#simon
My Night With Paul Simon
(Posted originally on June 5, 2013)
On the night train, the red eye plane,
Flying home to NYCeeeeeeeeeeeee,
From the city of Los Angeleeeeeeez
Feeling flush, dropped some cash,
Got me a seat in extra large first class
Seat 2C, plenty of room for my toes,
To wiggle to dance, lay down some poetry tracks,
pretending I'm a **** jive,
bad *** from the
make-believe west coast
A short guy, with fedora down low,
An older man,
looking about nine years older
than somebody I might know,
hiding his eyes @ 9pm
neath some excellent Raybans,
slip slides into 2D,
gives me a smile,
And says Hi, I'm Paul
I look once at his face and say,
Listen Rhymin' Simon,
I'd know you any place,
No worries, your secret,
with me is safe,
Cause dudes in row 2,
gottta stick together, be cool,
We're riding first class,
over the land of the free
What ya do for a living he asks,
A little of this and a little of that,
All of which, ain't no **** good at!
So I spend my cold, hard time
laying down cold hard verse,
Can't stop, cause it's my daddy's dying curse
He said that's cool,
I like to do that too.
Guitars on planes
drive passengers insane,
They take up too much
overhead compartment space,
I just scribble me some rhymes and
Let the music come
when I got two feet
on the ground in the city
we both come from.
Paul: You got any stuff writ
on that yellow sheet,
or just pretty blue lines,
a big pad of nothing?
Dude: Man you may got diamonds
on the soles of your shoes,
But pay me some 'spect,
you talking to the man who penned
Sad Eyed Teenagers of the Lowland
on Hello Poetry, gad ****
Paul smiled and said
you can call me Al,
And if you feel like blowing some lines together,
We got five hours till we can see
the house that Ruth built.
Dude: Hit me with your best shot,
I'll show you what I got
Paul: And she said honey take me dancing
But they ended up by sleeping
In a doorway
By the bodegas and the lights on
Upper Broadway
Wearing diamonds on the soles of their shoes
Dude: Just cause the union of the monkeys
in the Bronx Zoo done gone on strike,
Don't mean the lion ain't
still king of the hill
inside this New York city jail
Paul: And the sign said,
"The words of the prophets are written
on the subway walls
And tenement halls"
And whispered
in the sounds of silence
Dude: A home-grown poet.
I am
Soul enslaved to words.
The alphabet - My oxygen molecules,
I am both,
Addict and dealer
A ****** poet
******
Paul: You don't need to be coy, Roy
Just listen to me
Hop on the bus, Gus
You don't need to discuss much
Just drop off the key, Lee
And get yourself free
Dude: Contact with the atmosphere
makes self pity die,
blue blood turn red,
the TNT tightness in my chest exploded
I got no place
to store these words,
the cops think I'm
some kind of
Terrorist
On and on thru the night,
Riffing, rapping, rambling, and spitting,
Ditties and darts, couplets and barbs,
Single words and elegies,
Free verse and a lot of fking curse words,
It was a moment, a time
that deserved
to be preserved,
and so this poem got writ
You may think this story apocryphal
Which is another way of saying untrue,
But I got his boarding pass and it is signed,
To this crazy poetry dude, long may you rasp,
And it is signed by Mr. P. Simon, a big fan,
And it has never since that day,
Left my grasp
Feb 15, 2015
Feb 15, 2015 at 11:51 PM UTC
https://americansongwriter.com/behind-the-song-you-can-call-me-al/
The songwriter explains the new methods used to write this and the others songs on “Graceland.”
If you’ll be my bodyguard
I can be your long lost pal
I can call you Betty
And Betty, when you call me,
You can call me Al
Call me Al
From Paul Simon’s landmark Graceland, “You Can Call Me Al” is quintessential Simon. It’s whimsical, rhythmically infectious, poetic and conversational, all before it expands into a whole other realm.
The famously funny yet enigmatic chorus, Simon said, came from a funny memory of going to a party at the New York apartment of Pierre Boulez, the conductor-composer. Simon and his first wife Peggy arrived, meeting their host at the door, who evidently had no clue who they were. Boulez introduced them to his guests as “Al and Betty.”
It was the first single from Graceland, and became a hit, launched by the famous music video with Chevy Chase.
