When I first listened to Paul Simon's most recent album, Seven Psalms, I was struck by its prayerful tone, imagery and themes. It is a deeply spiritual piece of music.
The Lord is my engineer
The Lord is the earth I ride on
The Lord is the face in the atmosphere
The path I slip and slide on
Wow, I thought. Where did this come from?
I've been a lifelong fan of Paul Simon but Seven Psalms caused me to revisit his music catalog to see if this album represented something new, or if it were an evolution of themes he had been developing for years.
So I went back to the early Simon and Garfunkel albums. Their first record, Wednesday Morning, 3 AM, included the megahit, “The Sound of Silence.”
Hello darkness my old friend
I've come to talk with you again.
Paul confronts the void. This song reminded me of St. John of the Cross's dark night of the soul.
And the people bowed and prayed to the neon god they made…
And the sign said the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls, tenement halls.
And whispered in the sounds of silence.
To experience truth, we must confront the void and see what is false around us. Paul sees the illusions others hold on to, and looks for truth on the margins, in the graffiti on a subway wall. In a world of noise and distraction, silence is a spiritual practice. The song reminded me of the soul's need to enter liminal space.
Then I came across “Blessed” on his next album. In this song, Paul riffs on themes from the Beatitudes (Matthew 5: 3-10).
Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit…
He repeats this powerful line from Psalm 22, Mark 15:34, and Matthew 27:46:
O Lord, why have you forsaken me?
On “7 O'Clock News/Silent Night,” from Parsley, Sage Rosemary and Thyme, Paul and Art sing Silent Night, a song about Jesus's birth. In the background, we can hear a TV reporter sharing the news of the day, including the escalating war in Vietnam, and the murder of eight student nurses in Chicago by a mass murderer. Their beatific voices contrast with the horrors of the evening news.
By this point, it occurred to me that Paul Simon is truly a spiritual seeker, someone eager to look for meaning beyond his own life experience. Paul grew up in a Jewish household, but in his songs, he draws from a variety of cultures and religious traditions, including Christianity.
After the breakup of Simon and Garfunkel, in his solo career, Paul became less direct and more oblique, a master of wordplay and double meanings. Rather than address a subject straight on, as he did in “Blessed” or “Sounds of Silence,” he gives us a glance, or a hint. For example, in his megahit “Graceland,” he travels with his son to visit Elvis's mansion, Graceland. He is searching for healing after heartbreak. Graceland means something greater than an old building outside of Memphis. He sings:
But I've reason to believe
That will all will be received
In Graceland
In Paul's later albums, from Surprise to Seven Psalms, I find spiritual themes to be very present and the language to be more direct. In “Wartime Prayers” from Surprise, he sings:
But everybody knows, all about hard times,
The thing is what are you gonna do?
Well, you cry and try to muscle through,
And try to rearrange your stuff,
But when the wounds are deep enough
And it's all that we can bear
We wrap ourselves in prayer.
In 2012, the Christian Century took note of the overt spirituality in his next album, So Beautiful or So What. The author mentions an Irish blogger who considered the record to be “the best Christian album of 2011.”
In the three albums of original songs leading up to Seven Psalms, I found numerous songs that reference spiritual themes . Many express wonder and gratitude for the beauty that surround us, and trust in God's abiding love. Several express empathy and shared humanity for people who are homeless and displaced.
These songs are filled with evocative language and striking images, too many to include in this short blog. So let me wrap up by sharing a few more lines from the closing song of Seven Psalms.
The Lord is a virgin forest
The Lord is a forest ranger
The Lord is a meal for the poorest
A welcome door to the stranger….
Life is a meteor
Let your eyes roam
Heaven is beautiful
It's almost like home
Children! Get ready
It's time to come home.