| Don't know Paul Simon's Surprise, listen to Outrageous before going on. You have to read this blog as it was posted, earliest first (Cracked 2 More, lower right). The crackings are in the comments. |
"Another Galaxy" is a straightforward, verse-and-chorus song; cracking not required. In traditional lyric notation, you'd write it this way:
On the morning of her wedding day
When no one was awake
She drove across the border
Leaving all the yellow roses on her wedding cake
Her mother's tears, her breakfast order
She's gone, gone, gone
[Chorus]
There is a moment, a chip in time
When leaving home is the lesser crime
When your eyes are blind with tears
But your heart can see
Another life, another galaxy
That night her dreams are storm-tossed as a willow
She hears the clouds
She sees the eye of a hurricane
As it sweeps across her island pillow
But she's gone, gone, gone
[Chorus]
Well, maybe there's a little cracking required. Anybody have a clue about "her breakfast order"? Nowhere else does Simon just throw in some nonsense because he needs a rhyme.
And as a last note, cracking definitely required, there's the issue of boldface type in the lyrics. (Hey, buy the album. The booklet enclosed is worth the money.) Every word that refers to water - ocean, pond, tear, stream, mist - is set in boldface. Nothing else is in boldface. Every track mentions water, some way or another.
3 comments:
There is definitely a common thread that ties all the cracked tracks together. If that continues as the remaining tracks are cracked and it turns out that this album is one unified whole, I'll stop calling it a monster. I'll call it The Monster.
How come the unifying element I see has absolutely nothing to do with water?
I didn't mention that this song is hauntingly beautiful. For simply beautiful music, I'd put Surprise in a class with the original Crosby, Stills and Nash, G. Dead's American Beauty and Sir Paul's Chaos and Creation in the Backyard.
On the other hand, there's no accounting for tastes. Some people actually listen to AC/DC, after all. But this is wandering off topic. I'll stick to Cracking the Simon Code, but that doesn't mean the intellectual content trumps the music or the emotions. I just love the cracked songs more than when they confused me.
She left the morning of her wedding--assuming she was staying in a hotel, she ordered room service breakfast, decided she couldn't get married, and left before the breakfast made it to her room. She left the romantic aspect of her wedding (the yellow flowers on her wedding cake), the emotional, social repercussions of walking out on the wedding (her mother's tears) and the prosaic, financial aspect of walking out on her wedding (her expensive breakfast). I think it's interesting that Simon lists the three things she leaves, and then says "she's gone, gone, gone." It's also interesting that he doesn't mention the groom at all. I guess the groom isn't important--what's important is that marrying him is going to take her to the wrong galaxy.
Do you think it's important what border she's driving across? I always interpreted it to be her driving from the US to Mexico, if only because that's the only border I've heard called "the border." But I suppose she could be going anywhere... or the border could mean that's she's crossing the line, or a reference to borderline personality disorder. But because Simon says she's leaving home, I assume she's physically running away.
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