“I need a photo-opportunity, I want a shot at redemption, don’t want to end up a cartoon in a cartoon graveyard”
All the songs for Graceland, unlike his previous work written with voice and guitar, were written to tracks he and his friend, the producer-engineer Roy Halee, recorded in Africa. Simon brought those recordings back to his New York City home, where he allowed the energy of the music to inspire the lyrics and melodies.
It was completed at the Hit Factory in New York with Roy Halee in April of 1986. Rob Mounsey, who played synth, also arranged and conducted the nine-piece horn section (five trumpets, two trombones, baritone and bass saxophones).
There’s a delightful bass break by Bakithi Kumalo, which was not part of the original arrangement, but suggested by Paul when learning that it was the bassist’s birthday. Bakithi improvised the fast fretless break, which Roy sonically doctored in New York; he used the first half of the phrase, then reversed it for the second half, creating a musical palindrome.
Jazz musician Morris Goldberg played the other solo on the song on a penny whistle.
Simon wrote the song using a new approach to lyrics, which combined colloquial speech with abstract, “enriched” language.
The lyrics shift from the ordinary language of the first verse to a third verse imbued with enriched imagery, the “angels in the architecture, spinning in infinity…” That progression is not random. Nothing Simon does is random. Which is not to say he calculates his lyrics; he doesn’t. As he said during our first of many conversations back in 1988, “I’m more interested in what I discover than what I invent.”
“He looks around, around, he sees angels in the architecture spinning in infinity, he says, 'Amen and Hallelujah!’”
Asked what the distinction was between discovery and invention, he said, “You just have no idea that that’s a thought that you had; it surprises you; it can make me laugh or make me emotional. When it happens and I’m the audience and I react, I have faith in that because I’m already reacting. I don’t have to question it. I’ve already been the audience.”
“But if I make it up,” he continued, “knowing where it’s going, it’s not as much fun. It may be just as good, but it’s more fun to discover it.”
To get to the right place to allow that discovery to occur, he’d listen to the music while tossing a baseball against the wall, and catching it. Asked what effect that had on this song, he gave the following answer, which leads into his explanation of discovering what became “You Can Call Me Al.”
“You Can Call Me Al,” the video with Chevy Chase.
PAUL SIMON: The act of throwing a ball and catching a ball is so natural and calming. It’s like a Zen exercise, really. It’s a very pleasant feeling if you like playing ball, and while you do it, your mind kind of wanders, and that’s really what you want to happen. You want your mind to wander and to pick up words and phrases, and fool around with them and drop them.
Because as soon as your mind knows that it’s on, and it’s supposed to produce some lines, either it doesn’t or it produces things that are very predictable.
And that’s why I say I’m not interested in writing something that I thought about; I’m interested in discovering where my mind wants to go or what object it wants to pick up.
[The mind] always picks up on something true. You’ll find out much more about what you’re thinking that way than you will if you’re determined to say something. What you’re determined to say is filled with all your rationalizations and your defenses, and all of that what you want to say to the world. As opposed to what you’re thinking.
And as a lyricist, my job is to find out what it is that I’m thinking. Even if it’s something that I don’t want to be thinking.
I was trying to learn how to be able to write vernacular speech and then intersperse it with enriched language, and then go back to vernacular. So the thing would go along smoothly, then some image would come out that was interesting, then it would go back to this very smooth conversational thing. That was a technique that I was learning.
It didn’t have anything to do with logic or anything; I don’t know where it came from. But on Hearts and Bones, there’s more of that. “[“Rene & Georgette] Magritte” has more of that. “Hearts and Bones” is more of that.
“A Train in the Distance” is in itself that kind of speech: “Everybody loves the sound of a train in the distance; everybody thinks it’s true.” That is imagery, and that’s the title.
So by the time I got to Graceland, I was trying to let that kind of enriched language flow naturally in the course of it, so that you wouldn’t really notice it as much.
I think in Hearts and Bones, you could feel it was coming. Whereas in Graceland, I tried to do it where you wouldn’t notice it, where you sort of passed the line and then it was over. To let the words tumble this way and that way, and sometimes I’d increase the rhythm of the words so that they would come by you and then when a phrase was sort of different and came by you so quickly that all you could get was the feeling.
So I started to try and work with more feelings around with words because the sound of the record was so good, you could move feelings.
