EPISODE 337: SAIL ON SILVER GIRL
POP CULTURE SPIRIT WOW
Paul Simon was the musical guest on Saturday Night Live over the weekend, celebrating his 77th birthday, the end of his farewell tour and a new album. It’s the ninth time he’s been the musical guest on the show, most of any musical guest ever, and his nineteenth time on the show. He was in fact the host of the second ever SNL in 1975, and in that one show performed EIGHT different songs, including two with Art Garfunkel in their first performance since their breakup in 1970.
(This Vulture article tells the whole history of Simon and SNL. It is mucho fantastico.)
The second song he did on Saturday was a new take on “Bridge Over Troubled Water”. And right from the opening words -- “When you’re weary, feeling small”, man, he just had me.
For some reason SNL did not post the performance, but someone else did. Can I convince you to put down whatever you’re carrying for a few minutes and take a look? Paul Simon has something to say to you. ++ It’s just really reassuring, isn’t it? Like for a moment there it wasn’t Paul Simon singing to us but our collective dad, letting us know it doesn’t matter if we didn’t make the team or the planet is a mess, it’s going to be okay. For me, his performance is like the best hymn, it takes you to a peaceful, quiet place away from all the questions and fighting and fears and just lets you rest there for a while.
Paul Simon has spent his career basically as a civil servant, the modern day bard wandering the countryside singing stories that capture some element of what it is to be a human being and help us.
He’s got so many good songs. But I think the best ones emerge out of some kind of brokenness – a marriage failed, life that lacks meaning, death at the doorstep. For as successful as Simon has been, he really “gets” failure and disappointment. And yet rather than sad those songs are filled with a wistful wisdom and love.
Here’s Five Favorites, in no particular order.
"Once Upon a Time There Was an Ocean"
I only just stumbled upon “Ocean”, from his 2006 album Surprise. It was the chorus that really got to me:
I figure that once upon a time I was an ocean
But now I'm a mountain range
Something unstoppable set into motion
Nothing is different, but everything's changed
It's like that poem Ozymandias, good ole Percy Bysshe coming across a traveler who describes the ruins of a great king and his kingdom, except for Simon the passage of time proves hopeful. Stuck as a mountain? Wait a while. Even now, right now, something unstoppable is in motion. Nothing will be different, but everything will change.
And that last verse...it’s like we’ve stumbled into heaven, a place of song and colored light, and everything is okay. ++ This guy has blogged about every Paul Simon song and album ever. If you’re looking for a deep dive into any of his songs, or a portrait of obsession, a great place to look. ++ ”Graceland”
That sweet, sweet guitar echoing in the distance at the beginning. For me it’s like a childhood memory of sunshine. So pure.
The song tells the story of Simon traveling with his son Harper to Graceland soon after the dissolution of his marriage to Harper’s mom. But for me it, too, has always seemed like a journey to Heaven, Simon and his son coming finally to a place where "Poor boys and pilgrims with families" go, and where "we have reason to believe we all will be received." That last line, to me it’s like a promise that when all is said and done, we will really find ourselves understood and welcomed.
In a way I also think of it as a beautiful song about marriage. There’s that verse that refers to the breakup.
She comes back to tell me she's gone
As if I didn't know that
As if I didn't know my own bed
As if I'd never noticed
The way she brushed her hair from her forehead
And she said losing love
Is like a window in your heart
Everybody sees you're blown apart
Everybody sees the wind blow
It should be acrimonious, but there’s tenderness in there, too, the little things he notices about her, and the fact that he lets her words describe the sense of loss. Even their grief is shared. ++ Fun fact: The girl in New York City who calls herself the human trampoline, which is apparently one of Simon's most popular images, refers to no one, Simon says; it was just something he thought of while passing the Museum of Natural History.
(Also, this is a great article about the making of the Graceland album.) ++ “René and Georgette Magritte with Their Dog After The War”
Paul Simon apparently stumbled on this photo of the famous surrealist painter René Magritte with his wife and their dog as he waiting for Joan Baez at her house. The photo had the title “René and Georgette Magritte with Their Dog After The War”, and he decided to write a song about it.
Simon paints such a sweet world out of their relationship. There’s that sense of them riding happily through the years together, just the three of them, almost child-like. "Side by side they fell asleep, Decades gliding by like Indians/Time is cheap." And at home they dance to the old doo wop groups and are transported to a simpler, beautiful world.
The official music video is also pretty wild. (But the link above has some wonderful photos of the two of them intermixed with Magritte’s art.)
++
The best description of this song, from Rolling Stone (by way of Wikipedia):
There they are, a Belgian surrealist painter, his old lady and their pooch, dancing naked in a hotel room, window-shopping on Christopher Street and getting dolled up to dine with "the power elite." [...] It's a hilarious and magical juxtaposition of images that's also touching, because Paul Simon obviously identifies with the figure of the grown-up, respectable artist irrevocably smitten with those doo-wop groups, "the deep forbidden music" that originally made him fall in love with rock & roll.
