Beautiful

While there may be some question as to whom the speaker is on various songs on this album, I am fairly certain Simon has not adopted-- as the speaker here has-- three babies from overseas.

The song uses the activities of a growing family to mark the time. It begins with the image of a melting "snowman," so we can assume the time is either during the January thaw or in, say, March, assuming the speaker lives in the northern U.S.

The family depicted, two adults and one baby, must have built the snowman together. Now, this image of outdoor playfulness is falling victim to having "a little bit too much fun," and its snow head has evaporated. This symbol might serve as a reminder to the parents of the, well, head-erasing "fun" they used to have before the demands of childcare. Now, they "don't have time to waste."

Still, they must feel a fondness for parenthood, because the next thing you know, they (quite alliteratively!) "brought a brand-new baby back from Bangladesh." They name her "Emily" (not, say "Brenda" or "Bessie") and-- if they say so themselves-- agree she is "beautiful."

Yes, the snowman is headless, but he somehow retains a corpulent "belly" despite the lack of a mouth, which the speaker finds amusing. The adults are still doing laundry, stepping over their now "two [children] on the kitchen floor." This seems to imply that both babies are less than a year old, and are not yet walking.

But still, neither is "brand-new" anymore! So, they add one who is, adopting this time from China. This baby, another girl, "sailed across the China Sea," which seems like an unnecessarily long ocean voyage for a newborn. It is possible that the word "sailed" is used metaphorically, and she was flown. Be that as it may, it she traveled across the Pacific, that would seem to imply that our family lives in the western half of the US.

And now it is "summertime." (Simon throws in a Beatles reference, saying that you don't need a "ticket to ride" the children's go-kart.) No laundry this time-- just a "water-slide," "danicin' in the grass" and a trip to "the candy stand." And we have a "kid" in the grass, not a "baby."

While the earlier reference to danger only affected the snowman, now we have a more strident (repeated) warning: "You better keep an eye of them children... in the pool." Sadly, children have been known to drown even in the shallowest of pools, so this is sage advice: Try not to have "too much fun," kids.

It also opens up the realization that, as their mobility increases, the dangers children face increase and change as well.

Now, we see the couple adopt again, this time from the Balkan region of Kosovo. Only... this was not a new adoption. This was "seven years ago"! The implication seems to be that this was their first child, the one who was in the "nursery" in the first verse.

Then, this, about him: "He cried all night, could not sleep." Children are subject to danger even before they are old enough to build snowmen or go down water-slides. They are subject to war, poverty, disease, and any number of other threats. Why could this baby not sleep? Some trauma, either violence or being orphaned? Illness or colic?

Yet, as difficult as those sleepless nights were, the couple went on to adopt (at least! the song is only so long!) two more children, each from a dangerous part of the world. They brought them back to raise them in relative safety, calm and comfort.

Why? They cannot seem to be able to answer that themselves. Adoption is an expensive process, in terms of money, but also hassle and potential anguish. Perhaps they were infertile; perhaps they felt it was wrong to have their own children when so many already needed good homes.

Perhaps reasons are not at play, but emotions. Even though their Kosovar baby was sleepless (and made them so), they found his eyes "bright, dark, and deep." The found him-- and their other babies-- to be, in a word, "beautiful."

Yes, they will not bear children. Yes, adoption is a grueling struggle. As is baby-raising itself. When it is not tiresome, it's potentially terrifying ("Keep your eye on them children by the pool.").

And yet the answer to danger and drama is not to shut down or shut off. Yes, the snowman was doomed the minute he was patted together and adorned with button eyes-- but he did have some fun while he was around.

And yes, raising children is difficult, even dangerous. But the answer to fear is beauty. Even if life is fragile, it is still worth it. Even if the pool is hazardous, you still jump in-- you just make sure there is a lifeguard.

Is there war? Poverty? Death? Well, the answer to death is life, and more life. The answer to families being rent apart is families being sewn together. The answer to poverty and oppression and war is babies and beauty.