“You Can Call Me Al” starts very ordinary, almost like a joke; like the structure of a joke cliche; “There’s a rabbi, a minister and a priest….” “Two Jews walk into a bar…” “A man walks down the street…” That’s what I was doing there.
Because how you begin a song is one of the hardest things. The first line of a song is very hard. I always have this image in my mind of a road that goes like this: [motions with hands to signify a road that starts narrow and gets wider as it opens out], so that the implication is that the directions are pointing outward.]
It’s like a baseball diamond; there’s more and more space out here as opposed to like [motions an inverted road growing more narrow], because if it’s like this at this point in the song, you’re out of options.
So you want to have that first line that has a lot of options to get you going. And the other thing that I try to remember, especially if a song is long, is: You have plenty of time. You don’t have to **** them; you don’t have to grab them by the throat with the first line
In fact, you have to wait for the audience. They’re going to sit down, get settled in their seat. Their concentration is not even there. You have to be a good host to people’s attention span. You’re not going to come in there and work real hard right away. Too many things are coming; the music is coming, the rhythm is coming; all kinds of information that the brain is sorting out
“You Can Call Me Al,” Live in Central Park with Chevy Chase.
So give them easy words and easy thoughts and let it move along, and let the mind get into the groove of it. Especially if it’s a rhythm tune.
And at a certain point, when the brain is loping along easily, then you come up with the first kind of thought or image that’s different. Because it’s entertaining at that point. Otherwise people haven’t settled in yet.
So “You Can Call Me Al” is an example of that kind of writing. It starts off very easily with sort of a joke: “Why am I soft in the middle when the rest of my life is so hard?” It’s a joke, with very easy words.
Then it has a chorus that you can’t understand what is he talking about – “You can call me Betty, and Betty, you can call Me Al.” You don’t know what I’m talking about, but I don’t think it’s bothersome. You don’t know what I’m talking about, but neither do I, at that point.
The second verse is really a recapitulation of the first: A man walks down the street he says… another thing. And by the time you get to the third verse, and people have been into the song long enough, now you can start to throw abstract images. Because there’s been a structure, and those abstract images, they will just come down and fall into one of the slots that the mind has already made up about the structure of the song.
The guy in the third verse thinks, “Maybe it’s the third world, maybe it’s his first time around…” I thought it was interesting to combine what was on my mind with that music. I thought it would be interesting to an African audience, if they could get to the point of hearing it. And they did, once the album became a big hit.
So now you have this guy who’s no longer thinking about the mundane thoughts, about whether he’s getting too fat, whether he needs a photo opportunity or whether he’s afraid of the dogs in the moonlight and the graveyard, and he’s off in: “Listen to the sound, look what’s going on… there’s cattle and scatterlings…
And these sounds are very fantastic. And look at the buildings – there’s angels in the architecture.
And that’s the end of the song. It goes “phooomp,” and that’s the end.
Oct 26, 2020
Oct 26, 2020 at 4:13 AM UTC
Old friends two bookends
Catching fish and memories
On a river bank
Sep 7, 2020
Sep 7, 2020 at 3:36 PM UTC
Why Newton would tell you not to wear a seat belt
Going two miles-per-hour you’ll hurt yourself casually,
But if you add a zero to that you will be hurt incredibly.
Fine day we’re having, sure but the roads do look nasty.
No i’m sure it’ll be fine. But little did they know
their brains are soon to look like,
Well, dead brains.
Speeding two-zero-miles-per-hour,
Then in a flash, hearing scorn from Simon Cowl.
They’re in hell now,
Feeling very dead now.
This poem is deteriorating.
But it still rhymes.
So entertaining.
Jan 31, 2019
Jan 31, 2019 at 3:20 PM UTC
Paul and his friend once said
"The rock feels no pain".
Yet, without mallet or hammer
the rock,
was smashed with forked tongue
and I wonder . . .
was it Art?
Kaydee.
