Bookends is Simon and Garfunkel's masterpiece and also happens to be their first self-produced album. They got to make the decisions about how they wanted their art to be without most of the record industry's dictatorship. A beautiful instance of when restraint is lifted: change being art being freedom. The title of the album refers to two old friends who occupy a park bench together toward the end of their lives. But the world is the bookends too. We are born between them. How do we make room to move? We find love, make mistakes, create, visit the fucking zoo, we fake it, we face winter--have fears and master them, take drugs, watch movies, eat cereal. Some kill themselves young (the album begins with a suicide story), some make it to old age and are happy in their slow-death aching bodies because they have all these beautiful memories of when they did all that beautiful shit (Garfunkel recorded old people talking in a nursing home). And how do we feel welcome in this world? Is it inhospitable or the best of all possible?
Letter to a Young Lady in Paris is a suicide note from a man who could not be in the world the way he wanted. What he created he found detestable because it also destroyed.
The question of how to feel welcome in the world that has existed before you and exists longer than you. How to make your place, your art, your history in an already working, structured place, art, history. Is it necessarily destructive to make the attempt anyway--do you have to in order to live? does it kill you also? yes also yes.
Cortazar: "With all that, I decided to kill the rabbit almost as soon as it was born. I was going to live at your place for four months: four, perhaps with luck three-tablespoonsful of alcohol down its throat. (Do you know pity permits you to kill a small rabbit instantly by giving it a tablespoon of alcohol to drink? Its flesh tastes better afterward, they say, however, I ... Three or four tablespoonsful of alcohol, then the bathroom or a package to put in the rubbish. )"
vs.
Simon: "And here's to you, Mrs. Robinson,
Jesus loves you more than you will know.
God bless you, please Mrs. Robinson.
Heaven holds a place for those who pray,
Hey, hey, hey
We'd like to know a little bit about your for our files
We'd like to help you learn to help yourself.
Look around you all you see are sympathetic eyes,
Stroll around the grounds until you feel at home.
...
Hide it in a hiding place where no one ever goes.
Put it in your pantry with your cupcakes.
It's a little secret just the Robinsons' affair.
Most of all you've got to hide it from the kids.
...
Sitting on a sofa on a Sunday afternoon.
Going to the candidate's debate.
Laugh about it, shout about it
When you've got to choose
Every way you look at this you lose.
Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio,
Our nation turns it's lonely eyes to you.
What's that you say, Mrs. Robinson.
Jotting Joe has left and gone away,
Hey hey hey."
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