences to be happening to someone else. In short, he is in massive, willful denial.

So of course he doesn't "believe" Marion at first when she says that their relationship is "in trouble." He doesn't want to think about it, he never allowed himself to get that close to her... and, like all insincere people, he cannot appreciate sincerity when he hears it.

What's his assessment? That love is a "game." (Which idea stands in direct contradiction to that of the speaker of "Congratulations," who says "love is not a game.") It is predictable that a shallow person such as this would be dismissive of love.

He also concludes that the game is "easy" for "other people." Once again, he externalizes his problems. Love is just a game he is not good at, like chess.

Suddenly, something is his problem. Something real, and really bad, is happening, and it is happening to him and not someone else. Well then, at least it's no one's fault (including his own). And of course there is nothing he could do about it anyway.

"Oh, Marion," we have to say, "How did you get mixed up with this guy in the first place?"


Next Song: Ace in the Hole

50 Ways to Leave Your Lover

One question often asked of songwriters is: "Where do you get your ideas for songs?"

Sometimes, it is something a child says or does. For instance, one of John Lennon's sons showed him a drawing he'd made of "Lucy in the sky with diamonds."

In the case of this song, Simon was explaining to his son what rhymes are, illustrating by rhyming words with names.

The structure of the song is interesting. It is one side of a conversation, reported by the other person. If the song were the dialogue of a play, the woman would be speaking 90% of the words.

The man has asked her, evidently, for advice. Or, perhaps she asked him what was wrong, and responded to his answer. In any case, he seems to be in a bad relationship and wants out... but is unsure of how to effect an exit.

She reframes his question: "The problem is all inside your head." And her advice bears this out-- all of her proposals involve leaving without a farewell: "Slip out the back... hop on the bus... drop off the key." No talking things to a close, no therapy sessions, not even a note. Just leaving.

It sounds like the other person involved-- the one being left-- deserves no better, or perhaps wants it to be over but is also not able to initiate a breakup. In fact, the one being left might be grateful if he'd simply vanish instead of dragging things out by talking about their feelings. Regardless, the advisor implies that the issue of propriety or sensitivity is all his own: "The problem is all inside your head" [emphasis mine].

What is interesting is that the man would seek the advice of a woman in this case. And one he does not seem to be heading toward. In other words, it does not seems to be the case that he is leaving his relationship to start one with his advisor. She is too offhanded and uninterested.

Further. it is unlikely that this is his therapist, bartender, or co-worker, for at the end of the conversation she kisses him. More likely, is a female friend, perhaps a sister or cousin, who would give him a kiss goodnight.

Again, we might assume the advice "You think too much, man-- just leave," to come from a man. It is surprising that a woman would advise his insensitivity toward another woman, which is what makes me think that she is more familiar with the particulars of his case.

Another interesting thing about the adviser is her sudden change in tone. In the verses, she uses words like "logically," "furthermore," "intrude" and "misconstrued" (an amazing rhyme, incidentally). She uses locutions like "it grieves me so." Then, in the chorus, she switches tone and becomes more colloquial and clipped: "Don't need to discuss much." It is almost as if she is mocking his over-intellectualization of the situation. Her basic message: You're complicating things, dude. Just scram.

For all of her protestations of help, when he asks her straight out, "Would you please explain...?" she shuts him down, with "Why don't we just sleep on it?" Once again, he is trying to analyze something that requires no analysis. If he can't understand "Just slip out the back, Jack," then there is nothing more she is willing to say that night.

After all, even the five of the "50 ways" she lists all amount to the same thing: Just. Leave. Now.

The solution is not always difficult or painful. Sometimes, "the answer is easy."

IMPACT:
Like "Still Crazy," the title of this song has entered the popular lexicon. No doubt part if its popularity can be attributed to Gadd's military-style drumming and the catchy chorus.

The backup singers themselves were sort of a supergroup, consisting of Phoebe Snow (famous for the song "Poetry Man), Valerie Simpson of the duo Ashford and Simpson, and R&B/jazz singer Patti Austin.

The song went to #1 in the US, where it stayed for three weeks, and also topped the charts in Canada. It went to #2 in France, and brushed the top 20 in the UK. The song went gold and remained a top seller for nearly half a year.

The song has been covered by acts as different as The Drifters and Miley Cyrus, and an outfit with no self-esteem issues called G. Love and Special Sauce.

