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Going to Scarborough Fair
My wife just about jumped out of her chair. She had opened up the weekend paper on Saturday, September 21, and there it was. That day was the 39th anniversary of the famous Simon and Garfunkel reunion concert in New York’s Central Park. By 1981, their partnership had been over for some 11 years, so technically speaking the year 2020 marks the milestone 50th anniversary of their breakup.
My wife thinks that the sun rises and sets on the duo, and just happens to own the DVD of the concert. I think they are not too shabby as well. So to honour the anniversary, we sat and watched the DVD, and enjoyed it so much we resolved to do so every September 21 for the years to come.
There was something invigorating about seeing the two 39-year-olds—who in real life are now both 78—entertain 500,000 enthusiastic spectators with music mostly from their golden period of the 1960s, although they did also sing several of Paul Simon’s postbreakup songs.
The look back over 50 years makes Simon’s decision to go solo seem entirely reasonable: as things turned out, he had lots of songs to create and lots of time to do it in. At the time, the move was seen as potential career suicide; who could forgo a cushy glide towards retirement regurgitating the existing Simon and Garfunkel catalog? It was also seen as a bit cruel to Art Garfunkel, as the pair had been playing together since 1958, although by 1970 they were widely believed to loathe one another.
We should be very grateful Simon did go solo. He subsequently gave us some great albums, including There Goes Rhymin’ Simon, Still Crazy After All These Years, and Graceland— which arguably he would not have produced with the albatross of Garfunkel around his neck.
The pleasure we derived from that video eclipsed the twinges of sadness that confronting the 39-year-old event brought on. “We could have gone to see it,” said my wife —although we never thought of going at the time. But she was right: at that point, we had no children to babysit or cats to mind. How many other momentous concerts should we have gone to see that we sold ourselves short on? John Prine at Massey Hall? Leonard Cohen at the K-Rock Centre? How many other memorable life experiences had we passed up?
But because we enjoyed the concert so much, were we now to stand accused of wallowing in that nword, the last refuge of the culturally bereft: nostalgia? Were we just like audiences in those fundraising specials on PBS—plied with tired, bald and overweight performers dragged onstage from nursing homes, operating rooms, cemeteries and pickling jars, to sing again that one song that made them famous? All served with the assurance that this was the greatest music ever, and with the certain knowledge that hearing it will generate warm feelings and shake loose donations. (Not that I have anything against PBS: I have enjoyed The Highwaymen Live at Nassau County Coliseum many times courtesy of PBS fundraising campaigns.)
It was the great philosopher Harrison Ford who said: “I don’t do nostalgia. It just doesn’t occur to me. I’m living in the moment, and I don’t have that gene.” I think that’s being a little too tough, While nostalgia may receive a rap for association with false memories of an idyllic past, and may only serve to make some people sad about their present circumstances, it can also bring back warm memories of younger and less stressful times. Someone else once said “nostalgia is the intimate refuge of every man and every woman in a world seemingly gone mad,” A little nostalgia, however sentimental it may seem, can be a legitimate tonic to help us get through these tough COVID-19 times.
Besides, what is or is not nostalgia is entirely subjective: one person’s maudlin sentimentality is another person’s stirring passion. Or as Paul Simon might put it, one man’s ceiling is another man’s floor.
So you know where my wife and I will be on September 21, 2021. We’ll be going to Scarborough Fair. And we won’t be ashamed of it.
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