During my last semester at Saint Mary’s in 2011, I was lucky enough to take a class with Alex Green. We read and wrote about music, and chose two songs to write about each week–songs that had some personal significance to us. I enjoyed writing these so much, I think I’ll post a few every now and then. Good times… And here it is again, on Paul Simon’s birthday.
America by Paul Simon
Let us be lovers, we’ll marry our fortunes together…
When I first heard it, in 1968, did I hear those things too? Or was it mostly the romantic notion of a boy and a girl being able to hop on a Greyhound bus with a pack of cigarettes and Mrs. Wagner’s pies in search of …what? Real life?
 They went out of business a long time ago |
It’s a young person’s game: laughing on the bus, playing games with the faces. “She said the man in the gabardine suit was a spy. I said be careful, his bow tie is really a camera…”
The world is yours to mock. Other people are just fodder for your imagination and sense of humor: teachers, parents, strangers on the bus or the street. Make things up about them and laugh yourselves silly. You’re young, right? People understand this, don’t they? They should cut you some slack.
Wasn’t that what it was like? Just killing time, wishing and waiting for life to actually start? For me, it wouldn’t be on a bus ride from Pittsburgh to New York. It wouldn’t be a bus ride to anywhere.
I looked for America right here. I stayed here.
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| Toss me a cigarette…
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Now, “let us be lovers, we’ll marry our fortunes together” sounds like a child’s vision of adulthood, a fairy tale that will have to end with happily ever after, won’t it? My boyfriend and I used to marry our fortunes together, amounting to maybe three bucks on a given day. That was enough to buy a stack of pancakes at Red’s Shutter Café, a few blocks from our high school. The guy behind the counter had to know we were cutting class, but he never gave any indication that he knew or cared. We were two kids on an adventure, on our way to becoming lovers and starting life for real. Just a few more months till graduation and then, off to look for America. Or ourselves. Or who knew what.
And what about being empty and aching and not knowing why? Too many unknowns, too much hidden around a corner. And I wondered: Is this it? Is he the one? Am I making the right choices? Who else is out there? Where in the world do I belong? What’s on the other side? Will I live long enough to get old one day? Toss me a cigarette. We’ll live forever. Love lasts forever.