The answer to a melted snowman is to get some more snowman-builders, so you can build a bigger one the next time it snows, and he'll last longer. Or maybe you could build a whole snow-family, so even when they melt, they can all melt together and none has to face losing face (and head!) alone.

Oh, and my two-and-a-half year old already helps with the laundry. So there's that, too.


Next Song: I Don't Believe

Thelma

This is a fairly obscure song. It is available on the 3-disc box set Paul Simon 1964-1993, and on the reissue of Rhythm of the Saints; it is named on the same Simon webpage as being a track on the album. But its lyrics are not listed on Simon's site, even if it is in the Lyrics book. This lack needs to be addressed, as an incorrect version of Thelma's lyrics are the most prevalent ones online (The third word of the song, people, is "baby," not "feeling." Really?)

It seems to be a love song of a particular sort; a man saying "I want to have a baby with you" to the woman he loves, namely, Thelma. The song begins with the assertion that, "If a baby is born and no one complains/ Well, that's good luck running through young veins." Further, "if life is a blessing"-- life being both life in general and, perhaps, this newborn life-- "Well it's a short walk in a sweet breeze."

Further, the chorus, as in many love songs, is full of promises: "I will need you, feed you... plead with you" but also, in this case, "seed you." (If you don't understand the reference, please ask your parents how babies are made.)

Why? "All for the taste of your sweet love, Thelma." He is offering to impregnate her in exchange for her love. Now that's commitment.

In the next verse, he "searches" the "open memory book" of his "heart" and, well, "The more I searched, the more I shook for Thelma." So he is pretty sure that, of all the women in his heart's memory, she is the one. 

Then comes a series of lines about an international phone call. The speaker is in a hotel ("Last night I slept on a rented pillow") and it is night ("A silver moon above my head"). He awakens: ("A thirsty dreamless sleep released me"). Here, we have shades of "How the Heart Approaches...," which also had imagery of hotel rooms, moons, and dreams.

He reaches for the phone and calls, while realizing that there are two impediments to their relationship. One is age. He recalls that when he met her, he thought: "She's too young to be caught." The other is his reputation (If the speaker is Simon, by this time, he is twice divorced). And, as his "history" is well-known, he fears that "people"-- even "the management" at her hotel-- won't relay his message or will "poison the well" when they do, with comments like: "Oh, but don't call him back! You can do so much better..." etc. 

Then a more practical realization dawns on him-- she is across the International Dateline! "I realize we are time zones and oceans apart/ The words I speak in the middle of my night/ They fall on your yesterday's heart." It's still his "yesterday" where she is! So the "time zones" (age) and "oceans" (life experience) between them are literal as well. (In this distance, we hear echoes of "Kathy's Song": "I gaze beyond the rain-drenched streets/ To England, where my heart lies... My thoughts are many miles away/ They lie with you, and you're asleep.")

Then, more promises. Even if bad times come ("If the sun don't shine")... even if these bad times don't stop ("if the wind don't break" [i.e., stop, as when a fever "breaks")... and unless the impossible occurs ("If the clock don't jump off the wall")-- under all of these circumstances, he promises Thelma, "I will cushion your fall."

He has made his promises, he has overcome obstacles of societal pressure of technical logistics, and now, a final statement of resignation: "I am only a man who has skirted the edge of despair/ for a long time now, and I don't care."

Because he has faced depression and lost so much, he has realized which things matter. And what does Thelma respond to all of this?

Observe: "I watch you sleeping in the hospital bed/ The baby curled up in a ball." She accepted his offer, and now they share a child. He sees them all-- in the same "sunlight" now, not under the "moon" while she is in sun. "And everything else becomes nothing at all." Only the moment, and the people in it, matter.

(Now, Rhythm of the Saints came out in 1990. Meanwhile, Simon met Edie Brickell in 1988, and married her in 1992. Also, he's 25 years her senior. While I'm not saying this song is definitely about Edie Brickell, the thought did cross my mind.)

