Why I’m Still Listening to Paul Simon’s Graceland After All These Years

This morning I stumbled on this arrangement of Paul Simon’s Graceland, and it conjured all sorts of emotions.

The young musician captures the complexities of Simon’s rhythms and melodies perfectly, all in a single instrument. You can tell he’s also aware of the complexities in the lyrics — the heartache and allusions.

There’s power in these lyrics. Graceland is a song that becomes more meaningful to me each year. I’ve been listening to it since was released in 1986. It’s a song that shows us how to love and how to forgive.

Here’s a line-by-line look at why the lyrics are so wonderful.

The song starts with a simile:

The Mississippi Delta was shining like a National guitar.

On the surface, Simon is just saying that the Mississippi river looks like a National guitar (pictured below).

But there’s something more here.

National guitars were originally made in the 1930s and were used by African American blues performers — performers who were planting the seeds of rock and roll, the precursors to Elvis Presley.

I am following the river, down the highway, through the cradle of the Civil War. I’m going to Graceland — Memphis, Tennessee, I’m going to Graceland. Poor boys and pilgrims with families, and we are going to Graceland.

Simon is making a pilgrimage to Graceland, the home of Elvis.

Graceland is in the heart of the South — the birthplace of rock and roll, and the birthplace (“the cradle”) of a horrifying war fueled by racism. It’s a place that represents the best and worst in humanity: Rock and roll brings people together for pilgrimages, racial tensions bring wars and strife against civil rights.

This connection runs parallel with the tensions of the South African apartheid, which is something Simon was dealing with while recording Graceland in South Africa. It’s part of the theme of the Graceland project: transcending racial divide through music.

My traveling companion is nine years old; he is the child of my first marriage. But I’ve reason to believe we both will be received in Graceland.

Simon’s son Harper was around nine years old when the song was being written, and Simon’s marriage to Harper’s mom didn’t end well. The “first marriage” is shorthand for tension and heartache and the fact that Simon has felt rejected in the past.

However, Simon believes that he and his son will find a sort of reconciliation in this pilgrimage to the birthplace of rock and roll.

She comes back to tell me she’s gone — as if I didn’t know that. As if I didn’t know my own bed. As if I’d never noticed the way she brushed her hair from her forehead.

This is a reference to Simon’s second failed marriage, which was to Carry Fischer (Princess Leia). Fischer divorced him a couple of years before Graceland was recorded.

The lines note the sorrow and disappointment in seeing a spouse preen themselves for a new lover (“the way she brushed her hair from her forehead”) before leaving.

And she said losing love is like a window in your heart: Everybody sees you’re blown apart. Everybody sees the wind blow.

Here Simon captures the pain of divorce and the embarrassment of having to show up to social events where everybody knows what’s happened to you and therefore pities you in your vulnerable state.

And my traveling companions are ghosts and empty sockets. I’m looking at ghosts and empties. But I’ve reason to believe we all will be received in Graceland.

At this point in the song, Simon’s troubled thoughts about divorce and betrayal have conjured the demons his past. Now he’s traveling not only with his son but also with eyeless ghosts.

It’s terrifying imagery, imagery that could also allude to fallen soldiers in the Civil War. These ghosts with empty eye sockets represent the injustices of the human experience — failed marriages, troubled nations.

And yet — and this is where the power of the song surfaces — Simon has reason to believe that we all will be received in Graceland.

At this point in the song, Graceland takes on a bigger meaning. It’s no longer just a symbol for the redemptive power of rock and roll; it’s also a symbol for being able to somehow receive grace even when we don’t deserve it. It’s about nations searching for redemption for their past sins, and it’s about forgiving people who treat us cruelly or let us down.

Simon could have written a song about how angry he was at Fischer for leaving him or a song about how evil racism is. Instead, he wrote a song about how we often don’t fully understand what we’re doing, and how all of us can access grace.

It’s a song about not casting judgment in a confusing and unfair world. Instead of being consumed with trying to figure out who is and isn’t saved, the song invites us to consider the idea that we all will be saved (whether by our god or by some other source doesn’t matter so much here).

This concept, while simple, is perhaps at the root of all ethical acts. If you really believe that we all will be received in Graceland, then you can’t treat people like projects or make hostile generalizations about them. We’re all in the same situation — all seven billion of us — and we all have access to the same grace, whatever the source.

But, really, I still listen to the song because that guitar lick is freaking amazing.