So Beautiful or So What

“There are only two ways to live your life," Einstein once opined. "One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”

Simon more succinctly puts this: "So beautiful, or so what."

This driving song starts off with the speaker describing the "chicken gumbo" he is making, then shrugging "life is what you make of it." You have certain ingredients, but the choice of how to combine them is yours.

His next example is a "bedtime story" he tells his children, which may or may not have a happy ending. In either case, the moral remains the same-- the story is the work of the storyteller.

He continues with a gush of humility-- he is "just a raindrop in a bucket," one nameless, indistinct entity among many. He is but "a coin dropped in a slot," a means to an end. "An empty house on Weed Street," even.

Next, we have a musing on "the way we're ignorant," going so far as to "seek out bad advice." Why? We will "jigger it and figure it," rationalizing our (mis)behavior anyway. Even better if we can blame our misdeeds on the urging of others. 

Worse, even though "life is what you make of it" and you can, therefore, actually make something of it, we "play a game with time and love/ Like a pair of rolling dice"... and leave major life decisions up to chance!

The last verse is a major shift-- to a famous photograph of the men who pointed to the direction from which Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s fatal bullet originated. The speaker adds the idea of the responding police siren singing the spiritual "Savior, Pass Me Not." 

Why this historical reference here? Dr. King taught that justice was up to us, as individuals, in the ways we chose to treat each other. His own life story embodied the idea that a person could make his life be the way he wanted it to be. So we choose to make of his death what we will-- a warning to not get involved, or a call to get involved and carry the torch he passed us, spreading the light.

The theme of this song is stated outright several times. But the placing of this song as the last on the album serves to somewhat dismiss the spiritual, divine musings that permeated the rest of the album. We're never going to know, ultimately, what goes on in Heaven. And, since we couldn't affect it even if we did know, our best bet is to focus on the world we do have and can shape.

This echoes a teaching from the Talmud. The giving of the Torah at Mt. Sinai, at the Revelation, was not just a spiritual event. It had practical, even legal, ramifications. God gave the Bible to the humans... and it is ours now. "It is not in Heaven" anymore, say the rabbis. It is here, and it belongs to humanity.

Hopefully, this is only Simon's latest song, not his last. But it marks a culmination of a lifetime of theological pondering. In  the very first song we covered, "Bleecker Street," Simon noticed that seems to be a "fog" hiding God from humanity. All these years and songs later, he has stopped trying to pierce the fog with his eyes. 

He is resigned that "life is what you make of it," and that your own attitude, while it is all you can control, is all that matters anyway.

Musical note: 

The unusual instruments this time are...

the bansuri, a wooden flute from India, 

the croatles, a set of tiny tuned cymbals arranged on a rack and struck with mallets

the saz, a Middle Eastern string instrument with a round back, resembling a long-necked lute

the resonator, a guitar with a steel plate over the sound hole, sometimes called a dobro.

Next Song: Tennessee

Love and Hard Times

This song seems to be part of a triptych, on this album, of songs whose titles start with the word "Love."

It is a curious song. Like many other of Simon's songs, it seems like two songs sewn together. At first.

The first records a visit, or perhaps a "visitation," by God and Jesus on Earth. Naturally, this happens on a "Sunday morning," when it was Sunday in the Western Hemisphere, that is. We know this because of the "cottonwood" trees mentioned.

In any case, Nature welcomed Them with "orange blossoms," and "songbirds." And the humans? "Old folks wept for His love in these hard times." God, not the Son, seems to be the antecedent of "His." Also, it seems that the "times" were known to be "hard" already, and that the Divine Presence(s) brought "love."

It was only to be a brief visit, a "courtesy call," so it soon came time to leave. After all, as the Lord says unto His Son, "There are galaxies yet to be born/ Creation is never done." Furthermore, God doesn't care much for the "slobs" of Earth who will only create a "mob scene" if They stick around. Interesting that of all the pejoratives, the Lord thinks of humans as messy; perhaps it's the way we dress, but more likely the way we spread our mess all over God's (once) Green Earth.

"But," God does note, if They "disappear," then what's left is "love and hard times." Which implies that "love" is a constant whether God is here or not, but "hard times" return when He leaves.

At this point, it is as if another song starts, a love song (and the music agrees, as more instruments are added and the melody shifts). "I loved her the first time I saw her," the speaker says, immediately apologizing, "I know that's an old songwriting cliche." He follows it with another: "The light of her beauty was warm as a summer day." Actually, that's not only a cliche, but a mixed metaphor; light is "bright," not "warm."

But then, we see the pen of a true songwriter: "Clouds of antelope roll by/ No hint of rain to come in the prairie sky." So this love at first sight gives no sign that sorrow will follow. Everything from here to the horizon is "just love." And... no hard times.

Yes, but this is Earth, not Heaven. "When the rains came, the tears burned/ Windows rattled, locks turned." Well, sure-- there was no sign of rain, so no one thought to bring an umbrella, and now everyone is soaked and miserable.

Here, the speaker offers this observation: "It's easy to be generous when you're on a roll/ It's hard to be grateful when you're out of control." So... hard times? "...love is gone."

