Fact #156316

Paul Simon : I wrote my new album Hearts and Bones, in two summers - the summers of 1981 and 1982 - out in Amagansett. The first song I wrote for his new album was Song About the Moon. I was playing that melody, and I didn't have any words.

I was playing the chords to it. What I was really doing was playing an old Sam Cooke song, Bring It On Home to Me. And I was singing it and altering the chords, making substitutions. Instead of making them simpler, I was making them more complex, just for the fun of it. This is one way that people write.

I write from instinct, from an inexplicable sparkle. I don't know why I'm writing what I'm writing. Usually, I sit and I let my hands wander on my guitar. And I sing anything. I play anything. And I wait till I come across a pleasing accidentally. Then I start to develop it. Once you take a piece of musical information, there are certain implications that it automatically contains - the implication of that phrase elongated, contracted, inverted or in other time signature. So you start with an impulse and go to what your ear likes.

Paul Simon (speaking about the song Allergies) : When I finished (talking to my psychiatrist about writer’s block), he said, "I find what you say very interesting and I'd like you to come back and talk some more." then he asked if I'd noticed the guitar in the corner of his living room. I said I had and he said, " Would you like to borrow it and take it with you to your hotel?" So I said, "Yes, sure." And he said, "Maybe you'd like to write about what you've said today." I thought, That's an interesting ploy psychologically; so I said, "All right."

The first night, I never even opened the guitar case. The next day, he asked what had happened, and I said, "You don't understand. It takes me months to write songs." He said, "I only expected you to begin to write a song." I went back to the hotel and I wrote on a piece of paper, "Allergies, maladies / Allergies to dust and grain / Allergies, remedies / Still these allergies remain." Just that, with a melody. Went back the next day really excited about it.

But that didn't make me feel the problem was solved. So we just kept talking about writing. And I said, "My problem is that I really don't see what difference it makes if I write or don't write." He said "Do you want to make a difference ?" And I said I did. He asked if I thought Uncle Tom's cabin made a difference to people. I said yes, and he agreed. Then he said, "I think Bridge Over Troubled Water made a difference to people. I'm interested in working with you, because I think that you can write things that people feel make a difference. That's the reason I want you writing again."

He was able to penetrate someone whose defenses were seemingly impenetrable. He was able to make me feel that I wasn't there to work just for the satisfaction of having a hit but that there was a contribution to be made. Of course, the reason I'd been blocked was that I felt what I did was of absolutely no importance. He was able to say, "I'm telling you that the way to contribute is through your songs. And it's not for you to judge their merits, it's for you to write the songs." For me, that was brilliant - and liberating.

Paul Simon : I have a song on this new album called Train in the Distance. It's very factual about my life. What I discovered in writing recently is that facts, stated without color, are just potential energy. you don't know where they're going to go until you give them a direction. The song starts, "She was beautiful as Southern skies / The night he met her. She was married to someone." That's about Peggy, my first wife. And it's all true. Then it goes, "He was doggedly determined that he would get her/ He was old, he was young." That's me. I was, you know, pretending I was sophisticated. I wasn't . "From time to time, he'd tip his heart / But each time she withdrew." True, all true. All those are just facts. Then I add what is, I think, the artist's job : "Everybody loves the sound of a train in the distance / Everybody thinks it's true." That's not fact anymore. That's comment. I told a story, and then I used the metaphor.

And then I thought, I don't think people are going to understand what I mean when I say, "Everybody loves the sound of a train in the distance / Everybody thinks it's true. " And I don't want to be enigmatic. So I added : "What is the point of this story? What information pertains? / The thought that life could be better is woven indelibly into our hearts and our brains." And what was my writer's point of view. That's we've survived by believing our life is going to get better. And I happened to use the train metaphor because I was sitting in a friend's house near a railway station, and I heard a train. And I said, "Oooh, that's nice." There's something about the sound of a train that's very romantic and nostalgic and hopeful. Anyway, I guess my point is that facts can be turned into art if one is artful enough.
(Source : not known)