Monday, October 10, 2011

Hearts and Bones

Before we get into the song, it is important to note some dates. The song was copyrighted 1982, and the album on which it appeared was released in 1983. Paul Simon married his second wife, actor/author Carrie Fisher, in 1983, and they divorced in 1984, one month shy of their first anniversary. (True, they had dated since 1977, but still.)

So, while it is tempting to say that the song is about this couple and the dissolution of their marriage, Simon wrote it before they were married and released it before they were divorced. So it's about some other couple, or an imaginary one. Either that, or Simon predicted the ending of the marriage before he even proposed.

The opening line certainly lends itself to the speculation that the subjects are Simon and Fisher. Simon is Jewish; Fisher is Jewish on her father's side, which some count as only being "half Jewish," since Judaism is traditionally a matrilineal (passed down through the mother's side) religion.

The couple, whomever they are, are "free to wander wherever they choose" (which may be a riff on the idea of the "wandering Jew," and perhaps even the idea of the Jews being "the chosen people.") But then, during a trip to New Mexico, they choose differently from one another. (The Latinate guitars and drums of the region are heard throughout the song.)

It is significant that they are in the Sangre de Christo mountains. As the song itself explains, the range is named for the blood of Jesus, the ultimate martyr. Someone here feels that they are sacrificing themselves.

The journey is supposed to be ending; it's on its "last leg." The "arc" of their relationship is compared to a "rainbow," which is both beautiful and illusory. They are "high" in the mountains, where the air is thin and hallucinations are possible. Also, while there must have been rain for there to be rainbows, the area is a "desert" and bereft of the practical needs to sustain life. "Mountain passes," or pre-cut trails, are also becoming "stone," and more difficult to navigate. As pretty as things appear superficially, they are in fact bad and getting worse.

Then the man begins to wonder when the trouble started. He recalls a wedding that was somewhat scandalous-- "The act was outrageous"-- and the bride may have gone through with the wedding even though she was ill. She was "contagious," and she "burned" with a fever.

Either that, or her fervor caused his girlfriend, with whom he is travelling now, to catch the wedding bug: "These events may have had some effect/ On the man with the girl by his side." Wait, what was the effect on him? Did her passion stir his, in turn? "His hands rolling down her hair/ Love like lightning, shaking till it moans," is a very evocative phrasing (and it's better than what Simon came up with in "How the Heart Approaches": "I roll in your arms/ And your voice is the heat of the night/ I'm on fire.")

And then a question from her jerks our man back to now. They are already in New Mexico, so she asks him; "Why don’t we drive through the night? We’ll wake up down in Mexico.” After all, they are "free to wander," and Mexico is just across the border.

The next bit of the conversation is muddled, at least for me. This is how I have always heard it go:

She: "Why don't we... wake up down in Mexico?"
He: "I don't know nothin' about no Mexico. And tell me why won’t you love me for who I am, where I am?”
She: “'Cause that’s not the way the world is, baby. This is how I love you, baby."

To me, this makes sense. She says, let's go. He says, I don't want to, "AND" [emphasis mine, as it seems to indicate a further thought by the same speaker] why do we need to keep moving, anyway-- love me here! She says, that's just the way I am. Take it or leave it, sorry.

Now, according to both Simon's website and the liner notes on the original LP, it goes like this:

She: "Why don’t we drive through the night? We’ll wake up down in Mexico.”
He: Oh, I don’t know nothin’ about, nothin’ no Mexico.
She: “And tell me, why won’t you love me for who I am where I am?” [Why is she asking this? She's the one that wants to love him somewhere else! Namely, Mexico! He does want to love her where they are... and not go to Mexico.]
He said: “Cause that’s not the way the world is, baby. This is how I love you, baby."

(The words "He said" are on both the site and the notes; the quotes are as depicted at the site.)

So you see my problem with this. The difference in the reading is critical. It goes to the whole point of who was not accepting, who is inflexible. In my reading, she wants to go and he wants to stop; he asks her why they keep moving and she says "just 'cause."

In the official reading, she both suggests they go and then demands to know why they should go. Which I hold makes no sense. And if she is making no sense (as people sometimes do), why does he accept the blame for being inflexible about going when she is the one who wanted to go?! Instead of saying, "But you were the one who wanted to go!"

Anyway, they break up. They "returned to their natural coasts." If this were about Simon and Fisher (which it does not seem to be), he would go back to New York and she would head back to LA. In any case, they "resume old acquaintances" and date other people. Again, if this were about the couple people think it is, the line "speculate who had been damaged the most" would refer to her novels and his songs, each of which are at least semi-autobiographical and mention the other.