Next Song: Ten Years


NOTE: The comment below was written by a reader named Yasmin. She posted it to the page on "Dazzling Blue," but it also relates to "Thelma" so I am copying here:

Hi Paul,
Firstly, thanks for your insights and all the great work you have done in this blog. This is the first place I look when I get utterly confused by a Paul Simon song :)
But more specifically about this song, I have recently heard “Once In A Blue Moon” which was written back in 2003 by Edie Brickell and I think there might be some lyrical connections here. “Once In A Blue Moon” tells the story of how two lovers meet. Although it is done partly in third person it sounds like the story of Edie herself and Paul. For one thing it is in agreement with the story told in “Thelma” by Paul Simon. And also the song has descriptions of the man of the story which sounds very much like Paul Simon. Descriptions such as these: “But that sad look on your face…”; “Eyes like faded jeans, soft and blue and he had seen everything and he had been everywhere…”; “Til he turned his gaze her way, Longed to see her everyday”; “He was more than fun, She was more than young”. Now these two lovers that Edie talks about have met “Once in a blue moon”. Edie also explains that “He was fine before he met her”… “Til he turned his gaze her way, Longed to see her everyday, Heard a voice inside him say, He'll never never never be the same”. So I feel it might be that the “dazzling blue” that Paul is talking about is the light of the blue moon under which they have allegedly met and as Edie describes they are never going to be the same again and therefore in a sense they are (re)born.

Born at the Right Time

What a lovely lullaby, especially the chorus.

The first verse, of course, is a reference to the Biblical story of the infant Moses being discovered in a basket on the banks of the Nile by Pharaoh's daughter, near the start of the Book of Exodus.

The chorus depicts the ideal, Utopian birth and upbringing. Which, to be fair, was not Moses'. He was raised perhaps by his birth-mother until he was weaned, but after that resided and matured in the house of the oppressor of his people, so deception must have been involved at some point. After he realized his heritage, he killed a taskmaster and so lived most of his life-- scholars say from age 20 to 80-- in fugitive exile. He lived among neither his native Hebrews nor adoptive Egyptians, but as a shepherd, when he had been an imperial prince. He spent the next while wresting his people from the hand of Pharaoh, and his last 40 years in the wilderness, desperately trying to hold a new nation together, often against its will.

And then there is the sound of the "church bells," which Simon referred to in "Bleecker Street" and "For Emily." It is incongruous to depict the leader of the Jewish people being born to that sound, to say the least.

So this may be a reference more to a Moses-esque figure, a savior of the people... a prophet with "centuries" in his "eyes." But then, how would a coddled figure like the one described possibly understand suffering well enough to connect with the people he was to save (and don't we voice the same concern, today, over potential leaders)?

Leaving all of these objections aside, the song is about an ideal, if imaginary, situation. A boy is discovered, in remarkable health for a foundling. He was born under the music of peace and glory, to the words of friendship, truth, safety, and the approbation of the whole of humanity. Surely one so blessed is capable of conferring blessing upon others.

Then, another speaker seems to interrupt. This is a worldly gent, who likes to travel, spend, and eat well. He sees "them"-- and by the fact that they are still nursing, we must assume "they" are infants-- and they see him right back. They regard him as an intruder, yet they regard him without fear: "They follow me with open eyes/ Their uninvited guest."

These babies, too, are coddled, being nursed "in the airport lounges," and not in a less comfortable or relaxed environment. And they, too, are "born at the right time," like the foundling in the opening verse.

It seems possible that the chorus refers to "me" (the speaker) and not "they" (the babies), which would give another layer of implication-- that this sophisticated gent is also "born at the right time."

In any case, the gent bemoans overpopulation and overdevelopment in the next, short verse: "too many people."

And then: "But." This small word serves two purposes. One, it shows that it has been the same speaker all along, merely continuing his thought-- sometimes poetically, sometimes more conversationally.

It also serves as the introduction to the counterargument to the fears of overpopulation. How? Well, here is a "baby girl." Also "found," and also "born at the right time."

Every baby is, potentially, born at the right time, the speaker realizes. Every baby has the opportunity, if the right people find and raise it, to be Moses... or Miriam. Carl Sandburg said it nicely: "A baby is God's opinion that the world should go on." If so, could not all babies be born at the right time?

And in a world without isolation, lies, fear, and want, definitely so.