Dec 13, 2018
Dec 13, 2018 at 6:22 AM UTC
Driven by animal instincts
Reminds me yet again
I can no longer daydream
I am no longer human
I forgot the different colours of the leaves
I cannot dream this nightmare away
I cannot see colour in darkness
In the moonlight, they all look the same
I can run faster, I can jump higher
Even then, I cannot escape
I am stuck in the world of the living
An endless, ageless fate
I belong on the other side
I naively hoped the afterlife was better
But dying was more peaceful than this
I didn't choose the path to forever
Oct 21, 2018
Oct 21, 2018 at 1:47 AM UTC
“quo vadis, domine?”
i. you’re saint peter on a cross,
hung upside-down, staring at the
bright blue and if your arms
weren’t pinned to rotting wood
you’d reach out—
(petrus, dear petrus, why
hast thou forsaken me?)
there’s iron in your grip,
fingers curled in supplication
as you, the fisherman from Bethsaida,
bears only his own sins
the pain fades for a moment
under the sunlight and
you’d smile if your lips didn’t bleed
at the harsh stretch of skin
they poke your side with a spear,
but only red pours out and the
barren ground below you will receive
no nourishment
you are no god, no holy deity
walking to and fro amongst mortals
(O’ you of little faith, why did you doubt?)
martyr, martyr they’ll chime with each
bell toll, thousands of years from now—
long after your body has perished in
the valley between ***** and Gomorrah
you are simon peter, the betrayer, the liar, the
coward
you are oh so human, and the world will
never forgive you for it
bedrock, they’ll call you, and mean it
you’ll be hailed a saint and people will kiss
your bronze image, dust oil against leaden
feet and imagine that your gaze is not fixed
solemnly to the earth
(now, nothing but a false idol to some,
draped in velvet and handed a crown—
the rooster crows, and so god too will
denounce your existence)
Sep 24, 2017
Sep 24, 2017 at 9:38 PM UTC
my dogs has no arms ***** he dont no what 2 do
my dog flys a hummer and he doesnt know better
i get that the floor will turn to fight or flight syndrome
or is that just my dioxyribosenucleic acid acting up?
trump once was alive and he still is
there will be a large war with math and words
and when down will fall bombs
my dog will be the only one left
my dog with no arms
May 18, 2017
May 18, 2017 at 3:57 PM UTC
When Simon was born,
He had a rare syndrome,
The Treacher Colin one.
It included missing ears,
And condescending from it,
Were the missing years.
But he had his luck shining,
He met Vicky on sign language classes,
That he attended as he is challenged.
Even though Simon can not hear,
He heard Vicky's heart beat for him,
And both of them had a baby.
Unluckily, the baby has TCS as well,
But we must take time to appreciate,
Time & love the parents dedicate.
They named the daughter Alice,
So beautiful and healthy she is,
For Simon's burning wounds she is the ice.
Especially Simon Moore is careful,
Careful that his daughter is happy,
So she doesn't get the missing years,
A tough road lies ahead with missing ears.
Mar 20, 2017
Mar 20, 2017 at 10:45 AM UTC
I have mastered this at a very young age
Trust me, darling, I feel no pain
You think you're cooler than me
Well I think you're strange
You think you have life figured out and that yo are going to go far
Well guess what ? I hate you now and I egged your car
Your smile is a very sweet one but when you open it to talk at me I want to delete you out of my life
He was taking photos of me and now you're trying to become his wife
You feel like an ancient queen so here's my advice
Ready for it?
Just die.
Dec 6, 2016
Dec 6, 2016 at 12:11 AM UTC
[[[poem based on some of my virtual friends' wall posts and statuses from pages that I follow. Randomised. Mixed.]]]
The year was Poptastic!
And Rolling Stone crowned Bob Dylan the greatest songwriter of all time.
It’s alright, Ma (I’m only scrolling)
I get so awkward when I eat in front of people
But I have no problem understanding why an intern would live in a tent.
Sarajevo here I come!
A series of explosions killed at least 50 people and left 700 injured.
Do you ever miss yourself?
The person you were before you had your first heartbreak or before you got betrayed by a person you trusted?
It’s amazing to finally feel right. The real blue's inside
This thought is from last year... but still relevant.
Your Life Will Be ****** into an Awful Black Hole
But you still have a beautiful night to spend with friends;
Great night! Emily we will miss you!
“The moment was all; the moment was enough.” V.W
You know? It's a terrible waste of your life, making movies –
Maybe you should reconsider time.
Want to book Pharrell? You'll need a picture of Carl Sagan. Really!
Photos on memory cards can survive more than you may think.
If you could choose what your life would be like, what would you pick?
Did you ever consider failure as an option?
