Me and Paul Simon and the Origin of Musical Taste
I find musical taste fascinating; how each and every individual moment and each and every individual detail of our lives sculpt how we hear music and how we feel about it and that is what makes music so special. Nothing is more marvelous than hearing a song and feeling like it was written for you, like it is a part of you, like it was born with you and will die with you. This is how I feel about the music of Paul Simon. I was raised with Paul Simon’s music; it has always been a part of my life and indubitably always will be. As a child, Graceland was a lullaby. As a teenager, the music of Simon and Garfunkel provided equal parts solace and escape. I strongly believe that the early influence of Paul Simon’s music and lyrics along with his penchant for eclecticism has had a profound effect on my musical taste and as each day goes by, as my life and psyche evolve and grow, I realize it more and more.
I love singing along to music and often times (much to my dismay) how much fun I have when singing along to a song is a strong influence on how I feel about the song as a whole. Paul Simon’s range and mine do not mesh and are awkwardly out of sync the majority of the time. In spite of this, I adore singing his songs. Because my range doesn’t quite fit with his, my voice hops through octaves throughout a song, something that I’m sure is utterly terrible to hear. For me, however, it makes every song a vocal adventure; constantly having to think of what is coming next and whether or not I will be able to stay at my current pace without having to go off the beaten path: switching octaves, creating new harmonies, or stretching my range to its breaking point. The exposure to Simon and Garfunkel’s vocal harmony growing up, along with my choral upbringing and love of other American folk music that my parents listened to when I was younger, has made close, counterbalanced duets among my favorite motifs in popular music. Duet, to me, sounds like a silly word to use in this case, because I think the word can seem cheapened in the realm of popular music (Islands in the Stream, anyone?). Also, quick sidebar to share this remarkable scene from the Coen Brother’s Intolerable Cruelty in which Geoffrey Rush sings along the “The Boxer”, in a remarkably realistic portrayal of someone singing along to a song in a car (switching pronouns and singing sounds that appear later in the song in anticipation).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDc5YwIB7l4
Paul Simon is arguably one of the best lyricists of the 20th century. Achingly resonant and blindingly heartbreaking, to me his lyrics have that divine quality of seeming so personal that listening to a song can leave you battered and bruised, in a bloody pile in the corner. On the bright side, his music also has that ability to leave me an over-smiling mess, giddy and wordless.
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. I’m going to Graceland…
“Kathy, I’m lost,” I said, though I knew she was sleeping.
“I’m empty and aching and I don’t know why.”
Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike
They’ve all gone to look for America
Graceland, to me, is a perfect album. The eclecticism alone is enough to make it remarkable, without even mentioning the impact that the album had both musically and politically. Graceland represents that remarkable thing that can happen when people with different musical backgrounds come together to make something entirely new and unique, that can never be duplicated. Graceland is about redemption, even in the face of isolation, destitution, and loneliness, a timeless theme that was exceptionally resounding with the world’s (and especially South Africa’s) climate at the time. It was an album that genuinely brought people together and brought world music to the main stream, seamlessly blending genres to create something absolutely marvelous. While an over-the-top political message can be incredibly distracting to me in music (see Michael Franti's silly lyrics ie "You can bomb the world to pieces, but you can't bomb it into peace"), for some reason it isn't at all a diversion from the music on this album. I don't believe that Simon's intentions were politically grandiose while sculpting the album, but merely by sharing this wonderful music, he put the struggle of the black population of South Africa into the forefront of people's minds without the need to include pun-ny political slogans disguised as lyricism.
I acknowledge that this explanation is circular and useless, and that it may seem slightly exaggerated, but I really think that the emotional and visceral connection that one has to any given piece of music or musician is an almost impossible thing to describe. Without a masterful eloquence, which I do not at all claim to have, describing this feeling to someone else always seems stilted and awkward. For me, it is something so personal and so transcendent and so extraordinary that putting it to words falls flat. Fuck it.
I said take this child, lord from Tucson Arizona
Give her the wings to fly through harmony and she won’t bother you no more