++
“You Can Call Me Al”
For about three years after it came out this song was pretty much inescapable. It was the Pharrell Williams' “Happy” of its day, the kind of upbeat bit of nothing that gets you moving and requires nothing, until one day you realize that strange sound you are hearing somewhere in the distance as the song plays on the radio for the fourth time this hour is actually you screaming, you’ve got the shards of the radio scattered all around you and your neighbor is calling 911.
Yeah, not a song that aged well for me, and the video, which features Chevy Chase just sitting in a chair lip synching the words and smirking, always mystified me. How is this a thing that people like?
But then I was reading about it recently and realized the damn thing is like a time bomb that’s been waiting for me to get into middle age. Soft in the middle? Check. Fears of meaninglessness? Check. Short of attention?
Wait, what was I saying?
Yeah, it’s a song about all the big questions and fears of the return ticket, if you will. And no solutions, either. Answers are for kids, it turns out. When you get to middle age and beyond, the thing to look for is just some good company.
++
True story: The title of the song comes from a dinner party where the famous conductor Pierre Boulet for some reason kept referring to Simon as Al and his wife as Betty.
++
“The Boxer”
“The Boxer” is a Simon & Garfunkel song about a guy who moves to New York with hopes of making a home and a family there but instead just gets ignored and worn down. Which is a very New York story, really.
And it looks like there’s no hope for him, when he sees a boxer working out. And there’s that unbelievable description of him:
He carries the reminders
Of ev'ry glove that laid him down
Or cut him till he cried out
In his anger and his shame
"I am leaving, I am leaving"
But the fighter still remains.
That ending sounds almost hopeful, but it’s really not. There’s no promise that things will eventually work out for the guy struggling or for the boxer. But somehow our willingness to go on even though it means being brought so low is a really beautiful thing. That death, whether actual or in the form of failure, can be redemptive.
++
It was an unexpected choice to begin SNL’s first show after 9/11 with a song about being poor and abandoned and alone. (Simon’s performance starts at about 2:30 here.) But I find so much insight in that choice. While others beat war drums and preached bravado, the people who were there knew the truth, that we are fragile and survive only in the caring arms of each other.
++
++
For me this week has been consumed with bureaucracies fulfilling their purpose to drive we human beings crazy. The Apple Store, the DMV, the VA (long story), the Church... it’s been a real winner. (Or to put it another way: EAT THE ICE CREAM.)
In the meantime it feels like I’ve got about four big projects sitting on the floor around me like infants clapping and crying and eating ants and throwing flour and I don’t even know where they got that from but now I’m kinda hungry. It’s all good, but also worrisome to see how little progress I seem to be making on almost any of them. Deer freeze before headlights; me before too many different jobs.
(Meanwhile Past Me snickers, having committed me to each of these projects while knowing what it would eventually do to me. I’m pretty sure if I had a time machine I would use it mostly to go back in time and punch me in the face.)
In between bouts of anxiety I’ve spent the last few weeks researching and writing an article about Los Angeles’s longest street (41.8 miles!), and all of the different people and communities that you find there. It has entailed me driving up and down one length of Los Angeles a whole bunch of times, which has been its own kind of fantastic. Writing something like this is kind of like teaching; you discover so much just by going through the process. With any luck the piece will also not be terrible. *knocks on woods, offers favorite book as sacrifice to writing gods, begs for mercy*
A couple weeks ago America published a piece I’ve been working on all summer about the making of the movie Romero. It was another great journey to take; I’m really happy I got to do that.
So it’s all happening... and we’re still here, so we’ve got that going for us, which is nice. I listened to This American Life podcast this week about things going on in immigration; it was so upsetting it should have come with a warning. I’m not even going to link to it, come over here and look at this thing instead.
If you’re into podcasts but just can’t even with everything, can I recommend the new season of Heavyweight? Each episode host Jonathan Goldstein, who is a weird combination of nitwit and holy man, helps someone solve a problem they’ve been carrying. So far this season there’s been Rob, the story of a guy whose family refuses to accept that he broke his arm as a kid though he insists he did; Skye, whose best friends in middle school suddenly and viciously abandoned her (because middle school), and she has never really gotten over it; and Sven, who was on a jury that sentenced a man to death, and it kind of ruined his life.
Each episode has been so unexpected, both moving and funny. Really recommend it.
And hey, if you’re looking for something to read this week that will not make you cry, how about an obituary? No really, read this. It will give you so many ideas for how to write your own.
Why are you looking at me like that? Don’t you spend a lot of time thinking about your obituary? Hello? Guys?
You know what else is nice in dark times? Skies in video games. Like, all of them, in one place.
You scoff. Tell me that’s not a pretty sky.
Or this one – look at that blue. You could jump on those clouds.
This one even has a moon.
Ahh. Isn’t that better? We’re doing it, one Grande English Breakfast tea and 4000 calorie pumpkin scone at a time. There’s no rush. As one of my Jesuit heroes used to tell me, Take it gently.
Or, think of this guy:
Live this week like the parade is for you. Because you know what? It is.
Ready? Allons-y!