The line "easy time will determine if these consolations"-- their friends, dating, and artistic pursuits-- "will be their reward" reminds me of line in a Shawn Colvin song, about what her friends say after each breakup: "At least you got a song out of it."

And is it over? No. The "arc" that began in rainbows and peaked in sensuous lovemaking is now a broken bridge "waiting to be restored."

And now, on the last leg of this song's journey, we learn what the title and refrain are about: "You take two bodies and you twirl them into one/ Their hearts and their bones/ And they won’t come undone." The idea of "hearts" being an image of love is popular enough... but Simon adds "bones."

"Bone of my bone," Adam calls Eve, and indeed she is made of his bone. "I feel it in my bones," is a deeper, more intuitive sense than "I know it in my heart." Under all of the "flesh and blood," the very core of your physical being is bone. (How bad is George Thorogood? "Bad to the bone.")

It's not just "hearts" and emotions here. It's physicality and bones that are intermingled, and inextricably so.

This is one of Simon's prettiest and saddest songs. It is about how each love and loss shapes a person, potentially forever.

"Didn't it work out all right in the end?" Ozymandias asks Dr. Manhattan in the graphic novel The Watchmen. "End?" he supernatural superhero replies, "Nothing ever ends."


IMPACT:
The song did not chart, but the album did make the top 100 in the US and throughout Europe, and even Japan and Australia. It reached #3 in Norway, the Top 20 in Sweden, The Netherlands, and France, and the Top 40 in Switzerland, Japan, the UK, and the US.

Next Song: When Numbers Get Serious

28 comments:

  1. The text in the CD booklet has one 'She said' and one 'He said' fragment.

    She said:
    "Why? Why don't we drive through the night, we'll wake up down in Mexico?
    Oh, I - I don't know nothing about, nothing about no Mexico.
    And tell me why - why won't you love me for who I am, where I am".

    [each of these three verses are sung on the same melody, as if they belong together]

    He said:
    "Cause that's not the way the world is, baby - this is how I love you, baby - this is how I love you, baby".

    [which is sung in a very emotionless, bland, reinforced-by-echo kind of way]

    So it's actually very simple. She emotionally says X, he blandly responds Y.

    She wants to experience something new, something romantic, and wants him to love her for whatever she is, wherever she is. She wants him to love her unconditionally.

    Yet he responds by saying he can't love her for something or somewhere or someone else than the person he fell in love with. He won't particularly love her in New Mexico, in a new situation. He won't love her after they have changed things - he wants to love her 'just the way she is', and loves her here & now - no changing conditions accepted or appreciated.

    This is a truly tragic situation. She wants to change things in order keep on loving it, or loving him - he wants to remain things in order to keep on loving it, or loving her. They won't get together.

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  2. Hannes, Thank you for your insights. I am not sure how vastly your interpretation differs from mine, except for who says "I don't know nothin' about Mexico." I say it makes more sense if he says it, as she is for going and he is against it. I think whoever typed in the liner notes messed up.
    Also, to be clear, they are IN New Mexico (a state in the US) discussing about doing TO Mexico (another country, to the south). Yes, New Mexico was named after the country Mexico, but it is no more the same thing as New York, USA is the same as York, England.

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  3. The analysis is very good. As for who said what, it is what Hannes states. I don't know nothing about Mexico is a sentence she speaks to convince him to, please, let me get to know Mexico. But it does not matter which version you believe... As long as the song keeps its mystique the version you believe is correct. I know hiw it was meant, since I am able to

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  4. Anonymous, thanks for the compliment. But as to your other point, I think rather than go back and forth on this, I concur would just adopt an "agree to disagree" stance.

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  5. Sometimes the initial meaning has slipped away, here it hasn't :-)

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  6. The reference to "where I am" seems to be a central issue between Carrie and Paul of why he can't love her for where she is in her life or who she is rather than trying to make her into a more submissive, housewifey mold. I believe he even gave her the song as a present. There couldn't be any doubt to whome the lyrics referred.

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  7. Elizabeth-- That makes sense. What starts off as a discussion of where to go, literally and geographically, could have opened up a deeper issue of "where are we going-- as individuals and as a couple?"

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  8. This song is one of my favourites. I always felt there was a double-meaning in the use of the word 'arc', that it could also be taken to mean 'Ark' as in 'Ark of the Covenant', relating to (one & one-half) Jews and their wait for it to be restored, as also symbolic for the love affair in the song. And in an interesting twist it is the Ark that is waiting to be restored...

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  9. Listening to the song again just now (on vinyl :-)), the first line bridge definitely starts 'She said', and the last line definitely 'He said', so my assumption has always been each line is alternatively coming from 'she' & 'he'.

