Some Folks' Lives Roll Easy

In his Oscar-winning turn in As Good As It Gets, Jack Nicholson's character has this memorable line: "Some [people] have great stories, pretty stories that take place at lakes with boats and friends and noodle salad. Just no one in this car."

And no one in this song, either: "Some folks' lives roll easy... some folks' lives never roll at all." In the first verse and last, the speaker talks in general terms about people in general.

He uses the metaphor of motion. Easy lives are depicted with the effortless "roll," the relaxing "drifting," and the purposeful "heading."

Other lives "stumble" and "fall." Not necessarily in the sense of heartbreak, as in the Mamas and Papas' song "Trip, Stumble and Fall," but somehow.

"Most folks never catch their stars" changes the imagery a bit, and it is a vague line. You can "catch" something that is fleeing away from you, like a bus... or something that is thrown to you, like a ball. Stars are distant, so it could be the former, but they are also said to fall, like a pop fly in baseball. In the end, "most folks never catch" them either way, so it matters little whether they failed to fulfill an "impossible dream" or didn't open the door when opportunity knocked.

The chorus is repeated twice, and it is much more personal. It is a prayer, one of the few Simon recorded. It states the usual supplication of "I'm not worthy" found in many prayers: "I ain't got no business [being] here."

But then he uses that humility to his advantage. Rather than slink away in his unworthiness, he says, "Well, You said You would raise me when I was down... and now I am 'so low,' I'm 'busted' flat. I have 'stumbled', I have 'fallen,' and I can't get lower. So now, I that actually qualify for Your attention, I'd like some, please."

The song is about weariness, but it is not simply weary. It is world-weary. It is about being weary of being weary.

The rest of Nicholson's quote is: "But, a lot of people, that's their story. Good times, noodle salad. What makes it so hard is not that you had it bad, but that you're that pissed that so many others had it good."

This is less the sentiment in this song. There is no resentment for those whose lives do "roll easy." Since those who have empty star-catching mitts have them "through no fault of their own," the same might be said for the easy rollers-- they are not responsible for the ease of their lot, either.

There is a difference between envy and jealousy. I forget which is which, but one means "I wish I had a lake house with a boat and noodle-salad picnics, like you." And the other means "I wish I had your lake house and boats... and you had none."

Jack's character seems to feel the latter, our speaker the former. He does not begrudge others their lives of ease-- he does not even pray to share it, to roll easy. Right now, he'd settle for any kind of rolling at all, instead of the endless falling. While he notes the sadness of others, he is mainly concerned with his own.

This is proven through the general/specific switch noted earlier. After noting that some people are fortunate and some not, the speaker prays only for himself (in first person). He does not pray that of his friends-- the ones with "battered souls" and "shattered dreams" from "American Tune"-- all get boats.

His weariness has led him to become self-focused. Not out of ego-- quite the contrary-- out of humility born of humiliation. If he is going to get a prayer answered, he figures will likely be a small one, so it might as well be for himself.

Simon revisits the theme of weariness often, but this is one song entirely on the subject. Another is "Long Long Day" from the One Trick Pony soundtrack. Understandably, these are short songs-- who has the strength for a long one?

The version of this song on the In the Blue Light album has a much longer last verse. The original repeats the title, then contrasts that with, "Some folks' lives never roll at all/ They just fall/ Some folks' lives."

But in the remake/remix of the song, Simon adds quite a bit after repeating the title:
"Some folks' lives gaze out from a window to a wall
The sunlight written in a scrawl
The gift that God intended for us all
But some folks' lives"

This echoes one of Simon's very first published songs, "Bleeker Street," in which a fog prevents God from seeing the suffering of his flock. Here, the benighted person has the view only of a wall from his window, and sees not direct sunlight, but that which hits the wall. This reflected, refracted image of the "gift" makes God's "intended" message unintelligible. Their misfortune is compounded by the fact that the circumstances caused by misfortune itself makes their redemption impossible.

I just read an Angolan folktale about a slave who wanted to buy his freedom, only to have all of his side-job earnings confiscated by his master under the law that slaves-- being owned themselves-- can't legally own or earn anything. It is just this sort of Catch-22 Simon describes.

(In the folktale, the slave uses his master's greed against him, saying that he will split the side-job earnings with him. Eventually even half of his earnings are enough to buy his own freedom. Not that it relates to the song or its meaning-- I just wanted you to know the ending of the story.)

Musical Note:
One of the sax players on this track is David Sanborn, a highly regarded jazz musician who just (as of this writing) put out his 24th solo album. He also has racked up a long career backing popular musicians of nearly every stripe since the '60s.


Next Song: Have a Good Time

I Am a Rock

"No man is an island," says John Donne. "I am an island," replies Paul Simon, several hundred years later and an ocean away.

But two years earlier than our album came out, Peter and Gordon sang "Please lock me away/ And don't allow the day/ Here inside/ Where I hide/ With my loneliness" in their song "A World Without Love." The attraction of retreating to a solitary hideaway once one is burned by love is neither new nor exclusive to Simon.

