This morning, the first (and only) girl I ever dated told me she was getting married. This evening, I saw Paul Simon sing about aging, mortality, and leaving your lover.
“I remember playing here with Artie in the ’60s,” he said tonight, on stage at DAR Constitution Hall in Washington, kind of as an afterthought. The audience was like him – thinning brown hair, a little thick around the middle, accustomed to a smoother ride. (Tony Kornheiser walked by me in the lobby.)
The first CD I ever bought was “The Rhythm of the Saints,” in 1991. I was turning 14, and I certainly didn’t understand the journeys he described there. But I liked what I heard, and for all its global influences, for the inspiration he found in Brazil and Africa and elsewhere, his music had at its core an optimistic American-ness that spoke to me.
You can be gay and find love. You can be gay and have a family. These are the days of miracle and wonder. He closed with “The Boy in the Bubble,” and at the sound of the first chords, the portion of the audience not already on its feet rose as one, like supplicants before their god.
But the perfect moment for me came an hour earlier, when “The Obvious Child” ended with a roar from the audience, and Simon seamlessly segued into “The Only Living Boy in New York.” Get to your plane ride on time. You’re ready to fly now.
