LOOK AROUND. LEAVES ARE BROWN.
(Originally published November 2023.)
Trying to pick a favorite Simon & Garfunkel song is like trying to pick a favorite vegetable. They’re all good, especially as you age, except for maybe one that you just don’t think you’ll ever be able to stand. (For me, it’s mushrooms. And “Baby Driver.”) They’re all good, and you’ll gladly eat/listen to any of them, and you’ve named at least five of them as Your Favorite at different points in your life.
I’ve had my affairs with “The Boxer” and “Richard Cory” and “The Dangling Conversation.” Obviously, I’ve always loved “The Sound(s) of Silence” and “Mrs. Robinson” and “Cecilia.” My dad went through a huge “Scarborough Fair” phase when I was growing up, so I’ve heard it roughly like, eight hundred thousand times in my life. Need I extend this insufferable paragraph? It’s not a question of which S&G song is the best. They’re all the best, except “Baby Driver.” It’s a question of which Simon & Garfunkel song is yours.
And this one is mine.
“A Hazy Shade of Winter” is about when you’re a creative, and you live in a cold climate, and it’s November, and it’s pitch black outside by 5:00 P.M., and one day you wake up and think, Oh FUCK. It’s almost 1966 2024 2025, and you haven’t made anything good, and you’re about to be trapped inside your house with all of the nothing you’ve accomplished, and none of the motivation to keep trying. It’s dark and freezing, and that’s scary enough on its own, but especially so when it’s forcing you to stay inside and try in vain to create something. Because you know you can’t create anything under these conditions. And it’s going to take months before the seasonal depression subsides enough that you can maybe consider attempting a poem or a song or a Harry Styles deep dive. You’re not asking for help or pity; only understanding. You just want someone else to acknowledge the hostility of the environment. How it implores you to lie down and rot. You want to grab them by the shoulders and shake them until they truly get the color of the leaves and the shade of the sky and what they mean.
Paul Simon wrote the song while he was living in England, which is admittedly a far greater punishment than anything I’m currently dealing with, but at least he got to do it in the ’60s, while being Paul Simon. I have to assume that the line about brown leaves is a reference to “California Dreamin’”, which came out in December 1965, and is a little more straightforward in its angst. “It’s cold in New York. Fuck,” is its thesis, as opposed to the long-winded “A Hazy Shade of Winter” sermon I gave one paragraph prior.
It also rocks harder than pretty much every other Simon & Garfunkel song. So much so that The Bangles were able to cover it pretty flawlessly. And I like The Bangles’ version, because it is a banger, but I cannot forgive it for eclipsing the original in popularity. The cover simply goes too hard, sacrificing a great deal of the original’s intrinsic anxiety to become a rousing crowd pleaser. I know I said the song is a plea for understanding, but The Bangles somehow provide both too much and too little understanding? It doesn’t sound like one sad, anxious person in their apartment; it sounds like a fun jam sesh in someone’s garage. During October, at the absolute coldest.
The cover was recorded for the Less Than Zero soundtrack. I’ve not seen Less Than Zero, but I know it’s about a guy living in New York who goes home to Los Angeles for the holidays. And there you have it. I found the problem. You cannot invert a “California Dreamin’” pastiche like that. I went to school in California, and every year I was so relieved when winter break ended and I got to return to campus and stop freezing to death. You know what I told people my favorite Simon & Garfunkel song was in college? “Cecilia.” The Bangles are from L.A., too. I’ve cracked it. All right, I’m gatekeeping the song from Californians. If I ever move back, I’m gonna have to get really into “Fakin’ It.”