Gadd's militaristic drumbeat opener has been widely sampled by rappers-- twice by Eminem, and also by Tupac, Common, Kool Moe Dee, and even Kid & Play. And also by a band called Pop Will Eat Itself, which is as good a definition as any for what sampling is.

Next Song: Night Game

Still Crazy After All These Years

For all of his insistence that he is "crazy," the speaker of the lyric seems less unhinged than simply sad.

The song begins with an incident of his running into his "old lover." While she seems happier than he is for the coincidence, he agrees to join her for a drink and some reminiscence. It seems that the "crazy," here, follows the plural of "we" and "ourselves"-- they are both still crazy.

The next verse is not narrative, but confessional. He admits to to being solitary, unsentimental, and somewhat a stick-in-the-mud. Perhaps not someone you'd invite to a dinner party, but still not "crazy," although now he limits that adjective to himself.

So why, in the bridge, is he awake at 4 a.m.? Especially if he is exhausted ("crapped out," on some TV appearances, has been softened to "tapped out").

He seems trapped between two truths. One is that he wishes for things he does not have; he is "longing [his] life away."

On the other hand, is working to get those things worth the trouble, if "it's all gonna fade," and he's just going to die anyway?

He still can't sleep; perhaps it is the same night he met his old flame, but after he said good night to her at the bar. Perhaps meeting her is, for some reason, keeping him up. He doesn't seem to be missing her; we saw in the first verse that he was over her. Perhaps he wishes that he weren't-- that he cared about something in his life.

(The sax solo here is by Michael Brecker, a phenomenal jazz talent who passed away in 2007. His other work, especially with the haunting Electronic Wind Instrument, is definitely worth finding on YouTube.)

In any case, he is "watch[ing] the cars" by his window. He muses that if he ever did anything violent-- which is hardly likely, as that would require either physical motivation or emotional passion, and he seems to affect neither-- he would not be held responsible for his actions, but found not guilty due to his insanity.

In reality, as upset as he is, all he can do is watch traffic. He hardly seems like the type about which the neighbors say to news crews: "Oh, he was so quiet and he kept to himself."

Rather, he seems lethargic, moody, and just generally miserable. Not even clinically depressed, as that level of any emotion would be too extreme and taxing.

It is interesting to contrast this song with "I Am a Rock," also about a miserable loner, but one who is more adamant about insisting (unconvincingly) that he is not upset, but also that he is never going to allow that possibility because he will avoid relationships altogether, so there.

Our man here is upset, admits it, but just shrugs, "Oh well, so what, who cares."

Maybe in a world in which everyone ambitiously pursues happiness, allowing oneself to be noncommittal, solitary, and pessimistic is "crazy" by default.

People seem to react to this song as if they approve of the sentiment that one can still be as spontaneous and wild in middle age as in one's teen and college years. Upon reading the lyrics, that reaction proves unwarranted-- that sentiment is not really to be found.

For instance, many, upon re-meeting an enthusiastic old lover, would try to capitalize on the the opportunity of that enthusiasm, either for brief physical or longer emotional re-connection. Not our man, who has been down that road before and sees no reason to want to revisit its destination.

Neither is the song a longing look backward, as are Springsteen's "Glory Days" or Mellencamp's "Small Town." Our speaker seems to feel that while things aren't great now, they never were, either (see "My Little Town")-- and there is no real reason to expect they ever will be.

So he will continue to "long" and leave it at that, content with his overcast sadness and unwilling to risk his comfortable malaise for true happiness-- which would also mean the possibility of true misery. Maybe what's "crazy" is that he accepts that in his character, too, and doesn't care to change that-- and even takes some pride in his resistance to change.


IMPACT: This was a major hit for Simon. Simon won a Grammy for his vocals on the track, and the whole shebang won Album of the Year.

The album went to #1 in the States, #6 in the UK, and even cracked the Top Ten in Norway and Sweden. In a famous bit on a Saturday Night Live Thanksgiving show, Simon performed the song wearing a turkey costume.

The song and its title have become an idiom, part of common parlance; I saw an ad for a furniture store once that said it was "Still Sale Crazy After All These Years." That the song still elicited such recognition decades after its release is at least as much a compliment as a Grammy.

The song was sampled on a track called "Ninna Nanna" by an Italian band called Colle Der Fomento, and was covered by Karen Carpenter and Willie Nelson, among others.

Next Song: I Do It For Your Love