![]() Yet Cohen and Bowie each knew an end was imminent. It would be tempting to compare “Seven Psalms” to Leonard Cohen’s “You Want It Darker” or David Bowie’s “Blackstar,” two albums, both from 2016, that tussle with mortality. Or maybe he’s simply suggesting that faith-in the world, in ourselves-is always within reach. He could be saying that, although Christianity is not foolproof, it’s close enough. It may be an allusion to Pope Paul VI holding Mass at Yankee Stadium, in 1965. Perhaps he’s making a point about how religion is inextricably stitched into the cultural fabric of America. Perhaps Simon is suggesting that we’re capable of locating God in anything we love, including baseball. The final line of the verse can be read in several ways. In 1968, Simon & Garfunkel released “America,” a haunting song about being young, bewildered, and hungry:Īnd we said, “These songs are true These days are ours These tears are free,” And hey The cross is in the ballpark “I can just about hear it, but I can’t quite. “I’m looking for the edge of what you can hear,” he says. ![]() For Simon, the riddle of his work-why, for example, a toy harmonica might sound better than a grand piano, or a major chord might do something a minor chord can’t-runs parallel to his spiritual quest. In it, Simon talks about making music as reaching for something that might not be reachable it might not even exist. Simon is not explicit about what might have happened, but it seems he was left in a state of earnest wondering.Ī trailer for the release of “Seven Psalms” includes footage from “In Restless Dreams,” a forthcoming documentary. People who have endured a major loss-the real deal-often speak about feeling reborn in its wake. Partway through the verse, an elegant guitar figure is punctuated by a crash, signalling a moment of transformation. I lived a life of pleasant sorrows Until the real deal came Broke me like a twig in a winter gale Called me by my name “The Lord is my engineer / The Lord is the earth I ride on, ” he sings on “The Lord.” He returns to the construction in a refrain, finding the sacred everywhere and nowhere: Simon has described the piece as “an argument I’m having with myself about belief-or not.” Over and over, he imagines a divine presence, and then interrogates its borders. “I’m not a doctor or a preacher / I’ve no particular guiding star,” he sings on “My Professional Opinion.” Instead, “Seven Psalms” is focussed on a more expansive, open-ended notion of God. In interviews, he has been adamant about the fact that his cosmology is not organized. When it comes to the fallibility of the body and the enigma of the spirit, Simon, who is Jewish, does not seem beholden to any one world view. “Seven Psalms” is a series of hymns, but somehow it feels imprecise to call the piece religious. ![]() Despite being a songwriting virtuoso, Simon tends toward understatement, and his lack of vocal histrionics can make his music seem unusually (and deceptively) effortless. ![]() His long discography contains threads of sorrow (“Hello darkness, my old friend,” the gloomy opening line of “The Sound of Silence,” from 1964, has been adopted as a meme), but just as many moments of levity and gratification. Simon’s soft, neighborly voice has yet to be shredded by age or hard living, and its sustained tenderness makes me feel as though everything is going to be O.K. It’s a beautiful, mysterious record, composed of a single, thirty-three-minute acoustic track divided into seven movements. This month, Simon, who is eighty-one, released “Seven Psalms,” his fifteenth solo album. Simon started trying to make sense of what he was being told. Some messages are more urgent than others. Songwriters often speak about their work as a kind of channelling-the job is to be a steady antenna, prepared to receive strange signals. From then on, Simon periodically woke between 3:30 and 5 A. On January 15, 2019, Paul Simon dreamed that he was working on a piece called “Seven Psalms.” He got out of bed and scribbled the phrase-alliterative, ancient-feeling-into a spiral notebook.
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