Paul Simon
I don't listen to music the way I used to and I'm far from being up to date on the latest rankings on the pop charts. I plunk an album into my car stereo and it plays over and over, maybe twenty times, before I get tired of it and insert another or choose a classical music station. What else can you do in a car? (In motion, that is.)
The album currently playing is Paul Simon's Graceland. The lyrics are something else. "These are the days of miracle and wonder", from the first selection The Boy in the Bubble. "The bomb in the baby carriage was wired to the radio." And I love this one: "a distant constellation that's dying in a corner of the sky." Think of it. The sky doesn't have corners. Individual stars die, but constellations don't. The point could be made that constellations don't even exist, but are a construct of our imagination. It's all in our perspective - if we were a billion miles to the left or right, the alignment of those stars would differ because the stars are not equidistant. But the phrase is beautiful, it's evocative. It's poetry. "lasers in the jungle . . . . staccato signals of constant information . . . . . the baby with the baboon heart . . . . . the dead sand falling on the children . . . . . a loose affiliation of millionaires and billionaires And just who is this boy in the bubble? What bubble? Paul doesn't say.
And this, from Diamonds on the Soles of her Shoes: "She makes the sign of a teaspoon, he makes the sign of a wave." Hello? But it's ok, a great song. From You can call me Al: "Cattle in the market place, scatterlings and orphanages . . . . . He sees angels in the architecture spinning in infinity". Wow!
From the last selection, All around the world or the myth of fingerprints, we have "Over the mountain down in the valley lives a former talk show host, everybody knows his name." Well, I don't know his name - I feel left out. "Out in the Indian Ocean somewhere, there's a former army post, abandoned now just like the war, and there's no doubt about it, it was the myth of fingerprints, that's what that old army post was for". The myth of fingerprints??? Can someone help me here? And help I need with the following: "the sun gets bloody and the sun goes down, ever since the watermelon . . . . " Watermelon?
If this is poetry, then nobody ever said it has to make sense. But it does, in a sort of indefinable way.
The album currently playing is Paul Simon's Graceland. The lyrics are something else. "These are the days of miracle and wonder", from the first selection The Boy in the Bubble. "The bomb in the baby carriage was wired to the radio." And I love this one: "a distant constellation that's dying in a corner of the sky." Think of it. The sky doesn't have corners. Individual stars die, but constellations don't. The point could be made that constellations don't even exist, but are a construct of our imagination. It's all in our perspective - if we were a billion miles to the left or right, the alignment of those stars would differ because the stars are not equidistant. But the phrase is beautiful, it's evocative. It's poetry. "lasers in the jungle . . . . staccato signals of constant information . . . . . the baby with the baboon heart . . . . . the dead sand falling on the children . . . . . a loose affiliation of millionaires and billionaires And just who is this boy in the bubble? What bubble? Paul doesn't say.
And this, from Diamonds on the Soles of her Shoes: "She makes the sign of a teaspoon, he makes the sign of a wave." Hello? But it's ok, a great song. From You can call me Al: "Cattle in the market place, scatterlings and orphanages . . . . . He sees angels in the architecture spinning in infinity". Wow!
From the last selection, All around the world or the myth of fingerprints, we have "Over the mountain down in the valley lives a former talk show host, everybody knows his name." Well, I don't know his name - I feel left out. "Out in the Indian Ocean somewhere, there's a former army post, abandoned now just like the war, and there's no doubt about it, it was the myth of fingerprints, that's what that old army post was for". The myth of fingerprints??? Can someone help me here? And help I need with the following: "the sun gets bloody and the sun goes down, ever since the watermelon . . . . " Watermelon?
If this is poetry, then nobody ever said it has to make sense. But it does, in a sort of indefinable way.
posted by puzzled @ 11:43 PM
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