IMPACT:
Simon evidently liked the song, as he titled the tour to promote this album "The Born at the Right Time Tour."

Next song: The Cool, Cool River

Run That Body Down

Another unusual advice-giving song. The message here is clear: "How long you think that you can run that body down?"

In other words, how long do you think you can keep up this crazy schedule, with no rest?

This album was released in 1972. The speaker on this song is Simon himself; we know this because the doctor calls him "Paul." Although he was only in his early 30s at the time (yes, he had accomplished his entire S&G career by age 30), we might well assume that the strains of writing and recording his first (post-breakup) solo album-- with all the pressure for hits that came with it-- was wearing on him.

The "Peg" mentioned in the song is Simon's first wife, Peg Harper. She is mentioned again in the song "Call Me Al." A friend of theirs kept forgetting their names; instead of "Peggy" and "Paul," he would call them "Betty" and "Al."

The "kid" in the last verse might well be the listener... or it could (depending on when the song was written) refer to Simon's first child. His name is Harper, in honor of Peg's maiden name. He was born in... 1972. Babies, of course, are notorious for their sporadic and ever-changing sleeping and eating patterns, perhaps not unlike those of rock stars.

Harper's birth might also explain was Peg was doing that was running her own body down-- having and taking care of a newborn.

The somewhat lethargic tempo and languid tone of the piece fits the message: We're all going a mile a minute, and the pace starting to take its toll. Let's rein it in a bit, shall we, before we collapse.

As Billy Joel would later put it in his song "Vienna": "You better cool it off before you burn it out."

Speaking of Harper, he recorded his debut album in the past couple of years, and we will discuss the songs on it with which Simon helped him with after we discuss the songs on Simon's own Surprise. After that, of course, we will turn to the songs on Simon's 2011 album So Beautiful or So What.


Next Song: Armistice Day

Baby Driver

This song reads like a playground hand-jive, but sounds like a Beach Boys track. There is a great deal of childhood imagery... and then a whole lot of car-racing imagery. The title itself is, in fact, the two words "baby" and "driver."

The jump-rope sing-song element is the "my daddy"/"my mama" part. The information about the parents is adult, however, and at least somewhat autobiographical. Simon's father was a very successful session bass-player, for instance. In one interview, Simon recalls a song coming on the radio and his father off-handedly remarking, "I think I played on that." (I admit I have no idea if any of the military information has any basis in fact.)

Another childhood element is the phrase "once upon," as "once upon a time." Yet another is the invitation "come to my room and play."

(The speaker does mention the circumstances of his birth, but that can hardly be counted as childhood imagery. Many songs have lyrics like "born in the USA" or "born to be wild.")

As for racing imagery, there is the chorus, which mentions "wheels," the "road," an "engine," and the line "what's my number," as all racecars have numbers.

Whether childhood imagery or car imagery, by the end of the song, they both seem to be metaphors for sex. "I wonder how your engine feels" refers to the same thing as the line in Springsteen's "Born to Run": "strap your hands 'cross my engines."

And then there is the blatant line: "Yes we can play/ I'm not talkin' 'bout your pigtails/ I was talkin' 'bout your sex appeal."

My theory? It's about a guy trying to lose his virginity. Put together, the song seems to be one giant come-on. He is young, still a "baby," with no accomplishments to his name, so he brags about his parents as a way of strutting.

Further, he "wonders how [the girl's] engine feels", and wants to "play," but has as much intention of staying around as Dion's Wanderer: "I hit the road and I'm gone... scoot down the road..." (The Wanderer explains, "When I find myself falling for some girl/ I hop right into my car and I drive around the world.")

The line "What's my number?" could then mean "You don't even know my phone number or address, do you? I'm gone before you can find out."

The virginity theory also explains the line about carrying a "gun," but not yet getting a chance to "serve"-- i.e. use his "gun" to serve anyone else.

He is a "baby driver," with temporary tags and a learner's permit, but still no license. This would explain his ridiculous attempts at seduction... and his likelihood of crashing instead of making it all the way around the track.


Next Song: The Only Living Boy in New York