“A Hazy Shade of Winter” is for when you’ve been writing in circles about music theory for two hours, and then you remember it’s Monday, and you have to take the garbage out, but it’s 19°F with a wind chill of -5°, and you can’t see your hand in front of your face, and the neighbor’s dogs are going to bark at you because their vision is even worse so they won’t recognize you, and normally you love the neighbor’s dogs, but this accursed season has turned them into snarling beasts, because everything it touches becomes hostile. And you know you just spent October wishing your surroundings were a little more hostile, for thematic purposes, but a fun, controlled kind of hostile. Like, leaves are orange, and the sky is a foggy shade of creepy. “A Hazy Shade of Winter” is about when Thanksgiving, as much as you were dreading it, is finally over, but that means you no longer have an excuse to avoid the holidays. My holiday is the ghastly Christmas, which I know is not the case for Simon nor Garfunkel, so I don’t want to project Christmas onto the song, but it’s such a frighteningly inescapable affair that I can’t divorce it entirely, try as I might. New Year’s is imminent as well, and that’s a) universal, at least in western society; b) even scarier. “What did you do in 2023?” “You know Big Time Rush?” And I don’t regret any of it! Okay, I regret reviewing The Album a little bit, but just because I had to listen to The Album three times. Like, I had fun! But maybe I just had fun because I could fucking see outside. I could go on evening hikes. Without a coat. Grass was high, fields were ripe.
I write songs, too. They are not for public consumption at this time, (or ever) but I do it. None of them are as good as “A Hazy Shade of Winter”, because that’s impossible. I still do it. This is not a lead-in to me changing my mind and sharing one, because that’s also impossible. I’d never even finished one until last month. I guess that’s something. But look around. Leaves are brown.
I found a gimlet recipe, so that I too may drink vodka and lime. It sounds really unappetizing, but ’tis the season. The hazy shade of winter.
My favorite part of the song is when S&G give up on explaining the issue and just start repeating the refrain with increasing desperation. You either get it or you don’t. You live somewhere cold, or you’re The Bangles. Tangent: I noticed a prevalence of the song “California Dreamin’” when I lived in the song’s namesake — usually the Scala & Kolacny Brothers cover from those lottery commercials. And like, no???? No?????? That song is by, for, and about the cold and the miserable. I’m sorry, California! The greatest hip hop song of all time is about you! Is that not enough?
I’m losing sight of the real enemy here: the month of November. The month of December, also, but my next post will probably be about some Christmas shit. I’m not immune; it truly is inescapable. There’s no reason “November Rain” should be the definitive November song (guess where Guns N’ Roses is from! No, not the jungle!). The only person who’s recently come within spitting distance of what Paul Simon was getting at with “A Hazy Shade of Winter” is Vermonter Noah Kahan (who’s cited Simon as an inspiration) with “Stick Season.” But that song is sad, not anxious. I like Noah Kahan, and I like “Stick Season”, but I just don’t connect with the acknowledgement that November is depressing as much as I do with Simon & Garfunkel’s panic.
It’s a testament to that panic that I don’t find “A Hazy Shade of Winter” obnoxious. Because it’s ridiculous that Paul Simon would fret about never having written anything worthwhile. My dad thinks he’s found the cure for anxiety in the philosophy of another Paul. I can’t find the source quote, so it’s entirely possible he made this up, but allegedly, McCartney once told an interviewer he still gets nervous, despite being Paul McCartney, because there’s always something to worry about. Even if you’re Paul McCartney. Worry is inevitable, so stop worrying about it. Paradoxes are comforting to some people, apparently. I find that obnoxious. It’s like they haven’t even looked around (leaves are brown).
Don’t worry, I’m fine. I’m not sure I’m selling anyone on this song, though.
I usually say something about music theory in these things. My twisted, self-taught version of music theory, anyway. The song’s in (saddest of all keys) D minor, (The Bangles’ version is in F minor, which is another reason I don’t think it really works) but specifically D harmonic minor, which means it has a dangerous-sounding, anxiety-provoking major V chord. It’s also, as I said, uncharacteristically heavy for Simon & Garfunkel, but that just means the percussion is relentless. Get stoned and listen to it with headphones — you will not be able to take your ears off the drums. This, from the guy who would eventually write “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” I guess that’s comforting, actually. You may feel cold and useless now, but someday, you’ll write “Bridge Over Troubled Water”, and Johnny Cash and Fiona Apple will cover it, and isn’t that uplifting?
But look around. Leaves are brown.
There’s a patch of snow on the ground.
(Once Thanksgiving is over, people will start decorating their houses for Christmas. That’ll mitigate some of the perversely early darkness. Some of it might even look pretty.)
LOOK AROUND. LEAVES ARE BROWN. THERE’S A PATCH OF SNOW ON THE GROUND.