"I sit here thinking of memories we knew
Life rushes by so fast
We all are blind, and we stumble through our days
As the future turns to past"
Private World
Artie Garr
The digits I had dialed traversed the six hundred
miles or so from my home to Art Garfunkel's New York. The call was
answered quickly by the friendly, warm voice of Art saying, "Hi J.T.
Just let me close the door of my office... hang on." The candid and
familiar tone set my nerves at ease, somewhat. The sound of silence was
finally broken when he picked back up and said, "How do you feel
today?" There was such an actual genuineness in his tone that all of my
apprehensions faded quickly away.
Our
conversation wended its way through politics, global warming, the
environment, the disingenuousness within the recording business, apathy
and the role of technology in making us even more apathetic. There were
fascinating twists and turns, none of which were covered on my
meticulously prepared list of questions. We did however get around to
his current project, Some Enchanted Evening and the subsequent tour to
support it. Some Enchanted Evening is an eclectic collection of Tin Pan
Alley style songs by the likes of Johnny Mercer, Jimmy Dorsey and
Rogers and Hammerstein, which is wholly engaging in its selection as
well as its execution.
It was daunting to
interview such an iconic figure, a man whose achievements ranged from a
masters in mathematics to all of the songs, music, prose and poetry he
has created. Were there other worlds that he has not able to conquer
and things that he still wished to attain?
"I
still haven't gotten to sing as good as I can, so the first thing your
question makes me think is right down the mainstream, the middle of
what I do. I'm a singer first and foremost. I can sing better than the
world knows me to sing," he stated flatly, while in my mind, his
soaring counter tenor rang through Bridge Over Troubled Water, and I
found no flaws whatsoever. "I'm still in the process of getting my full
act together, being maximally effective. I don't look outside of music
when you ask me a question. I am a singer. Have I really done it all?
No."
I disagreed with him, tactfully of
course, telling him that the sheer silkiness of Some Enchanted Evening
was just astounding. The selections from America's songbook, containing
classics such as I’ve Grown Accustomed To Her Face, Quiet Nights Of
Quiet Stars (Corcovado) and the album's namesake, Some Enchanted
Evening, were all expertly arranged and the singing had such a
melodious quality to it, you could feel the relaxed sense of release
within him.
"I'm smiling because, you know, I'm quite pleased with
it. I know you're not supposed to say this, but after a bunch of
albums, I've been convinced to put the vocals way up front finally,
very palatably... don't show off as a singer. Don't make them go, 'Look at
the singing!' Just tickle their ears. Serve the listener aurally. So
I'm trying to be a servant of delight in this album with the vocals way
up front and I thought the phrasing came out good."
With his background in mathematics, I wondered if he ever saw the musical form as an elegant mathematical process.
"Well,
I certainly see Bach and his fugues that way. I calibrate, very
carefully with great precision... I am precise. When I'm singing, time and
the exactness of rhythm and the solidity of the groove, something that
Creedence Clearwater was so brilliant at, is just total, solid time.
When you feel that solid time, the mathematician such as I, likes to
play with it and surge just a little ahead, a little behind. The
precision of the exactness, of feeling it, allows you to play games
with it and you pull your listener into such a sensitivity when you
play these games. Now you can grab the next word, and just a little
ahead of the beat, and it has an effect, an urgency. Or, you slip back,
the same thing you do with crescendos and de-crescendos you do
volume-wise, you do with little pushes and surges in the rhythm when
you're just mathematically precise about what you do. But, maybe I'm
just describing a musicians' precision."
Emerging
onto the music scene, as well as becoming aware of the sheer breadth of
the world, in a time of a convoluted evolution of political and social
structure, Art Garfunkel has seen the seams of what holds America
together. He has toured across the land, having walked across the
country as well and has a keen sense of the changing landscape. How
does he view the new technology and the inherent anonymity of the
computer age, especially in deference to the changing face of the music
industry?
"I very happy to say, I don't
quite get it," he admitted without regret. "It's a moving target, it's
shifting sands. I don't have to get it. All I have to do is sing. Can I
find a venue to sing? It may not be the record business, but maybe it's
only the stage."
"I like this motto. It's a
very important guide to living, in my opinion. 'Never underestimate the
massive quantity of human shyness,'" he said, pausing slightly before
expounding on the statement. "People's ability to be shy is massive and
it explains so much. The computer world feeds into people who don't
want to be face to face with anybody, and that shyness, that living
through your terminal at a distance, more detached from everybody,
getting your entertainment with an increased amount of detachment it's
about feeding into shyness. It's exactly what the community of the
human race does not need. How to superficially pretend we're in touch
with each other from a farther distance with more detachment."
"W.H.
Auden has this little short poem, which tries to preach accepting for
whatever is... 'Try and embrace whatever's going because these are our
lives and we love being alive/ Bless what there is for being/Which has
to be obeyed, for/What else am I made for?/Agree or disagree?' Art
finished with a flourish. "Short and sweet. That's what there is for
me. If it's here, if it makes up our world, try and embrace the whole
funny, contradictory, ridiculous picture."
"It's
a tough age. I'm not partaking of it. I'm proud to be old fashioned in
many ways... I don’t own a cell phone, I never got with computers. I don't
own one. I don't know how they work. It's costing me," he stated,
somewhat defiantly. "I have personnel to help me, but something tells
me that I don't want to learn to communicate in a zippier way. These
are the elements that make quality of life so I don't want to find
shortcuts when it comes to the quality of life."
With
the record industry circling their wagons to try and contain their
self-inflicted, short sighted losses, it was apparent that this was a
whole new species than the artist friendly record companies of the
sixties and seventies. To see the progression from the organic
structure where art was appreciated to the mechanical behemoth that
manufactured music for the masses must be quite a sad scene indeed.
"I'm
on the inside of the record business and I'm an artist and I can tell
you that royalty statements and everything have gone... disappeared in the
last year. The structure of the whole business and getting paid has
gone somehow into somebody's sub-basement in some building and no one
can find it. In other words, we lost our record business, we the
artists have. The royalty payments, the structure, the whole way the
business worked, it checked out in '07. So we're in a state of real
vigilantism. Rules are gone... who is making up the new rules? What kind
of grabbing is going on? These are the questions."
One
of the questions I so dearly wanted to ask, but was afraid to, suddenly
came up in conversation so I ventured forth. Was his upcoming tour
going to include selections from the Simon and Garfunkel repertoire in
its set list?
"I'll sing Kathy's Song near
the end of the show," he said, much to my relief. "It's a beautiful,
nostalgic love song. I like say it's Paul Simon's number one love song.
I'll do some Simon and Garfunkel stuff because it's coy to leave it out
and I'm an entertainer and I want to give the audience Scarborough Fair
and I love doing these things," he proclaimed, quite animatedly. "I
have orchestra charts that enhance them and it's not like I've done
them thousands of times and am bored. I've done them a hundred times.
That's enough to know how it goes and enough to enjoy it."
I
glanced in panic at the clock. I was only supposed to have interviewed
him for fifteen minutes and thirty-five had elapsed. My page of
prepared questions had almost been wholly forgotten as I had gotten
lost in conversation with one of the most prolific originators in
modern memory. Too soon, our conversation ended with a poetical phrase
that Art had said earlier, summing up not only the last half-hour, but
the essence of our existence as well. "Our lives are love and a
continual goodbye."
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