Graceland SSSWCBS
The song Graceland of Paul Simon, on his album with the same title, is an example of ‘saying/singing something which cannot be said’ (SSSWCBS).
Any song of importance contains a SSSWCBS message in everyday language and even more in scientific language.
Let us take songs (and poems) as ‘mythology’ of a concrete situation and moment in time which touches the heart. Perhaps in doing so we could say a few words about it.
Paul Simon did so to soften an argument between Ophra and her friend Gail on the meaning of his Graceland song.’ (see source here)
‘……´Was he talking about Elvis Presley´s Graceland when he did that?´ Gayle said. ´He was talking about going to Graceland,´ Oprah said. ´Yes.´ ´I thought he was talking about something in Africa, and his love for Africa,´ Gayle said….. Who did they find to settle their dispute? The songwriter himself!
´Let me see if I can clarify the issue a little bit,´ Paul says. ´Oprah, you´re right. The song is about a real trip that I took to Graceland. It´s not really autobiographical, although there are elements that are. It is about a trip there with a father and his 9-year-old son trying to find some kind of solace from a loss of love.´ Before Oprah can gloat, Paul says that Gayle´s interpretation is also right! ´The song is also about Africa,´ he says. ´The song was made in South Africa, and the musicians were South African. ´¦ The South Africans were going through a time when they went through the reconciliation with their past, and in that way, that´s what the father was looking for in his trip to Graceland and hoping to find there. So in a sense, you´re both right……….’
This is what language al about. ‘Straight’ everyday (old and social media) written language and surely scientific written language have a ‘doxic’ claim on ‘truth’.
Art, songs/singing, poems, praying, hip hopping, humor, dancings, doing ritual and surely rapping are in another root-category of communication.
These human forms of expressing have always more, even many, meanings.
Focusing on one of two basic patterns of human communication: digital (right/wrong) OR analog communication, make our lives miserable.
Live becomes bearable and more and more enjoyable when we practice continiously balancing between the two.
Music, singing, bodily movement AND understanding the lyrics offers you/us a Gate into Graceland.
Following this path with a heart Paul Simon, for me, expressed (in connection with ‘Boy in the Bubble’ and ‘All Around The World Or The Myth Of Fingerprints‘) the alienation in Western ‘estranged’ contexts.
We are losing, have lost, our abilities to get, ‘collectively’, into Graceland frequently.
For most USAliens the illusion (Graceland, Disney, movies) has become more important than the real thing.
Read my scientific paper on young men’s seeking GRACE (land) in ‘liminal experiences‘ (1998).
Being in romantic love and losing love. which is a big thing in his song Graceland, is a Western surrogate (coping style) for (collectively) losing our Gate to Grace.
Read my recollection of a shamanic teaching of Swift Deer in last century’s eighties of White Women’s Romantic Love and The Talking stick.