Then "dawn" comes back into the bedroom. The house noises are keeping the speaker awake. And he is "uneasy," probably now more than before, since before he was just "out of control"... and now it seems that his relationship is suffering because of that, too!

"But then your hand takes mine." Oh, so the relationship is stronger than his unease after all. And even stronger than the turmoil and ingratitude that his unease caused. His reaction? Sheer gratitude: "Thank God I found you in time."

Excuse me? Thank whom? Or, rather, Whom? Why, God, of course. Who we thought had left. Guess not. Oh, omnipresence... right.

So it's not "love" or "hard times, but "and." We think that hard times come and go whether or not God is Present. Or that both can't co-exist without God.

But neither is true. Love and hard times are always with us. Sometimes, we feel God's love directly. Sometimes, the love comes from others. Sometimes we feel that human love is a manifestation, or gift, of Divine Love.

But love is there despite hard times. Or, for all we know, because of them.


Musical note:
The word "celli" in the liner notes does not refer to an exotic instrument; it is the formal plural of "cello." Speaking of classical music, the song was covered by opera star Rene Fleming.

(Also, there are rhymes in this song, but you have to find some of them.)

Next Song: Love is Eternal Sacred Light

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

Look at That

This song, like "Train in the Distance," tells the story of a relationship, of a life, but in much more abstract terms. So abstract, in some lines there are not even words.

The song begins with the symbolic line "Drop a stone in the abyss." In a basic sense, all of our actions are only meaningful to us, in the scope of the infinite universe and its eternal timeline, naught but a stone dropped in the abyss. (Compare to the Kansas lyric, "All we are is dust in the wind.")

But in a metaphoric sense, this can refer to a conception, if one imagines the "stone" and "abyss" are a seed in a hole... or a sperm in a womb. From that beginning, "anything can happen."

Then comes a "hug and a kiss." This could be between lovers, or a parent and child. The latter seems more likely, as the next thing that happens is going "off to school." In the larger sense, it might mean something my neighbor-- who never went to a university but still built a successful business-- once said: "Every day is college, if you pay attention." As Simon puts it: "You might learn something/ You never know,"

Well, after all that school, or at least schooling, comes what? Marriage. "Lovers merge and make a wish/ They close their eyes, and now their dreams are legal." 

Then comes an image of an "eagle," which admittedly might just be there to rhyme with "legal," or it might symbolize America, nature, or other larger forces at work, against the background of which the marriage will take place. 

These images also appear in the same section of the Bible. God says he will carry the Jews out of Egyptian bondage "on the wings of eagles," and is said to have guarded the Jewish camp in the wilderness with a "pillar of cloud" by day and a "pillar of fire" by night. Here, Simon's eagle flies "over the mountain" (Mt. Sinai?) through "clouds of fire" [emphasis mine]. So there might be a sense of God protecting this love-journey the way the passage in the wilderness-- envisioned by some sages as the marriage between God and the people-- was.

Then Simon backs up for a minute to the moment of the marriage proposal: "Ask somebody to love you/ Takes a lot of nerve." No one who has every made or received a marriage proposal needs to have this explained.

As the children's rhyme goes: "First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes baby in the baby carriage." The baby, of course, has to learn to talk. And we hear it do so: "ma ma ma," and "da da da." Then it learns to sing: "la la la/ Oom bop a doom." Now, this is Simon's imagined kid-- so when it learns to sing, it learns to sing doo-wop!

And, this is Simon's relationship song, so the relationship has to have... issues. "This is near enough to bliss." (Oh, gee, thanks... I love you too!) "Then over the top we go and down to the bottom." (Well, what did you expect, with that attitude?) "If you were looking for worries/ You got 'em." It's "Darling Lorraine" all over again.

Then there is a series of other nonsense sounds that are less recognizable: "tih," "guh," and "lih." This may represent being at a loss for words, being in a situation that's inexplicable. It may represent finding oneself, as the speaker in "Call Me Al" does, "in a strange world," in which the very words being spoken are unintelligible to him. 

Personally, I think these are supposed to represent the sounds of musical instruments. "Tih" sounds like a light, high tapping, maybe of a "high-hat" cymbal. "Guh" could be a bass or drum. And "lih" is perhaps the strumming of a guitar or other string instrument. Rhythm, bass, and treble are the basic building blocks of music worldwide, so this series of sounds may represent the learning of musical skill and composition.

Every once in a while, you also get an epiphany in life: "Come awake, come alive." And what is it, in this case? "Common sense, we survive." Evidently, there is a calming down, an acceptance, and "we"-- either this couple or the human race in general-- continues. 

And then? Why, life goes on, of course. "Down the road we go/ You might learn something, you never know. But anyway, you got to go." This last line might mean that life proceeds whether we like it to or not. Or it could mean we must "go" in the final sense: die. If so, it would be the logical end to a song about a lifespan.

The repeated title line: "Look at that!" means "Well, would you look at that!" in the astonished sense. But coupled with "look at this" every time, it implies: "Look far, look near-- and you will find the same patterns." Yes, marvel in wonderment at "that"... and now recognize it in "this," your own life...

"Just like that," in an unexpected instance. "Just like this," right now.

Next Song: Senorita with a Necklace of Tears