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

That's Me

In some cases, it's clear that the speaker in a Paul Simon song is not, in fact, Simon himself. One example might be "Duncan," in which he states "Lincoln Duncan is my name." In other cases, it could go either way.

Here, Simon is very clear that this is an autobiographical effort. He announces that he is going to fast forward past "the boring parts," where he is a baby and even up through his college "graduation." The "bogus degree" is one in English. Considering he made his career as a writer, that may be unfair-- he might be one of the few to ever parlay that degree into a career at all!

He explains that he was a dreamer, not career driven: "I was more like a landlocked sailor/ Searching for the emerald sea."

The first thing of import that happens to him, that even invokes an interjection-- "Oh, my God"-- is his "first love," which "opens like a flower," then is suddenly much more intimidating: "A black bear" that "holds me in her sight and her power."

Then the metaphor shifts again. "But tricky skies, your eyes are true," could refer to the sky's metaphorical eyes, but the "you" could also to be listener, his first love. In this case, he thought the future was to be sunny with her, but the skies tricked him and instead brought forth foul weather. She did not trick him-- her eyes were "true"-- so fortune was what changed. This being autobiographical, I am going to go out on a limb and say this "first love" was Kathy, and the fortune that changed was his success.

"The future," it turned out brough both "beauty and sorrow," perhaps being both new loves, children, and recognition for his artistic efforts on the one hand, and the breakup with Garfunkel, his divorces, and other sorrows on the other.

So... does he regret his choice to leave Kathy in England and return to New York to pursue music? "Still, I wish that we could run away and live the life we used to/ If just for tonight and tomorrow." So he does wonder about it, but knows that his life now is what he would prefer. He is wise enough to know that, even if he had stayed, life would still have brought both "beauty and sorrow."

And then... we are at the present! But Simon is not resting on his many, many laurels. He still considers himself striving for better, newer heights: "I am walking up the face of the mountain/ Counting every step I climb."

As he climbs, he looks higher still: "Remembering the names of the constellations/ Forgotten is a long, long time." Perhaps this refers to his heroes, the "stars" he idolizes and idealizes, and feels that, even standing on his mountain, he will never ascend to those heights.

Plus, he may be out of time, or nearly so. He is aware of his age: "I’m in the valley of twilight." The next line, "Now I’m on the continental shelf," refers to the edge of a landmass that is usually underwater, before the land falls away and you are entirely in the ocean. Again, this is an image of near mortality.

In the last line, he perhaps summarizes his entire artistic career: "That’s me—/ I’m answering a question/ I am asking of myself." All of his songs are potential answers to the questions he has been pondering. Since he keep writing songs, perhaps he is trying to adjust to the fact that he may never know. At least he let us listen in.


Next Song: Father and Daughter

How Can You Live in the Northeast?

Often, Simon seems to have two songs going at once, sewing them together at the end. Here, it seems there are three. One is about watching fireworks on July 4, the USA's Independence Day. Another is about making life choices. And the third is about Simon's musings on his own family history.

The discussion about those things in life which we choose-- or not-- takes up the bulk of the song. The chorus, from which the title comes, sounds accusatory: "How can you live in the northeast?" Usually, when asked a question of that nature, we hear "How could you...?" or more pointedly, "How dare you...?"

But then we hear the rest of the chorus, which asks the listener how he or she could live in "the South," or on the "banks of a river"? So the question is not accusatory at all. It's a genuine question of wonder. How can you live here... when you are forgoing a life there? How does one decide, when the options are limitless, and one such choice precludes all others? This query is then extended into the realm of religion-- how can one choose to believe any one thing, when there are so many things to believe? In one of the choruses, the question is further extended to specific practices; "How can you tattoo your body/ Why do you cover your head?"

And then something as basic as food: "How can you eat from your rice bowl?" Ah, but then comes a judgment: "How can you eat from your rice bowl? The holy man only breaks bread." This comes to show how silly these judgments are, especially coming from a Western perspective. Do we really think the only holy men are the ones who eat bread, not rice? Well, then, why do we act like it?