Take a look inside this thought: Inge Morath, "Gypsies dancing in a camp near Catesiphon", Iraq, 1956, black and white blue eyes.
These kids were playing in the dust and mud because the schools were too far away.
So with nothing but his own time, this store manager decided to be their school.
How quantum computing works — and why it could change everything:
Things just don't grow if you don't bless them with your patience.
5 minutes of inspiration: This is how a living legend thinks about photographing the world.
As we expect more from technology, do we expect less from each other?
I just can’t be away from her, she’s the finest woman in the world
Keep on playing those mind games forever, raising the spirit of peace and love, not war, (I want you to make love, not war, I know you've heard it before)...
Solid proof that having kids is frankly terrifying.
You should remember this:
No matter how complex, no matter how unique, your passwords can no longer protect you!
I would say all the allegations aren't true — some of them are.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEEQWPfjv1U
Aug 26, 2015
Aug 26, 2015 at 4:37 AM UTC
By Simon & Garfunkel
I’d rather be a sparrow than a snail
Yes, I would
If I could
I surely would
I’d rather be a hammer than a nail
Yes, I would
If I only could
I surely would
Away, I’d rather sail away
Like a swan that’s here and gone
A man gets tied up to the ground
He gives the world its saddest sound
Its saddest sound
I’d rather be a forest than a street
Yes, I would
If I could
I surely would
I’d rather feel the earth beneath my feet
Yes, I would
If I only could
I surely would
Jan 25, 2015
Jan 25, 2015 at 12:26 AM UTC
Sitting solid on a thinking throne
Drinking bottles that sing melancholy tones
Singing lone, resonating to your bones
Your fragile little frame cannot save the show
Not when you're casting skys clouding with crows
Your mind is pale, sick to it's stomach
Everything up there can't reconcile, but luck
It's begun to resonate quietly like a comets tail
When your playing on mental jungle gyms of shale
I'm sure there's things that keep you up
Drugs, and alcohol, and fasting all day
A cyclical belt of asteroid tales
You think so much you've burnt an image
Of cotton dreams, so soft and harsh, but somehow sail
You may never grasp them, but you've reached so far you've become so frail
It's hard to try, it's even harder to pry
Open your heart, and let yourself cry
The castles you build are built of tears, and the cemetery near is calling your fears
The foundation is weak, and your pastor you seek, but everything you've found thus far, oblique
Cast your shadows as you will, but they're just funny puppets you've conjured in the night still
May 7, 2014
May 7, 2014 at 1:36 AM UTC
Sleep.
Sleep child,
til' the light overpowers the darkness inside,
where I secretly cried.
I secretly tried,
but no one would guess,
and I never put my cards face up.
It's only ketchup.
Used to patch up,
the cut and scratch ups,
caused by the dull
of my pencil,
and my soul.
I fell,
but I dragged myself up again,
back into my daily skin,
and I'm that burden.
That one whose not fully there,
told by everyone, "you just don't care",
with a random shudder scare.
The words I despise you all think,
even the shrink,
and it drowns me to the sink.
I'm that disaster,
everyone's after,
maniacal laughter.
"Am I losing my mind?"
"Is this mind really mine?"
"Would dying be fine?"
I'm not so refined :)
I can see the things in perfect imagery,
things I don't want to see,
always worried everyone hates me.
I can't see,
I'm not me,
I'm not even a somebody.
Maybe inside is some other ghost,
I'm the host,
at my death let's just have a toast.
Til' death do we part,
take it as a new start,
buy the roses to my grave from walmart.
I didn't think I mattered anyways,
sleeping through these pass-me-by days,
my mind playing simon says.
I always secretly try,
but I am still I,
and now simon says ".....goodbye."
Feb 15, 2014
Feb 15, 2014 at 9:32 PM UTC
Simon
I'm a rock
I'm not sure the things I was before
Or the could and would of it all
But i know surely that now I'm a rock
And I like it like it were mine
Because it is now
This rockiness
Has become the me inside of mes me, yes I am here
It is me?
This time Henry, simon is what I meant
It's about you, its about you
And coming undone
But as you find me in the whirlwind
In the marriage that lasts for 35 years
The having a kid or drowning of such kid
Of the yacht set to sea in the highest of marsh, of dune.
It's land I see!
A rock a rock
And not much more
Apr 10, 2014
Apr 10, 2014 at 6:45 PM UTC