Old friends: how terribly strange to be seventy
Simon and Garfunkel have had their share of ups and downs.
They met as 6th graders at PS 164 in Queens (oh, those ever-so-creatively-named New York City public schools! I went to one of them myself.) They teamed up as Tom and Jerry in 1957 (no, not these guys), became mega-famous in the mid-60s, broke up in 1970, but have performed together off and on in the decades since.
Here they are close to the beginning, practically babies. They seem a little subdued, don’t they? And so does the audience:
The following video was mislabeled “2011,” but it’s really a concert in New York’s Madison Square Garden in 2009. Older, and wiser? The purity of the Garfunkel voice is somewhat diminished, but what’s lost in clarity may be made up for in extra layers of meaning. And the audience seems a good deal more into it:
Well, the leaves that are green turn to brown, and Paul Simon turned 70 last October, Art Garfunkel a couple of weeks later.
Here they are around the age of forty, imagining what it might be like to be seventy. How terribly strange:
And here they are again, with little left to the imagination anymore (this was in 2009, so they were both probably 68 years old):
Memory brushes the same years,
Silently sharing the same fears.
Time it was, oh what a time it was, it was,
A time of innocence, a time of confidences.
Long ago, it must be…I have a photograph.
Preserve your memories, they’re all that’s left you.
Thanks to YouTube, we’ve got a lot more than memories.
(Hat tip: commenter “davisbr.”)
[ADDENDUM: For those of you not inclined to follow the link above on the words “leaves that are green turn to brown,” I couldn’t resist posting that video here as well:
I was twenty-one years when I wrote this song,
I’m twenty-two now, but I won’t be for long.
Time hurries on…]
Depressing in the extreme.
I was ^never^ going to be as old as my grandfather . . . and now I suddenly am, and getting older fast.
Depressing.
When I was living in Berserkeley, I had a passing acquaintance with someone who claimed to have informally played music with Simon and Garfunkel back when they were PS or high school students in NYC. I believe it was before S&G formed Tom and Jerry, as I recall his saying that S&G had invited him to join in a group with them, which he declined for whatever reason.
One never knows if that was BS or not. The passing acquaintance was a New Yorker of a similar age to S&G, and he did play the guitar, which would not have disproved his claim re S&G.
From the power of Google: I found out the passing acquaintance had a second career as a schoolteacher, with an emphasis on math.
I recall one of their albums had a picture of them in what was likely a deserted subway platform. With the jeans, the boots, the peacoats, the solemn look.
I think the name of the album was Wednesday Morning, Three AM.
I also recall that somebody or other said that three o’clock in the morning is the dark night of the soul.
Perfect picture for the way we were supposed to be thinking at that point, as I did, from time to time.
And military types are encouraged to attack at the point, on the presumption that the enemy’s cognitive processes are at their lowest, being tied up with their dark night, or at least thoughts of home.
It seems that when we’re young, our frame of reference is an unwritten future, but when we’re older that frame of reference is our immutable past.
Coincidence. I watched Catch-22 on Netflix last night. Arthur Garfunkel was cast as Captain Nately.
I will say that if you are of a certain age, you will have had an almost Kerry-esque “seared-in” memory of where you were the first time you heard Sound of Silence. I certainly do. I was 15 years old in 1966, in a record store at Lenox Square here in Atlanta. It was haunting then, it’s haunting now. I had no idea until just now (when I checked Wikipedia) that it was about the JFK assassination. For me that kind of ruins it; heretofore I had always thought it was just a heavily existential, Zen-like piece. Odd how a mere 10 years’ age difference makes on the human scale: I was just a teenager digging a cool tune. These guys were already old enough to be doing politics…. It always comes down to the politics; I wonder why that is? Tribalism or sheer animalism?
My Teenage girlfriend and I would sit and listen to S&G in her parents (nicely appointed) basement and be all romantic ans $hit. It was the best of times.
Yep, carl, crazy stupid and completely subjective lyrics as the later “musicians” discovered can be foisted on a crazy stupid and completely subjective (subjugated) cowherd:
http://www.lyricsfreak.com/r/red+hot+chili+peppers/give+it+away_20114705.html
(Hint: Go to the ending for the big give away.)
Meanwhile, there is a simple, muscular, and powerful antidote:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnztMhtUF6o
Thank God for the fine arts!
M J R: these words are for you.
I have found a way because of you:
when the way required much of me.
but for you, I could not, would not be.
Though I have gone, I have not forgot,
love expressed in your eloquent eyes.
See me, Love, in each and new Sunrise.
Curtis:
I don’t seem to be tuned in, but I certainly appreciate the thought. I will continue to ponder. Thank you.
M J R
carl in atlanta: I ain’t gonna take S&G’s word for what the song’s about!
I went to the Wiki entry to see what you were referring to, and it just says there that the song was written after JFK’s assassination. I’m not sure that means it’s what it’s about, though. There’s really nothing in the lyrics that suggests it.
I apologize as I am the world’s worst anaylst. But I could not let a fellow make quite the conclusion you did regarding getting old, which is a privilege and no harm. I figured something must have arrested the joy of aging, the joy of becoming perfect wine.
You forced me to it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKG1HCoQ1LY&feature=related
“Parsley Sage Rosemary and Thyme” was the first record album I ever bought, when I was 12 or so. I bought it in a Grant’s store someplace in the D.C. suburbs; I think it might have cost me two or three dollars, brand new. (Remember Grant’s, that long-gone predecessor to Caldor, Ames, and finally Wal-Mart?) I was struck by the haunting, ethereal voices, the harmonies, and what seemed to me then the sophistication and worldliness of songs like “The Dangling Conversation.” (Don’t laugh. I was 12!)
A few years later I remember hearing them sing “How terribly strange to be seventy,” and thinking, well, of course it is strange, far too strange to imagine.
Now — well, time hurries on. I’m not seventy yet, but it isn’t so hard to imagine getting there any more. But M J R, that’s not necessarily so depressing. Think of the folks who didn’t make it to seventy, the ones who would have given anything to get grey hair and wrinkles in the mirror, celebrate a birthday with a cake too small to hold all those candles, hold a grandchild, or just sit on a bench with a good friend and remember.