American Tune

I was born in Connecticut, in a small town near New Haven, and I lived there until I was six. We lived in an apartment; in the converted second floor of an old house, not in an apartment building. My parents didn't like the landlord. In fact, it wasn't until I was a bit older that I realized that "landlord" wasn't an insult.

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My memories of that place are of course very vague, but I do remember a few things. The house had a big yard, with trees and a stone wall that was covered with ivy and moss or something. We played out there every day. My sister and I liked the fuzzy caterpillars that hung out on the stone wall.

I got pneumonia the winter that I was in kindergarten, and I remember spending all day, for several days, in my mother's bed. Like most parents at that time, my parents didn't allow the children to play in their bedroom, so I remember feeling very privileged to be allowed in there, especially in the giant bed.

My mom had a radio in the bedroom, and I remember hearing "Sounds of Silence" over and over again as I slept and woke. "Sounds of Silence" was released in 1965, so I don't know why the radio station was playing it so frequently in 1970. Maybe it was about Vietnam. I don't remember that I understood anything about Vietnam when I was five; I just remember that I knew that Vietnam was something that grownups talked about. Or maybe I only heard the song once and remember hearing it over and over. I was five.

My parents' marriage was troubled, and they divorced. I barely remember my father. He left and I never saw or heard from him again. We moved to Philadelphia, my mother's hometown, when I was six. My mother used to take us there to visit her family; we took the train from New Haven, because my parents had only one car. On one of these trips, my mother had the three of us children and herself in two seats. My brother, a baby at the time, was on her lap; and my sister and I, who were probably five and four, shared a seat. The train was full of mostly young people. I remember the train ride.

Apparently (this part I don't really remember), I asked my mother if the young people across the aisle from us were hippies. And apparently, the hippies heard me, and thought I was hilarious, and they entertained my sister and me for the rest of the trip. One of the boys had a guitar--that part, I do remember. I don't remember what songs he played, but I think of the train ride every time I hear "Scarborough Fair (Canticle)," so maybe he played that. Or maybe that song is just another hard-wired memory of my early childhood during the Vietnam War, riding trains to the city that would become my home.

Our first few months in Philadelphia were confusing. We lived with my grandparents, whose tiny three-bedroom rowhouse barely accommodated them, my youngest aunt (who was 8 at the time), and their German schnauzer, Toby. I slept on a cot in my aunt's bedroom. My mother, sister, and brother slept in the spare bedroom, which had a trundle bed. My mother worked during the day and was unhappy when she was home, and my grandmother was overwhelmed, having quadrupled the number of young children in her house.

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I'm watching old episodes of "The Office" as I'm writing this. Two separate Chewy.com commercials feature two different white women of about my age. Both women have shoulder-length wavy blondish hair and they both wear stretch jeans and long open cardigans. It's like they screen-tested two different actresses and then just decided, "what the hell, we like both of them."

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Soon enough, my mother found us a place to live--another rowhouse less than a mile from my grandparents' house. She got a car, and I started school at St. John the Baptist, where she had also gone to school, and we settled in to life in Philadelphia, and I grew up there.

Before the days of Apple Music and Pandora, kids listened to the radio. Kids still listen to the radio, because there's nothing like the random serendipity of just hearing your favorite song while you're driving along. It's even better when you're in a car full of people who love the same song, and you can all sing along together. In 1973, "Kodachrome" was one of those songs, and not just because we got a bad word pass on the word "crap" when we sang along with Paul Simon. I loved "Loves Me Like a Rock" even more than "Kodachrome," but "Kodachrome" is the song that recalls my childhood, like a photograph, like my mother's Instamatic, like the Fotomats that occupied every other street corner in Philadelphia.

I didn't think much about Paul Simon after 1973 or so, until 1979, when we sang "Sounds of Silence" at my first high school choir concert. I remembered it, and I dug out my mother's old Paul Simon and Simon and Garfunkel records, and then I was a fan all over again.

A few years later, I was out of college (not finished, but out) and working as a proofreader for an old-fashioned offset printing company. I was 21, with the wrong job and the wrong man and the wrong apartment in a very wrong neighborhood. Not gonna lie, as they say on the Internet: My life was a bit of a mess.

I was at a party one night, and the TV was on, tuned to "Saturday Night Live." Paul Simon was the musical guest (and maybe he was the host, too).  I went out and bought "Graceland" the next day, just so I could listen to "Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes" a  hundred more times. There are lots of albums that I really love, but "Graceland" is the one that I know best. I could sing every single word of that album. That's not a threat, just a statement of fact.

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In another of my favorite songs, "The Cool Cool River," from the 1991 "Rhythm of the Saints," Paul Simon sings "Sometimes, even music cannot substitute for tears."

But sometimes, it can. Music has substituted for tears for me more times than I can count, and no one's music more than Paul Simon's, which I have listened to for literally as long as I can remember and even longer. I probably heard it "Wednesday Morning 3 AM" in the womb.

Tonight is the last date on the "Homeward Bound" farewell tour. Who knows what "farewell" really means--lots of artists and athletes "retire" only to return a month or a year later. And last Friday night, when I finally got to see him live for the very first time, he sounded great. So maybe he'll perform live again--maybe he'll even tour again. But I'm glad I was there, last tour or not. I'm glad I got to share over 50 years of music with 40,000 or so of my closest friends, many of whom weren't even alive when even "Graceland" or "The Rhythm of the Saints" were first released, let alone "The Sounds of Silence" or "There Goes Rhymin' Simon." I bought a t-shirt, and then I bought another one. I can still hear the music, a week later. I've been hearing it for my entire life.