I should have posted this ages ago. I wrote it, then I didn’t type it up. Read “tonight” as “a week ago”. I suck.
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I’ve had dreams come true. I got into the college of my first choice; I got to drive cross-country, not just once, but twice; I have my own apartment and two fantastic cats; in a more literal sense, I got my current job; and tonight, I got to see Simon & Garfunkel in concert.
I have many childhood memories of lying on the oak floors of my parents’ living room playing Simon & Garfunkel on vinyl from my parents’ adolescence while following along with the lyrics printed in the liner notes. I listened to those records over and over until I knew every word of every song on all five albums. I fell in love with their body of work as a whole, but also with each song individually as one line or another, or the general mood of a song, would feel relevant to my life and inextricably tied to who I am.
Years before I sprawled across the living room floor trying to figure out all the cultural references in “Punky’s Dilemma”, I had walked into the bedroom my newborn sister and I shared with our parents, then stopped at the sound of my father singing my sister to sleep.
Last night I had the strangest dream
I ever dreamed before
I dreamed the world had all agreed
To put an end to war
Admittedly not written by Paul Simon, but I stood in that doorway until my father finished the song, my four-year-old eyes full of tears, and that was probably the beginning.
Their Concert in Central Park happened in September 1981, two months after I was born. By the time I was twelve and dreamt that they came to Lewisberry to put on a show for me, I knew it was likely that Paul & Art would never play together again. I never stopped wishing, though, and tonight was worth the wait.
Though their voices are no longer as clear and sweet as they were 40 years ago, the sheer beauty of Art singing “Kathy’s Song” while Paul gently strummed his guitar from a few steps away moved me to tears. Many songs did, in fact, some for the heartfelt, breathtaking performance, some just because I love the songs so much. I laughed, too, for “Cecilia”, “Mrs. Robinson”, and the final song of the night, “The 59th Street Bridge Song”. Had I read reviews of other shows from this tour, I would have been prepared for their “surprise” guests, but as it was I was truly shocked when Paul introduced their inspiration, The Everly Brothers, and after a few songs Simon & Garfunkel rejoined them on stage for a joint rendition of the hit “Bye Bye Love”. The whole evening was magical and perfect.
I am no musician and cannot give a critical analysis of the performance. But I am a human being and tonight I was alive — as one can be only when dreaming.