Paul Simon Says

I'm accustomed to a smooth ride

Or maybe I'm a dog who's lost its bite...

The Obvious Child
-By Paul Simon

Musical interpretation isn't my forte and I have little time for the death of the author but I can’t resist reflecting on this beautifully profound song. 

           When I was a teenager a friend of mind, Mitchell Stevens, gave me a mixed tape (remember those) that he got from his sister. It was the first time I heard the song. I listened to it over and over. I loved the afro-latin beat and Simon’s sincere voice. Now, fifteen years later, another friend asked me if I had every heard a song called Obvious Child. “Yeah, man I loved that song when I was a high school,” I said. We looked it up on Youtube and listened to the song a couple of times. Later, I pulled up the song on iTunes and bought it. Best $1.29 I ever spent. 

          The song captivates me. But, why?…why has this song, from so long ago, touched me so deeply? These are my thoughts:

          I AM accustomed to a smooth ride. I’m from the most comfortable and accommodating culture on the plant. But now living in lands not my own I'm treated like a fool. I seem foolish; language after language I have lived, never mastering one. Thirty-one years and I still speak to my friends with the vocabulary and diction of a five-year old. I have gotten used to being laughed at. Pregnant wife, two-year old son, chickens, dogs, cows, guns, 400 square-foot house…I don’t expect to sleep through the night (the story of my life in song.) 
           In a world of LIES, we have become blasé to the effects and destruction of those lies—our lies. Broken hearts, peace agreements, borders, churches, cultures, skulls. Why deny what we are doing to ourselves? What’s the point of putting our head in the sand? We don’t like to remember pain, so we take the road sign towards more happy thoughts and ignore the lie. 

          For a time, we have youth with its pleasure and naïvety–the good days. But the lies are rarely faced and thus passed on to the next generation. Youthfulness with all its distractions, eventually times-out and we find ourselves wrestling with the lies we inherited from our parents. We are the children of the 70's generation who are represented in Sonny who awakes to an empty adulthood as so many of us have. 

          Sonny follows the pattern of his father and tries to relive the ignorance, which is the blessing of youth. But the yearbook provides little comfort. He can’t escape the lies. Some of friends are dead and others tried to escape their lies. Sonny runs his hands through his thinning hair and quotes the words of his father and the chorus repeats. The lie as been passed on to another generation. 

Sounds drab.

          Simon wrote the song and left its meaning a mystery. He said the everyone is entitled to their own interpretation. But, he did translate one line. 

The cross is in the ballpark.

He said, The cross is the burden that we carry and it is in the ballpark, it's doable.

          The voice of the prophet reminds us that we can do it. We can carry this heavy load. We'll not be giving an impossible task. And we don't have to succumb to despair. Life is difficult for us all. The older I get the more I see the pain of living. But The cross is in the ballpark. The more pain I see, the more I want to escape into nostalgia. I don't want to face the lies. But I can, The cross is in the ballpark. 

Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?"
-Jesus of Nazareth (Matt 16:24-26)

The Obvious Child
youtube
-By Paul Simon

I'm accustomed to a smooth ride

Or maybe I'm a dog who's lost its bite

I don't expect to be treated like a fool no more

I don't expect to sleep through the night

Some people say a lie's a lie's a lie

But I say why

Why deny the obvious child?

Why deny the obvious child?

And in remembering a road sign

I am remembering a girl when I was young

And we said These songs are true

These days are ours

These tears are free

And hey

The cross is in the ballpark

The cross is in the ballpark

We had a lot of fun

We had a lot of money

We had a little son and we thought we'd call him Sonny

Sonny gets married and moves away

Sonny has a baby and bills to pay

Sonny gets sunnier

Day by day by day by day

I've been waking up at sunrise

I've been following the light across my room

I watch the night receive the room of my day

Some people say the sky is just the sky

But I say

Why deny the obvious child?

Why deny the obvious child?

Sonny sits by his window and thinks to himself

How it's strange that some rooms are like cages

Sonny's yearbook from high school

Is down from the shelf

And he idly thumbs through the pages

Some have died

Some have fled from themselves

Or struggled from here to get there

Sonny wanders beyond his interior walls

Runs his hand through his thinning brown hair

Well I'm accustomed to a smoother ride

Maybe I'm a dog that's lost his bite

I don't expect to be treated like a fool no more

I don't expect to sleep the night

Some people say a lie is just a lie

But I say the cross is in the ballpark

Why deny the obvious child?