{"id":3729,"date":"2013-08-15T01:00:12","date_gmt":"2013-08-15T08:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/suddenalarm.blaseckie.ca\/?p=3729"},"modified":"2013-08-13T09:00:22","modified_gmt":"2013-08-13T16:00:22","slug":"paul-simon-pooka","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/suddenalarm.blaseckie.ca\/?p=3729","title":{"rendered":"Paul Simon, Pooka"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"young<\/a>\u00a0I walked into a coffee shop that was playing a Paul Simon song and immediately remembered the time in my life I first heard it. It could have been any one of his songs and I\u2019d be there at the point of my life when that song was popular. Seriously.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

I know music in general has this effect on a lot of us. The experience is certainly not limited to me nor is there some magical property, an aural fairy dust Mr. Simon sprinkles over each master tape (or whatever they use now\u2014I refer to the recording medium not the powder modern magical creatures use to cast their spells).<\/span><\/p>\n

After all the moment I hear Stevie Wonder\u2019s \u201cSuperstition\u201d, I am a dancing fool of 19 just starting to work on a long list of bad choices.\u00a0 Jesse Winchester still melts my heart. A few items on that list of bad choices followed closely after hearing \u201cBrand New Tennessee Waltz”. I certainly can\u2019t blame the song, however, any more \u00a0than say it was\"Jesse_Winchester\"<\/span><\/a> responsible for the green shag in my first apartment.<\/span><\/p>\n

I guess music, like smell, is hardwired directly to the memory centre of our brains\u2014the combination of Dial soap, toast and percolating coffee immediately puts me in my grandfather\u2019s house, washing my hands before breakfast.<\/span><\/p>\n

The reason for singling out Paul Simon, however, is that his music has consistently been the soundtrack for my life. Play any one songs from his early albums and there\u2019s my sister\u2019s first boyfriend. With stitches in his chin because he rode on the hood of the car daring my sister to shake him off. Which she did. I was screaming at the time but I promise I won\u2019t now unless the song is,\u201cWe’ve Got a Groovy Thing\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"kodachrome\"<\/span><\/a>High School equals Mrs. Robinson. <\/span><\/p>\n

My first apartment with that particular shade of barf green shag is winkled out by Kodachrome. Me and Julio is my best friend finding my journal and me looking for someone to help share the rent shortly thereafter.<\/span><\/p>\n

Half a day in New York this spring was spent trying to shake the ear worm \u201cfeeling groovy\u201d because we\u2019d changed trains at the 59th\u00a0street bridge station. Nothing else from the song, dammit, just \u201cdo-dil-lee-do-dooo-feeling groovy\u201d over and over again until half-way through the first act of Matilda<\/span><\/a>. \u00a0\"IMG_0785\"<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

For anyone over the age of 30 at least one Paul Simon song will open an address on their memory map. Go ahead, play “Graceland” and if you\u2019ve grown up anywhere in North America or Europe and weren\u2019t raised by wolves, chances are you\u2019ll be singing the chorus when he hits it. If it\u2019s not already playing in your head right now.<\/span><\/p>\n

For most folk under the age of 30 when they hear “The Boxer” they’ll remember playing in granny’s kitchen, her radio tuned to easy listening radio. It’s still filling the space between the weather and \u00a0\u201cthe 3rd\u00a0caller to answer the phone with \u2018I go all the way with Todd\u2019 wins tickets to lunch…with Todd…”.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"The

he can still rock a hat<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

Okay, maybe it is just me but I don’t think so. I can’t be the only person with a \u00a0music pooka following me through life.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0I walked into a coffee shop that was playing a Paul Simon song and immediately remembered the time in my life I first heard it. It could have been any one of his songs and I\u2019d be there at the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[70,1],"tags":[758,759,600,757,224,756],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/suddenalarm.blaseckie.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3729"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/suddenalarm.blaseckie.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/suddenalarm.blaseckie.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/suddenalarm.blaseckie.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/suddenalarm.blaseckie.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3729"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"http:\/\/suddenalarm.blaseckie.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3729\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3748,"href":"http:\/\/suddenalarm.blaseckie.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3729\/revisions\/3748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/suddenalarm.blaseckie.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/suddenalarm.blaseckie.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/suddenalarm.blaseckie.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}