This was the first time I had heard recorded music in a church service, and it made a big impact. It made a big impact on our BB Captain also but it was not favourable! But it made me think that S&G were worth exploring. I became a fan and over the years have found Paul Simon worth keeping in touch with. From a Jewish background but nevertheless professing not to be religious he is among those artists who would describe themselves as ‘spiritual.’ I’m never sure what is meant by this but in Paul’s sense I think it means an appreciation of the ‘deeper’ things in life and an openness to the existence of God. This has come out in albums over the years but never more clearly than in his latest offering: ‘Seven Psalms’.
The title itself says something to anyone from a Jewish or Christian background. The Book of Psalms has been described as the Prayer Book of Israel and the Praise Book of Israel. It gives believers and opportunity to open up to God in praise but also to express the darker thoughts and emotions that commonly afflict them. This is its greatest value allowing us to see that the life of faith is not always a travelling on smooth and fragrant ground. There are dark valleys that cannot be avoided, and they can be bewildering and painful.
Paul brings this out in the first movement of the album, which is a continuous 30-minute unfolding, is called ‘The Lord’. The idea of God brings out positive images:
‘The Lord is a virgin forest
The Lord is a forest Ranger
The Lord is a meal for the poorest of the poor
A welcome door to the stranger . . .
The seeds we gather
From the gardener’s glove
Live forever
Nothing dies of too much love.’
That is a final line destined to be quoted much! But ‘The Lord’ ends on a darker note which we cannot escape when considering the God of the Bible, a book which Paul reveals in a recent interview is never very far from him:
‘The Covid virus is the Lord
The Lord is the ocean rising
The Lord is a terrible swift sword
A simple truth surviving.’
People of faith cannot really escape this. The struggle we sometimes have in the promise that nothing will ever separate us from the love of God, not even the darkest, the most painful experiences, and yet when they come they take us to the end of ourselves. And yet Paul is not content to leave it there. In ‘My Professional Opinion’, which is an aspiration to ‘carry my grievances /down to the shore/And wash then away in the tumbling tide’, he ends with a startling declaration:
‘All that really matters
Is the one who became us
Anointed and gamed us
With His opinions.’
If the sleeve-notes are to be trusted, then the higher case at ‘His’ belong to the author.
So where does it all take us this quite remarkable album which has been attracting those proverbial ‘rave reviews’? Some might say that it’s typical of the large community of ‘spiritual’ people who treat things beyond sight, touch and sound like a giant smorgasbord from which you can pick or choose whatever appeals to you. I would not agree with this. He may not have made the crucial breakthrough to faith in Christ but Paul offers us personal insight that leads to confession, an awareness of inspiration as a gift – Dip your hand in heaven’s waters/God’s imagination/ Dip you’re your hands in Heaven’s waters’ – and in the final song, ‘Wait’, there is a longing for completion in a life to come:
‘I want to
Believe in
A dreamless transition
Wait
‘I don’t want
I don’t want to be near
My dark intuition.
‘I need you here by my side
My beautiful mystery guide
Wait.’
Which in the end is where all people of faith arrive.