    The bridge seems like a classic lovers' bust-up but I think it's archetypal of so many relationships. There's a huge amount of love but tragically radically different ideas about what love is and how it's shown, and hearing different things from what each is saying. She loves him but pines for something more daring in their lives, so suggests a spontaneous, romantic escape to Mexico, into the unknown (recalling Kerouac's 'On the Road', and obviously countless outlaws over the years), with the promise of actually being there in the morning if they just pile in the car & go now. He has a simple view of things: he loves her very much and is happy where they are (geographically & emotionally). He's taken by surprise, initially he just echoes her 'Whyyyy...?' but then what she's saying registers with him, he's kind of hurt that she feels the need for something more & responds a bit dismissively that he can't see what would be so great or different about being together in Mexico instead of where they are. What she hears is that he's dismissing HER, so she comes back to him that if the relationship is to survive then she needs to have her dreams/desires valued right here & now. So her 'who I am, where I am' ironically is about emotional not geographical location. His final line sounds to her like an off-hand rejection of her plea. What he's actually saying is repeatedly 'I love you', but sadly asking her to consider whether love is really about romantic dreams because he can't give her that (nobody can of course). But what she's hearing, to her it's the end, so that's what it is. It seems they both have valid positions but mis-matched. So their love arc (or Ark) is left hanging, waiting to be restored, possibly forever.

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  10. I also feel this song goes hand-in-hand with Hearts & Bones (b), with 'the smartest people in the world gathered in LA, to analyse our love affair & finally unscramble us. They sat among our photographs, examined every one, in the end they compromised & met the morning sun.'

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  11. Anon., Yes, and several others here. The album is close to being a concept album-- a collection of songs on the same topic.

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  12. Anon-- As for "arc"/"ark," I suppose that's one way to look at it. The word always, for me, calls to mind those images of the arched land bridged in, I think, Monument Valley, also in the US Southwest.
    But yes, the Ark of the Covenant is lost, at least for now.

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  13. Anon-- Lastly, about the whole who-said-what debate, I think I have said what I wanted to about that, and I'm not sure I want to go over it again, if that's OK.
    I think that, like many conversations (and relationships), as you say, it will likely never be resolved.

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  14. An interesting note: a "wandering jew" is also a type of house plant. It's a clever poetic insert on Paul's part, without many knowing it!

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  15. Emily-- True, but I think the plant itself was also named after the mythical figure.

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  16. It is just best guess conjecture but I'm pretty sure what is going on here is that Carrie is identifying herself as someone who does crazy things and then wonders (rhetorically) how he can not fully accept her for it. Since she had been diagnosed as bipolar at the time I am sure, just like her family, they both realized something was wrong but as Paul has said were too spoiled and immature to work out their problems as reasonable adults.

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  17. Elizabeth-- It is true that, simply because you have identified a problem, you have not solved or even dealt with it.

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  18. Even though the song was copyrighted in 1982 I think you might be forgetting that they had a relationship before that time and they got married because they didn't want to break up. I don't know what that means to the marriage thing but I definitely feel like this is about their relationship perhaps they had talked about marriage or I envisioned it I'm not sure but she said when she saw him that was it. It was instantaneous attraction and they had at least four years before he copyrighted it. I think it's about Carrie Fisher and Paul Simon. It fits everything way too well and I don't think she was sick I think it was either her bipolar disorder or her drug use that made her burn or it could have been just passion, her feelings for him

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  19. I also have to comment that in several places they have confirmed and Paul Simon confirmed it himself that it is about Carrie Fisher. I don't know the thing about the marriage that's a mystery but it is actually about them and their relationship he said he confirmed it himself in some interview or something that he or something I read that was an official interview or something of him

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  20. Last comment the interview I heard or the thing I read said that Paul Simon made a comment about it being him and Carrie because she was half-jewish through her father now I know that it's the mother's side but Paul discounted that and called her a half do as a humorist comment so I know that it's about her what the marriage was about maybe it was in their head maybe they were married in their heads I know that they were going to break up and instead of that they decided they said it was too sad so they decided to get married instead

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  21. Unknown-- I don't think it's them, given the timeline. But I can say that writers sometimes base characters on themselves and those around them.
    I mean, I could write a novel about a dashingly handsome and suave blogger who saves the world through the analysis of decades-old songs... and everyone would just HAVE to assume it was secretly an autobiography, right?

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  22. In an interview Paul Simon says that hearts and Bones is the same material as Graceland which was definitely about Carrie Fisher. So if Graceland and hearts and bones are the same material then it's about Carrie Fisher. I realize the dates don't match for your perfectionistic person that you are however Paul said it himself and Kerry also said that although that may be more I'm more doubtful source you never know what Paul and Carrie talked about anyway and she made the comment at one point that the marriage should have stayed a conversation as opposed to actually doing it so they are actually having those conversations before they married how much proof do you need dude?

