Paul Simon
Hearts and Bones

Everyone in my house seems to be shouting these days, my mother shouts, my father shouts, even my father's lover shouts when I accidentally catch her on the phone. It seems to me that the opera singer on TV is also shouting, an unconscious trigger of my personal and absurd association between opera and domestic quarrel. I quite hate everyone and need something more powerful than a pillow over my ears. Going out, of course, fortunate that I'll get my learner's permit soon.

As it happens, I hang out with a group where there are two inconsolable daughters whose parents are separating. I find them hugging each other, sobbing about their common misfortune. I wouldn't mind slipping into that embrace, showing solidarity by resting my head on their prominent breasts beneath their sweatshirts, but instead, I blurt out something like: What the hell are you complaining about, at least you’re lucky not to have any more damn headaches at home like I do, they won't abandon you, they'll spoil you competing against each other.

They look at me somewhere between horrified and compassionate, and in response, one of them hands me a Walkman with the cassette of Simon and Garfunkel's Concert in Central Park.

-Here, I'll lend it to you, this concert always relaxes me.

Then a lanky seventeen-year-old, certainly with the same intention of inserting himself into the girls’ torments, arrives and declares with a knowing air that Paul Simon’s new album, Hearts and Bones, has just been released,

-A masterpiece, you have to hear it.

I rush to the Stereorecord store, find the record available for listening. I grab the headphones and as soon as I hear Paul Simon's voice, so quiet and smooth, I begin to relax.

In this shouted autumn of 1983, it's exactly what I need. A great mildly soporific American singer-songwriter, with a lineup of tracks possessing strong sedative power. There's this muffled atmosphere of musically perfect songs, worked and reworked until every edge and imperfection is smoothed out, and it couldn't be otherwise thanks to the involvement of some legendary musicians like Jeff Porcaro, Al Di Meola, Eric Gale, Marcus Miller, Bernard Edwards.

So this work goes into loop on my record player, gently displacing any other metallic or pop sound, as well as screams and flying household objects. The house and the rest of the world can even crumble: nothing can scratch the imperturbability granted me by the serial listening of Hearts and Bones. True, once in a while, apparent bursts of liveliness seem to arrive, like with the songs "Allergies" or "Cars are Cars", but the true track that represents the album for me is the xanax-affine "Rene and Georgette Magritte with their dog after the war". It's also appreciable that our American refers to European culture, perhaps even with hints of Pirandellian references in "Train in the distance". The train has whistled, even for a couple in disarray.

Finally sedated, I go down to the garage, pass by the paternal beige Giulietta, and get inside to grip the steering wheel, fantasizing about driving a rear-wheel drive. Something on the right-side mat catches my attention. I bid farewell to a million unfathered siblings, imprisoned inside a little latex serpent. I also bid farewell to Paul Simon, as it's time to return to metal.