That one song: Simon & Garfunkel's America

Simon's aching, but not empty, ruminations on a nation that seems so far away

When I was a kid, I knew two things.

I knew I was in the wrong body.

And I knew I wanted to be American.

I had visited and seen enough of America to determine it better music, TV, movies, and products.

It also seemed to me to have a better sense of self and a fascinating narrative.

At least what I was exposed to, which told me America was exceptional, aspirational, united and patriotic.

Anyone could succeed there if they just tried.

I bought it because it was so pervasive.

It filled a void in me.

A need for belonging.

There were always cracks in that perception, whether it was the Iran Contra hearings or even a better understanding of the racism and slavery that is so inextricably tied into the country’s origins.

But I still believed that America was constantly aspiring to something greater, something better.

There were other factors that fed into my favorable impression of the country.

Through Twitter, I developed a lot of great friends there.

I also was able to build my career as a writer helped in large part by American organizations.

When I was struggling to get work in my own hometown, I was able to open doors with major entertainment corporations and academic medical centers that I never would have dreamed of working with as a child.

Even having those clients on my resume didn’t help me much here.

If anything, it seemed to hurt.

But all these things fed into my desire to be American, even if there were other narratives to consider that painted a different picture of the country.

Which brings me to Simon & Garfunkel’s America.

The song was on the duo’s fourth album, which somehow came into my possession when I was in grade four or five.

I was so enamored of Paul Simon’s writing that I nicked the line ‘marry our fortunes together’ for a writing assignment.

My teacher, probably not a Simon & Garfunkel fan, questioned what I meant by that.

I didn’t know.

It just sounded cool—one more American thing that fascinated me.

The song was haunting and haunted, informed by a trip that Simon took with then-girlfriend Kathy Chitty, across the United States in ’64.

I don’t pretend to know whether the song is an honest recount of that trek.

It wouldn’t matter anyway.

I loved the storytelling, the metaphor of a more perfect union, but one that constantly needs to be navigated, reframed.

Not to mention that it spoke to an America that isn’t necessarily what you see around you.

But a bigger idea you pursue.

When I had a Tumblr account, I wrote an essay about the song forged in that interpretation to make a case for its enduring greatness.

I saved it somewhere when I closed shop there.

I recall bits and pieces of it, as you would any journey, but I can’t attest to the accuracy of my recall.

So I need to start fresh here.

I need to contend with the song from this point in life.

Listening to America, the thing that strikes me is how it reminds me of The Swimmer, not Cheever’s original story, but the film adaptation starring Burt Lancaster.

Like America, the movie is a journey, an attempt to get to a place, a state of being, ultimately seems impossible to reach, in the way a memory is.

But Simon’s America is a bit of a different journey.

Unlike the protagonist of The Swimmer, Simon isn’t trying to get back somewhere but to find something called ‘America.’

I don’t know what he is hoping to find, and I don’t think he knows either.

Kathy is along for the journey, but Simon doesn’t share anything about her beyond what his protagonist hears and perceives.

She is, in a way, unknowable, which is appropriate.

This is a song of uncertainty.

You get that sense from the jump.

The wordless harmonies that fade in, Hal Blaine’s echoed, eerie percussion—they imbue this journey with a sense of foreboding.

The sense that whatever Simon, or his protagonist, is looking for, he won’t find it, at least not in the way that he suspects.

There is a sepulchral or autumnal vibe to the song, reinforced by the soprano saxophone and Larry Knetchel’s Hammond, which has an otherworldly quality.

As the song progresses, there are intimations that things are not well between the two young lovers at the heart of the song.

The laughter on the bus gives way to Simon’s protagonist looking at the scenery while Kathy reads a magazine.

Two solitudes.

In some ways, it mirrors the schism that has occurred in America over the years, but that interpretation ignores the schism at the time and has the benefit of hindsight.

‘Kathy, I’m lost,” Simon’s protagonist says, acknowledging not just that she is sleeping but that he knows it—an admission that he is so lost that he can’t even actively engage with her about what’s going on with him or between them.

His protagonist is empty and aching and does not know why.

All he can think to do is count the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike, the terminus of his journey with Kathy, both literally and figuratively.

‘They’ve all come to look for America,’ he says. ‘All come to look for America.’

I used to hear that line as being one of progression, of a country moving forward as individuals but together toward something better, something more, never willing to settle for less than realizing its full potential.

A country always seeking a new definition of what it means to be American, a new possibility.

But Simon’s lyrics lines strike me differently now.

In the wake of two Trump presidencies, one unfolding in horrific ways, I hear Simon’s protagonist coming to the realization that it is impossible to find something like America.

Because, at heart, it is an abstract.

An idea that is sold across the nation and around the world.

An idea that is always in flux—growing and chanting.

And yet, like any abstract, be it a relationship or happiness, we want it to be concrete to an extent.

Something attainable.

But that’s when stagnation sets in.

A little death.

I don’t pretend to know what Simon had in mind when he wrote America.

Maybe he didn’t.

It strikes me as a journey of uncertainty and unknowing and coming to terms with that as best as you can, while realizing you’re not the only one who is searching for some great insight or better way of living.

It also strikes me as a commentary on the folly of discovery of anything so vast as America (take that, Columbus).

Still, there are things you are likely to find when listening to the song, and those things will change over time.

A song may be static, but we aren’t, nor are the times and the mores we contend with.

So when I listen to it today, I do so while looking at an America I struggle to recognize.

An America as lost as Simon’s protagonist, who is empty and aching from realizing that the country he sought disappeared or was never really there to begin with.

I relate to that.

And yet, as the song fades, I think about the image of those cars, and I want to count them.

Not just numerically, but also figuratively.

Because if one thing hasn’t changed in how I hear this song, it is that I perceive those drivers and passengers as people who are looking forward.

People who are headed toward something better.