Taking Simon's song in the context of his others, however, we might see this as a sequel to "Kathy's Song." There, Simon sings of "gazing" through a "window" at "drops of rain," thinking of a faraway love. Here, scorned by (and therefore, scorning) love altogether, he looks not outward but downward, and sees only his immediate surroundings: "Gazing from my window, to the streets below." And instead of "weary" raindrops, he sees "a silent shroud of snow."

In "Bleeker Street," the "shroud," remember, was a "fog" that hid God from His people. Here, the shroud of snow is simply "silent." It serves to dampen and hush the world (like a layer of music-studio soundproofing foam?). Listen to the the f, s, and sh alliterations of the line, like footfalls (the four ds of the opening line?) muffled in powdery snow.

The song may also be an attempt to understand the syndrome of the Most Peculiar Man, who "lived all alone, within a house... within himself." That Man could well have written this song. Why did he remove himself from the world? Well... "friendship causes pain," and having "loved" means having "cried." So to Hell with all of it. (And what if the speaker in "Kathy's Song," and "I Am a Rock" are both the Most Peculiar Man, before and after a break-up. We do know that one person wrote all three songs!)

There is an interesting use, or non-use, of rhyme. Each verse starts with three unrhymed lines, followed by two rhymed lines, and then the two unrhymed lines that form the chorus: "day/December/alone," then "below/snow," and then "rock/island." The next verses rhyme "pain/disdain," "died/cried," and (more of an internal rhyme) "room/womb." The lines before and after these rhymes do not rhyme, forming a jagged barrier-- like barbed wire or a point-tipped fence-- around the sad, angry rhymes.

The major imagery of "I Am a Rock" is that of Medieval castles: In "a fortress deep and mighty... I am shielded in my armor." Perhaps the "books" the speaker is using as a "wall" against the world are of this era? (If so, they would be a poor choice; most of the famous ones are romances. The disenchanted works of the Beats or the existential novels of mid-20th Century Europe would have been wiser selections to inculcate a sullen solitude. For instance, "No Exit," Sartre's play that famously ends: "Hell is other people.")

"She is soft, she is warm" is the line in "Wednesday Morning." "Soft and warm" also is the rain in "Kathy's Song." In "I Am a Rock," there is no softness, only "walls... fortress[es]... armor." There is no warmth, only "winter... December... snow."

The images are of inertia, a lack of movement: "snow... sleeping/slumber... womb," and the title image. The other images are of barriers, especially the castle/armor images (as well as a moat of snow, and the water around an "island."). Paradoxically, both the isolating barriers of no-longer-alive ("shroud") and not-yet-alive ("womb") are brought to use. The result is complete alone-ness: "None may penetrate... I touch no one and no one touches me."

The word "deep" comes up twice in the first two verses. This December is "deep" (as in "the depths of winter"), and his metaphorical fortress is "deep." The word has many meanings. Another is "profound," and many have taken reclusion as an indication of "deep study" or "deep thoughts." And certainly, the speaker would like to think of himself as a Michel de Montaigne-like figure, holed up in solitary scholarship amid towers of books.

But more likely, he is bound up in deep sadness. By pushing away the world, the speaker hopes to stave off sorrow: "friendship causes pain... [but] a rock feels no pain."

It is odd indeed to end this album with a song about a person who retreats inward and rejects the world as only a source of suffering. A person who has never heard the warning prophet of "Sound of Silence"... who has not read the cautionary tale of Richard Corey in the volumes of "poetry" in his room.

The love songs on this album, however, are break-up songs. In "Leaves That Are Green": "I held her close, but she faded in the night." In "Somewhere They Can't Find Me," a robber tears himself away from his lover to flee the law. And in "April Come She Will," a woman arrives, then leaves, then dies. Even "Blessed" is, in a way, about breaking up with God.

In interviews, Simon has said that this is one of his two least favorite of his own songs (the other will be revealed when we arrive at it). Perhaps the severity of the isolation imagery is too harsh. Perhaps it simply makes no sense to create a character who so purposefully isolates himself after all the warnings, all album long, about the effects-- from societal breakdown to suicide-- of such a self-imposed hermit-state.

We can only hope for this depressed, disheartened character's sake that he takes his own "womb" imagery to heart-- that his solitary confinement is temporary, and that he emerges from it with a sense of birth and life and a connection with the world. To remain in exile within society would be, to borrow a phrase, most peculiar.

IMPACT: This is the only song the duo sang during their appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, January 30, 1966.

Concluding thoughts on this album:
Many albums take their titles from the titles of one of the hits on the album itself. This is Simon's major practice, in fact. But here, the album title is a variation on the song title, and so gets its own meaning. Each of the songs presented reflects one of the many kinds of silence there are (just as a painter will explain that there are many shades of black).

Each song is about one of the sounds of silence... the silences of: unheard words, an unresponsive deity, a distant or fleeing lover, isolation due to privilege or poverty (there is even "Anji," an instrumental, or wordless song).

On this album, Simon explores the various tones of quietness, and may conclude: Yes, either noise or nothingness, taken to extremes, leads to chaos. But also, there is-- as the author of Ecclesiastes might put it-- a time for sound, and a time for silence.

Next song: "Scarborough Fair"