A Relationship in Song: The masterpiece Paul Simon wrote for Carrie Fisher
“Years ago, there were tribes that roamed the earth, and every tribe had a magic person,” the late Carrie Fisher writes in her memoir Wishful Drinking, which was released in 2008. “Well, now, as you know, all the tribes have dispersed, but every so often, you meet a magic person, and every so often, you meet someone from your tribe. Which is how I felt when I met Paul Simon.” There are many moments of fate throughout the world of pop culture–this is one about two star-crossed lovers, inextricably connected, and the masterpieces that defined their unfortunate destiny.
Anyone who has read Kurt Vonnegut’s masterful Cats Cradle will identify Fisher’s fated sentiment as the Hollywood star recognising that Simon was a member of her ‘karass’. For those who haven’t read it, then allow Vonnegut’s prose to explain: “If you find your life tangled up with somebody else’s life for no very logical reason, that person may be a member of your karass.” In other words, when you can’t seem to shake a person loose for no good reason, they’re essentially in your club. For Fisher and Simon, their tether was love–and it’s the kind of swirling love story that we all hope for when wistfully dreaming of teenage romance in our adolescent years.
Simon and Fisher’s lives were about as tangled and logical as a dissolvable fishing net. Their off-and-on romance was one that, by all means, should’ve resided in a sitcom, but it didn’t, and the human comedy it underpins is far less laughable as a result. Over the course of their tumultuous 12-year relationship, their tempestuous romance went from dating to split, then to engaged, split once more, missed a step and ended up dishing out matrimony vows, divorced, then dating once again, until they finally acquiesced to a fate that seemed tragically predestined and went their separate ways with a firm farewell. It’s the kind of story usually reserved for pop songs. And, in fitting fashion, Simon didn’t disappoint.
As Paul Simon explained to Peter Ames Carlin in the biography Homeward Bound: The Life of Paul Simon: “Once they saw each other, no one else mattered to either of them. Carrie added velocity to [Paul’s] life, a kind of wild energy that often set him alight and sometimes made him scream.” Thus, we return once more to our noble sage, the late great Mr Vonnegut, who adds to his humorous karass musings: “We Bokononists believe that humanity is organised into teams, teams that do God’s Will without ever discovering what they’re doing… The karass ignores national, institutional, occupational, familial, and class boundaries. It is as free-form as an amoeba.”
In short, there is no logical link behind the dispersed members of your tribe, and the fact Fisher and Simon were like two parts of a puzzle that belonged together but never quite tessellated nicely enough to withstand the tethered pulls of life itself is a stark and brutal testimony to this. By all accounts, their relationship was always loving, but it was pitted by tragic circumstances and various puncturing potholes on memory lane, the kind of journey that leaves most famous people destined to travel alone.
This relationship was defined beautifully in Paul Simon’s masterful ode to Fisher with ‘Hearts and Bones’, an anthem which he describes as “a better song” than ‘The Sound of Silence’. With wedding vows on his mind, he wrote: “Two people were married, the act was outrageous, the bride was contagious.” This wry, no-holds-barred tale decreed the passions and pitfalls of their time together. It is, by turns, a harsh and brutal song, but it is always evidently borne from love.
In an interview with Paul Zollo, Simon later reflected: “That was one of my best songs. It took a long time to write it, and it was very true. It was about things that happened. The characters are very near to autobiographical. It’s probably the only track that I really like on that album.” Nevertheless, he saw this honesty as something that unlocked something in his art.
He later adds that this personal switch towards more autobiographical lyrics brought about his songwriting zenith. “In Hearts and Bones the language starts to get more interesting. The imagery started to get a little interesting,” he states. “And that’s what I was trying to learn to do, was to be able to write a vernacular speech, and then intersperse it with enriched language, and then go back to vernacular. So the thing would go along smoothly, then some image would come out that was interesting, then it would go back to this very smooth, conversational thing.”
“So that was a technique that I was learning,” he continued. “I don’t know where it came from.” For those following the story, it seems fairly evident where it came from. Commonplace fun giving way to profundity and then a sudden rough patch not only describes the songwriting at play in ‘Hearts and Bones’ but the romance that spawned it.
In the end, we are left with a track of honeyed belle that seems to prognosticate the bittersweet arc of their love affair very clearly. Thus, despite the prickly pastures it stands within, it is a patch of beauty that remains untouched by torment, reflecting only love even in its moments that are less than loving. As Fisher would remark in an interview in 2016, shortly before her passing, “I do like the songs he wrote about our relationship. Even when he’s insulting me, I like it very much.”
Very few sentiments could be as befitting of their relationship as that, and no song in Simon’s back catalogue delineates that with as much clarity as ‘Hearts and Bones’. It is an account of their love run through the fictional filter of mellowed nostalgia. The song abides by what Vonnegut writes: “Live by the harmless untruths that make you brave and kind and healthy and happy.”
There aren’t many songs that will entirely encapsulate a relationship. Often, those things are too complicated, too layered and too frustrating to even attempt. However, if there was one songwriter in the world able to distil such feelings into a potent, punchy and powerful cocktail, then it’s Paul Simon. For that reason alone, the song is a defining moment of his career–one littered with hits, but none that mean more than this lesser-known opus.
