Paul Simon, The Boy In The Bubble

At last, The SongMine presents an American Singer Songwriter! Paul Simon! Isn't Paul cute in this pic? Waddaya think he was, maybe 20?

So I said to my 26 year old Israeli barber (the one time I've gone for a paid-for haircut in at least a decade) when he asked me what my music was like "Well, I guess you could compare it to Paul Simon."  By which I meant that, like Paul Simon,  I sing songs of my own devising,  emanating from an acoustic guitar, flavored with many different rhythms and chordal voicings, with subjects that range from politics to religion to art and philosophy and are not predominately about love.  And he said "Oh, Paul Simon.  You mean fun music."  

Which kind of took me aback because in Paul Simon's entire amazing, up-there-with-the-greatest-of-the-greats career, you'd be hard pressed to find a song that isn't kind of melancholy, rueful.  At his sweetest he's bittersweet. As the bard himself put it" "When something goes wrong I'm the first to admit it/The first to admit it/And the last one to know/When something goes right it's likely to lose me/It's apt to confuse me/You know it's such an unusual sight/Can't get used to something so right..."

So, with my barber's point of view in mind, I decided a good song to post would be one of Paul's most joyous anthems, which serves as a counterpoint to the somewhat bleak numbers we've been examining in previous weeks.  Obama, the child of an African, is President, we are all carrying around little devices that connect us to each other and take pictures and videos and bounce signals off satellites.  And I am writing and singing to you from a laptop computer.  These ARE the days of miracles and wonder, and so let's listen to Paul sing about it and then talk a little more...

The Boy In the Bubble
© Paul Simon 

It was a slow day,
And the sun was beating
On the soldiers by the side of the road,
There was a bright light,
A shattering of shop windows
The bomb in the baby carriage
Was wired to the radio,
These are the days of miracle and wonder,
This is the long distance call,
The way the camera follows us in slo-mo
The way we look to us all,
The way we look to a distant constellation
That's dying in a corner of the sky,
These are the days of miracle and wonder
And don't cry baby don't cry
Don't cry,
It was a dry wind,
And it swept across the desert
And it curled into the circle of birth,
And the dead sand,
Falling on the children
The mothers and the fathers
And the automatic earth,
These are the days of miracle and wonder,
This is the long distance call,
The way the camera follows us in slo-mo
The way we look to us all o-yeah,
The way we look to a distant constellation
That's dying in a corner of the sky,
These are the days of miracle and wonder
And don't cry baby don't cry
Don't cry
It's a turn-around jump shot
It's everybody jump start
It's, every generation throws a hero up the pop charts,
Medicine is magical and magical is art think of
The Boy in the Bubble
And the baby with the baboon heart
And I believe
These are the days of lasers in the jungle,
Lasers in the jungle somewhere,
Staccato signals of constant information,
A loose affiliation of millionaires
And billionaires and baby,
These are the days of miracle and wonder,
This is the long distance call,
The way the camera follows us in slo-mo
The way we look to us all o-yeah,
The way we look to a distant constellation
That's dying in a corner of the sky,
These are the days of miracle and wonder
And don't cry baby don't cry
Don't cry don't cry

Well.  Maybe not so totally joyous but that's exactly my point.  The bomb in the baby carriage is wired to the radio. Dead sand falls on the children and the mothers and the fathers and the automatic earth.  Automatic earth! Wow, what kind of earth is that? And there's a staccato of constant information and a loose affiliation of millionaires and billionaires. Loose is right.  The question we have to ask ourselves in 2009, 20 years after this song appeared, is how come they're still loose? And meanwhile,  are we looking to the distant constellation--in other words looking up at it.  Or is it looking down at us.  Is it the way WE look to that constellation? And how do we look to it? How do you think we look? It's an amazing, profound song performed by a multi-racial band, a multiplicity of rhythms and possible meanings and a little elfin Jewish boy out in front.  You call that "fun"?!  I guess it is. You can dance to it.  You can sing along.  Paul Simon has always had that knack.  Somehow he confronts us again and again with our deepest anxieties, in a way that goes down so smooth and easy and, yes, fun, that we barely know we're taking any medicine.

One other Simon song I wanted to point out to you, since it applies so aptly to the SongMine, is his much more obscure song "Jonah".  When you hear this song you hear an almost loungey bossa nova type number.  But check out the lyrics and you'll find that he is singing to his fallen comrades, the boys with the cardboard guitar cases, going to late night hootenannies so many years ago...

Jonah
© Paul Simon 

Half and hour you change your strings and tune up
Sizing the room up
Checking the bar
Local girls unspoken conversations
Misinformation
Plays the guitar

They say Jonah was swallowed by a whale
But I say there's no truth to that tale
I know Jonah
Was swallowed by a song

No one lets their dreams be taken lightly
They hold them tightly
Warm against cold
One more year of traveling 'round this ciruit
Then you can work it into gold

Here's to all the boys who came along
Carrying soft guitars in cardboard cases
All night long
Do you wonder where those boys have gone?
Do you wonder where those boys have gone? 

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standing on the side of the corridor, and with her two accomplices, smile and talk about all this.