My SubConscious Likes to Sing.

Sangre de Cristo

Paul Simon asks me, “What do you like about the song?”

“The intimate conversation that it is...two people w/o walls talking.” I tell him.

He adds: “How about its circular-ness?'”

I respond with a “Huh?”

*****

Dreams are great. You can have major rock stars sit in your living room while you talk to them. This was what I was doing at around 5 am, talking to Paul Simon.

Hearts and Bones, both the song and the album, was a commercial flop in 1983 and signaled the low point in Simon's career. I never really knew of the song till few years ago when it came on a Nantucket radio station I can get if the atmosphere Gods allow it. It's a quiet, typical Simon song that wormed it's way into me.

I don't consider it his best song, not by as longshot. Simon singing about his dying marriage to Carrie Fisher (Princess Leia) just reminds me of her booze swilling, pill-popping life. It doesn't evoke any kind thoughts at all in me. And yet the song still rings to me.

 

One and one-half wandering Jews, free to wander wherever they choose

Are traveling together in the Sangre de Cristo

The Blood of Christ Mountains

Of New Mexico

On the last leg of the journey they started a long time ago

The arc of a love affair

Rainbows in the high desert air

Mountain passes slipping into stones

Hearts and bones

Hearts and bones

Thinking back to the season before

Looking back through the cracks in the door

Two people were married

The act was outrageous

The bride was contagious, she burned like a bride

These events may have had some effect

On the man with the girl by his side

The arc of a love affair

His hands rolling down her hair

Love like lightning shaking till it moans

Hearts and bones

Hearts and bones

And whoa whoa whoa

She said: :"Why...Why don't we drive through the night, we'll wake up down in Mexico."

Oh I "I don't know nothin' about nothin' about no Mexico."

 

 

"And tell me why, why won't you love me for who I am, where I am?"

He said: "Cause that's not the way the world is baby. This is how I love you, baby

This is how I love you, baby"

One and one-half wandering Jews return to their natural coasts

To resume old acquaintances, step out occasionally

And speculate who had been damaged the most

Easy time will determine if these consolations

Will be their reward

 

 

The arc of a love affair

Waiting to be restored

 

You take two bodies and you twirl them into one

Their hearts and their bones

And they won't come undone

 

Hearts and Bones...Hearts and Bones!

 

This song rings with me because because I know exactly what he's talking about. It rings so loud that I dream of it.

The previous bit I wrote about, Peter O'Toole's Venus, came to me because I woke up with Jethro Tull's "Cross Eyed Mary" in my head.

I dream a lot of things...