Simon backs off in one of the verses, admitting that in fact we do not make many such decisions. They are an accident of birth, and babies are totally dependent on those adults to care for him or her: "Weak as the winter sun, we enter life on Earth." A father myself several times over, I can tell you that the next line is also correct; before we even process the idea of being a parent, a bureaucrat comes in with a form for us, demanding the name of the newborn. And then there is the ceremony welcoming the infant into the religious community and instruction in a language: "Names and religion come just after birth... everyone gets a tongue to speak." None of these major factors in our development are our own choices!

Ah, but why the word "tongue?" Why not "language?" Because we are born with that part of our anatomy-- a tongue-- with which to make our own voice heard, and our own wishes known. Once we can assemble words into our own sentences, we do start to guide our own courses more and more. After all, "everyone hears an inner voice," of consciousness and conscience. Of self-awareness. It is up to us to listen to it and decide how much of it to share with the rest of the world, and in what manner, with our "tongues."

Then Simon poses a puzzler: "If the answer is infinite light, why do we sleep in the dark?" This is not just a practical question, although even nocturnal animals find dark places to sleep during the day. But Simon has provided his own answer. The same as with sound, so with light-- if we have an inner voice, do we not also have an internal brightness? Further, is there not such a thing as "blinding light," a brightness that denies us the ability to see? We can only see this "infinite light," perhaps, with our eyes closed, and only with our subconscious mind. No matter-- it is internal in any case.

Now, what does any of this have to do with fireworks? The song starts with them, after all. The fireworks celebrate American independence from colonialism. This was one of the greatest strokes for self-determination in human history. "This is a free country," we Americans are fond of saying, but first the whole nation had to become free for the individuals in it to share in that self-determination, that liberty.

(Yes, I know... almost 300 years later and we're still working on getting everyone their fair share of that liberty! And while we are no longer a colony of the British Crown, there are still colonies aplenty on Earth, and some are American).

The holiday is a celebration of excess-- noise and explosions, fire and food, family and parades. It is "happy-go-lucky." We have created many chances in American to become lucky, and we are happy about that. And no one wants to see the party end, so we wait until the fireworks are mere "fireflies" in the sky before packing on home.

But we watch them across the "endless skies," because that's what we see when even the fireflies fade. The sky, and how endless it is. We see in its infinity the infinity of our own possibilities.

And so the question of the title might be phrased: "Now that you can do anything, what do you want to do?" And, since you can choose anything, how can you choose any one thing?

The song ends with a verse in which Simon assesses how all of this has impacted him. He is the son of immigrants, "only three generations off the boat," and has had all of the benefits of the American Dream: "I've been given all I wanted." Usually one plants, then harvests, but Simon knows that in his case, others planted for him first, so he correctly says "I have harvested and I have planted," meaning for his own children.

The song closes with the observation that "I am wearing my father's old coat." When he was born, he was given a name, a faith, a language and so forth. And like other Americans, he grew up to know that these were not the only options. That he could truly choose another name, faith, language and so forth.

But, like most people, he chose to keep the ones he had been given. How can you live in the Northeast, or anywhere else, forsaking all other places? Well, maybe you don't want to move too far from the place of your roots. Maybe, like an old coat, it just... fits.

Add to Simon's grand songs about America-- "America" and "American Tune"-- this one.

IMPACT:
Surprise was, musically, a departure for Simon, as he made extensive use of electronic production (and electronic music guru Brian Eno) instead of his usual acoustic or electric instruments. Suzanne Vega had done the same with her 99.9oF album more than a decade before, but it was still a, um, surprise when Simon did it.

Surprise made it to #4 in the UK and cracked the Top 10 in Ireland, going gold there. In the US, it rose to "only" #14. It also made the Top 20 in much of Scandinavia and did well in other Northern European countries.


Next Song: Everything About It is a Love Song