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  23. Last comment Paul 2, I would send u all the sources I mentioned however I don't think I should have to do your homework. Look up a nice or she wants there's plenty of them and maybe read Carrie material cuz it doesn't seem to me that you've done that.( also don't know if you've been to the mountains in New Mexico but some of those mountains are so high that they have clouds right on the top of them they have moisture in them and then the sun shines and then there are rainbows with no rain, just saying

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  24. Unknown-- It seems to me, from where I sit, that these are two different Unknowns who somehow posted within 3 minutes of each other, because one was nice and the other is kinda cranky.
    Also, I hardly think calling me "perfectionist" is the insult it is intended to be, coming from someone who threatens me with citing sources.
    As far as doing my homework-- Look, these songs exist on two levels, as all works of literature do. One is a record of what is going on at the time, in the life of the author. The author may be a reliable or unreliable reporter of reality, or a mix of both.
    To me, this is about 30% of what I am interested in, as far as explaining the songs' meanings. I think it's interesting and important, but only as I said a third of what I care to focus on.
    The rest is that second aspect of a song-- what it means as a work of art. THAT is, and has been, my focus, for the long duration of this blog.
    With Simon, yeah-- his life story is important to know, since it informs his songs and he even mentions people in his life by name or nickname. But this discussion about which of his songs are about Carrie and to what degree is, to me, in a word: boring.
    The back-and-forth over this issue, and the amount of time, energy, and space it has taken up has FAR overshadowed the meaning of these songs (not just this one but similar comment threads on other songs like Spirit Voices) and has proven a HUGE distraction.
    I am interested in Simon's work, and in Simon as an artist, not Simon as a character in a soap opera.
    Believe what you want about who this song is about. I reported the relevant dates as to when the song was written and when these two were married. Draw your own conclusions.

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  25. JoeRoth@landofAZ.comMarch 30, 2023 at 9:35 AM

    The whole reason I found this link was because of my question about the "He said/she said" aspect of this. This song has been rattling inside my head for awhile. I agree...this is intrinsic to the very meaning of the song. And it's super confusing at the onset.

    I'd guess that they are working through all these things as he is writing, and he is likely predicting these two complicated celebrities getting married...only to fall apart. I understand in some small way. I've entered into furtherance of a relationship, knowing darned well that it isn't going to work out in the end. Nonetheless, I felt that I needed the next chapter in order to culminate properly.

    I do feel that CF is probably confused...suggesting that they go somewhere...anywhere they haven't been...to find that magic that convinces him that he can be fulfilled with her. That he can find contentment. Albeit she probably knows it not likely.

    Let's face it...at this stage in his life, Simon has it in the palm of his hand. And he is likely constantly at a state of vacillation between falling into a committed relationship, or enjoying all the fruits of his labor as a proven "Rockstar status" kinda guy. So, I contend that when she suggests something spontaneous that could be the very journey that they need to take together, and he rebuffs it...that she then asks one of the most powerful questions a person can be asked in a relationship. "Why can't you simply love me for who I am, where I am?". She recognizes in this moment that there is no magical place, time or experience that is going to cause him to feel what she wants him to.

    It's likely one of the saddest lines in any song of the 80's. Maybe echoed by Bonnie Raitt in "I can't make you love me if you don't". Anywho...thats what I take from it. Its what it means to me.

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  26. JoeRoth-- I have been to AZ and I agree it is as enchanting as Oz. Thank you for your comment.
    I agree that all relationships are entered into with the implicit knowledge that they will end at some point. So the question isn't "Why enter this relationship, knowing it will end?" but "Given the amount of time I have on Earth, is THIS how I want to spend it?" And sometimes the answer is... yes.
    Also, I have heard of the therm "the geographic solution" as being the idea of "Maybe the problem isn't me, or us-- it's this PLACE." It is presented as a fallacy, but I wonder if certain people aren't just happier in certain environments, with different values and a different pace of life.
    The question this song presents is about who is willing to be more accepting. Each is really asking the other for acceptance.
    In the case of "Midnight Train to Georgia," Gladys Knight says she is willing to bend more: "I'd rather live in his world/ Than be without him in mine." But Stevie Nicks says, "I'd rather be alone/ Than be without you."
    So one asks, "Can't you accept me here and not Mexico?" And the other asks, "Why can't you accept my need to go to Mexico?"
    No one should have to give up their needs to be in a relationship, but some are willing to do so anyway. And some are not. In which case, the relationship won't work.

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