Communication – Dr. Bernard F. Natelson

A few weeks ago, my wife Lisa and I attended a live Paul Simon concert, titled: A Quiet Celebration. Paul played some of his newer songs the first half of the concert, tunes I had little familiarity with, and after the intermission played some of his hits from the past. Although Simon has had a prolific career in writing many songs, I will address only a few of my favorites, some of which he did play the night of the performance we attended.

Prior to singing Homeward Bound, Simon mentioned he had written this song when he was 24 years old with apparent fond memories. The opening words are:

I’m sitting in the railway station

Got a ticket to my destination

On a tour of one-night stands my suitcase and

Guitar in hand.

With all of Simon’s success in churning out music in a variety of locales, there remains this underlying wish to return Home where his girl friend or as he writes his “love lies waiting.” Sometimes the luster that fame brings cannot replace the familiar sights of one’s native environment when one’s sense of loneliness becomes pervasive. The fans his concerts bring forth meld into one-night stands with little value next to the things Simon misses and loves.

Another favorite of mine, If I Could, is Simon’s preferences by comparison, all of which have a rhythmic chime to them with the first stanza being the following:

I’d rather be a sparrow than a snail

Yes, I would

If I could

I surely would.

The last three lines of the stanza repeat themselves in all but one of the four stanzas of the song. Much of this song, like so many melodious tunes, resembles the fine language of poetry. The second stanza begins and ends with the same three lines as the first stanza.

The link between the two stanzas appears to be Simon’s yearning for movement and action over passivity and inertia as reflected by a sparrow and a hammer vis-à-vis a snail and a nail. The rhyming of the objects adds to the beauty of the song. The author appears to be seeking a certain freedom as opposed to being stuck in one’s circumstances. This is elaborated in a different manner in the last comparison made by the songwriter when he desires to be a forestthan a street. The forest brings us the image of nature unsoiled by the decay of urbanization as personified by a street.

The song ends, not with a comparison, but in the following way:

I’d rather feel the earth beneath my feet

With the same refrain as the above comparisons completing the stanza. I believe those last four lines summarize the theme of the song that represents the active process of fully taking in and appreciating our natural surroundings. Rather than move with little consciousness nor awareness, it brings us inestimable joy when we actively experience the beauty of our environment.

Mrs. Robinson was perhaps the most famous song that Simon wrote. We all remember it for appearing in The Graduate, the film that brought Dustin Hoffman immediate fame. Simon had worked on the song with the intention of it reflecting the past, its tentative title being Mrs. Roosevelt. When Mike Nichols liked the sound of it, he asked Simon to score it for the movie, The Graduate, that he was in the process of directing. How different the character of Mrs. Robinson is than that of Eleanor Roosevelt. In the film, Mrs. Robinson is a middle aged unhappy alcoholic woman preying on Dustin Hoffman, a recent college graduate. She is the symbol of the lust and tumult of the ‘60’s when the film was made and takes place. The song depicts Joe Dimaggio, the New York Yankee star, a hero gone and replaced by the looseness and immorality of the present. The lines of the song reflecting this loss are:

Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?

Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you

Joltin’ Joe has left and gone away

Woo, woo, woo

What’s that you say Mrs. Robinson?

Joltin’ Joe has left and gone away.

In the film, when Mrs. Robinson (played by Anne Bancroft) seduces Benjamin Braddock (Hoffman’s role), he loses his innocence. The metaphoric loss of Joe DiMaggio represents a hero that reflects another time, when life was simpler and not complicated by the hustle bustle and unending cries of contemporary culture.

The irony of these lines was that DiMaggio himself did not understand the symbolism behind the above words. When Simon and DiMaggio met by chance in a restaurant the latter pointed out to Simon: “I’m a spokesman for the Bowery Savings Bank and I haven’s gone anywhere.” After his career as a Yankee had ended, DiMaggio’s past stardom gave him the opportunity to do the T.V. ads for a popular bank in New York City.

At their meeting, Simon explained to Joe that the lines were not meant literally but rather to point out to DiMaggio that he was a true hero of the past where in the present such individuals are in short supply. According to Simon, DiMaggio accepted the explanation and they shook hands and parted amicably. Of course, like the song, and indeed to many, DiMaggio’s deeds as a great baseball player were a thing of the past.

Simon finished the concert with one of my favorite songs he and Garfunkel had written: The Sound of Silence. The title of the song stands out as it has an oxymoronic ring to it for how can silence sound? The songwriters express the lack of communication felt by all when they sing:

People talking without speaking

People hearing without listening

People writing songs that voices never share

No one dared

Disturb the sound of silence

When I first heard the song, the imagery of the “flash of a neon light,” a human artifice, only appeared to exaggerate and bring to the forefront the sound of silence. But, more so, the intensity of the song comes from the oxymoron, sound of silence, that is repeated throughout the song. That silence has so much power that it appears to have a voice of its own, stifling the will to break free of it by rendering us all in a state of paralysis. When we hear the words sung so brilliantly by Simon and Garfunkel, we recognize how important communication is and how the lack of it can sorely affect us all.

The other night, during dinner with a friend, David Alpern, we discussed my last blog: Scorn in America, when he made an interesting observation. There had been a march in downtown Long Beach, California, where we both reside, with the goal of prompting the end of gun violence. A woman at the march held up a sign saying the following: How could any one (sic) be proud to live in a country that protects its guns over its citizens?

In a follow up letter to the editor to a local newspaper, David pointed out that this type of message will further alienate those that don’t think like us rather than attempting to bring these people to our way of reckoning things. Granted it, this message was held by only one of the marchers in the rally, but I think it reflects the partisan climate that we all find ourselves in today. The message implies that if you don’t agree with me on a much-debated subject, the right to own firearms, you can’t feel proud of what America represents. This brings to mind the statement Hillary Clinton made in 2016 during her campaign against Donald Trump when she referred to the “deplorables” that don’t think like us. What Mrs. Clinton appeared to have forgotten was that the deplorables she spoke of consisted of approximately half of the country.

If our goal is to change the present status of gun laws, then as Alpern mentions, our messages need to recruit not repel those that hold opposing views. I have suggested to couples having difficulty seeing their partner’s differing perspectives on an issue that they employ the disarming technique. When one of the partners is criticizing the other, rather than become defensive and go in the attack mode, I ask them to find some truth in the criticism. This often has the effect of disarming or neutralizing the one doing the criticizing. Underlying this method of communication is the fact that the person finding fault with you needs to be listened to rather than counter attacked. It very often leads to more sane and rational communication between the two partners.

So, when discussing a point, and this especially holds true with our leaders in Washington D.C., we might look for either the strength or weakness in our position and go from there. Now if it’s a question of something you absolutely think is wrong like the elections being rigged, as Trump and some of his followers do, then this technique probably will not be useful. But most situations are not black and white where one person is perfectly right and the other is perfectly wrong. That is to say the “truth” for one person may not be a factual truth but rather a strongly held viewpoint.

The pandemic and social media have rendered any kind of civil discourse difficult. The anonymity intrinsic in much of social media allows people to hide and not face those whose opinions differ from them. The pandemic has kept us isolated from others and has perhaps increased the amount of time people spent on the internet. This has resulted in an inordinate amount of confirmation bias, that is, reading only what reinforces one’s opinion. Hopefully, if the worst of the pandemic is over, people will have the chance to interact with others in a more humane way than previously. More face-to-face meetings with coworkers and others that think differently may at least transform the hostility we feel toward each other, stemming from labeling the other “bad,” into a less combative more useful conversation. The aim in mind will be to expand our perspectives on controversial subjects rather than limit them.