Empty and Aching

The late Maya Angelou once wrote, "I've learned that you shouldn't go through life with a catcher's mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw something back."

It's a good lesson for folks in their 20s to learn -- that, in order to get, you have to give, too. Simon and Garfunkel were in their 20s when they recorded this song, but by the time the story ends, they had yet to learn the valuable lesson about giving and getting. They started out to "look for America" with their hands out. They ended up the same way.

Kathy, I'm lost, I said
Thought I knew she was sleeping
I'm empty and aching
And I don't know why

The question of why is a fine thing to answer in your 20s and 30s. Sometimes, finding the answer can be the stuff of a midlife crisis; but some get through their 40s and 50s and beyond without ever having answered it.

Counting the cars
On the New Jersey Turnpike
They've all come to look for
America

That might be one clue: Shutting yourself up in your car, doing your own thing and taking your own journey year after year is a good way to avoid the truth. Opinions, they say, are like navels: everyone has one. And everyone is willing to offer you theirs. If you're staring 50 or 60 in the face without having discovered how to fill the emptiness that everyone feels at one time or another, maybe it's because you stopped listening to good advice a long time ago. Probably because that oh-so-helpful advice always has to do with sacrificing yourself to something, someone, or Someone greater than yourself.

Of course, it's always possible that you've never received good advice.

You know what they say about that: "If you want something done right, do it yourself."

Here are Simon and Garfunkel, badly in need of some good advice -- or maybe just a well-stocked public library -- singing all about "America". Gee, maybe this whole album is about the American disease.

The American Disease

Jay Gatsby had it. The Great Gatsby would never have been written without it.

You don't have to be American to fall victim to it; I've seen it strike citizens of other countries (especially evangelical Christians) and immigrants, too, but who knows? -- Maybe they came to America to escape the consequences of succumbing to the American disease in their home countries.

And there should be consequences, even in America. The problem is -- and has been, maybe for most of our history -- that there are no consequences. Instead, people who have the American disease get a wink and a nod and a good-natured slap on the back for confessing their symptoms, but doing absolutely nothing to change:

Is there any danger?
No, no, not really,
Just lean on me.
Takin' time to treat
Your friends and neighbors honestly.
I've just been fakin' it.

A psychologist would call it Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Simon and Garfunkel just said they were "Fakin' It".

Go Home, Outsider!

There’s some dispute about whether Paul Simon wrote this one for Andrew Goodman, who had been a college classmate, and was one of three Freedom Riders murdered in Mississippi during Freedom Summer, and the initial struggle for civil rights.

The initial struggle.

As you’ll see and hear, this song is as relevant today is it was in 1965, when it was written.

“Go home, outsider!” Simon has an angry mob telling his courageous brother, who was the kind of outsider we all should aspire to be.

This is Simon and Garfunkel at their folkiest with “He Was My Brother”.