There is something beautiful and painful at the same time about having to deal with one's own muddling. I have always loved the famous duo Simon&Garfunkel with quiet and admiring moderation. Some things I have always found excellent and certainly worthy of setting a standard, as they indeed have. Others have always seemed excessively sentimental and baroque. Still others, frankly quite useless, even though I have long since shelved the criterion of usefulness as a usable evaluation parameter: too extremist and subjective. I have always bought Paul Simon's records and silently despised Art Garfunkel's.

The first has always earned on-the-field credentials as a great songwriter, while the second is universally recognized as “nice little voice”, author of not-so-successful songs and co-author of stadium reunions. Good: I read that a new record has been released, which features only the presence of great classic songs from the American repertoire. But not from the songwriting repertoire...: we go from jazz standards to well-known background and dance hall tunes (both luxurious).

I download it (don't have the courage to buy it), I listen to it. I criticize it harshly. Baroque, banal, rhetorical, devoid of real content, very academic in both instrumental and vocal interpretations, naturally objectively impeccable. I listen to it again and criticize it again. I make a nice CD of albums in mp3 as a background for office work. I look at the list of records in memory in Nero's little window and say to myself: “obviously not Garfunkel, right...?” Obviously Garfunkel yes. I listen to it again. Again. Again and again. Still rhetorical, banal, baroque, and... yes... let's say it: useless. Very useless. Useless beyond measure.

Enough with self-imposed principles: an outrageously useless record. But. But there's a but... But I love it like crazy. It relaxes me, I hum along to it, I leave it on, very low, even when there's some customer... In short: a senile and absolute, foolish, and pseudo-adolescent infatuation. It is what it is. I can't do anything about it. And I live in the secret hope that my original and very severe judgment was wrong. And that I am instead the same as ever.

But deep down I know the horrible (and beautiful) secret: I have become muddled.

Tracklist

01   I Remember You (02:57)

02   Someone to Watch Over Me (03:23)

03   Let's Fall in Love (02:28)

04   I'm Glad There Is You (03:45)

05   Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars (Corcovado) (03:03)

06   Easy Living (03:37)

07   I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face (02:48)

08   You Stepped Out of a Dream (02:46)

09   Some Enchanted Evening (03:35)

10   It Could Happen to You (02:30)

11   Life Is but a Dream (03:43)

12   What'll I Do (03:04)

13   If I Loved You (03:09)

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