The Obvious Child

Boppin' down the road the other day, radio on, and a song by Paul Simon flows at me called The Obvious Child.

Loved it immediately and thought it must be a new song. Gotta check it out.

Checked it out and found out it was released in 1990.

1990. 25 years ago.

Sometimes I feel like I am hanging on to a vertical pole with both hands while a wind is whipping powerful enough that my body is horizontal to the ground. All these things that I could love and might enrich my life are flying by me like paper in a hurricane.

Whaddya gonna do.

The music is percussion driven and stimulating; the lyrics are thought provoking.

He opens with these lines: "Well, I'm accustomed to a smooth ride, or maybe I'm a dog who's lost his bite, I don't expect to be treated like a fool no more, I don't expect to sleep through the night."

The man immediately crawled inside my head and took a damn close look at my life.


Later on he describes a guy thumbing through his high school yearbook.............."some have died, some have fled from themselves, or struggled from here to get there, Sonny wanders beyond his interior walls, runs his hands through his thinning brown hair."

There is a lot more to the song. A lot.

I won't quote every lyric but I will say the song blew me away. I loved it immediately. When I checked out the lyrics I was rewarded with the typical Paul Simon mix of depth and smoky innuendo.

Got lucky with this song.

This is one piece of paper that did not fly by me.