Paul Simon contemplates faith, death and the existence of God | CBC Arts

Paul Simon, 81, is adamant that he’s not religious, but the source of inspiration for his latest album, Seven Psalms, is undoubtedly divine.

On Jan. 15, 2019, the veteran songwriter had a dream with the message “You’re working on a piece called Seven Psalms.” The dream was so powerful it roused him from his sleep in the middle of the night, and he wrote it down.

“The next day I thought, ‘You know, I’m not even sure what a psalm is — I’ll look it up in the dictionary,'” Simon told Q‘s Tom Power in an interview at the musician’s home near Austin, Texas.

“I mean, of course I knew the word, but I didn’t know exactly. And the Psalms in the Bible, I thought, ‘Well, I don’t know how to write this. I won’t be writing this. In fact, I don’t know how to even begin with this record.’ But then I thought, ‘Well, it wasn’t my idea anyway, so there’s nothing to do but wait.'”

While Simon was unsure how to begin writing his psalms — sacred hymns used in Christian and Jewish worship — he started by composing guitar pieces, and then, after a year or so, the words came to him, again while he slept.

Words [were] flowing through me, and I’m just taking dictation. That’s happened to me in the past, but not to this degree.– Paul Simon

There was an urgency to the messages he received through his dreams that compelled him to immediately jot them down.

“Maybe three times a week, I would wake up between the hour of 3 a.m. and 5 a.m. with words coming, and I would just write them down,” Simon told Power.

“If I used my experience as a songwriter, it didn’t work. And I just went back into this passive state where I said, well, it’s just one of those things where words [were] flowing through me, and I’m just taking dictation. That’s happened to me in the past, but not to this degree.… I’ve dreamed things in the past — I didn’t necessarily think that they were worth noting. That’s why it’s unusual that I got up and wrote that down.”

But just as Simon began to really enjoy this creative process, seeing the dreams as “a kind of a gift,” he experienced sudden and profound hearing loss in his left ear, which now prevents him from touring.

“I would say it was terrifying, but at first, I just took it as a real annoyance. I didn’t think it was permanent. I didn’t know why this was happening,” he said. 

“I thought, ‘This is so easy. This is so much fun — and now this is a real interruption.’ And I’m, you know, angry and annoyed. Then I started to think maybe that’s the wrong idea and maybe this is another piece of information that I should incorporate somehow into the making of this. Maybe it’s not just so easy — something hard is now happening.”

WATCH | Paul Simon’s interview with Tom Power:

A meditation on faith, death and God

Seven Psalms was composed as a single 33-minute acoustic suite divided into seven movements that ruminate on faith and meaning. The album was intended to be listened to in its entirety as one piece of music. (The full recording can be heard below until 9:00 p.m. on June 21.)

On the record’s opening movement, The Lord, Simon sings, “I’ve been thinking about the great migration,” and it quickly becomes apparent that he’s referring to the transition from life to death.

“At this age, there are, you know, friends who die. And when it happens, you do think about it,” he told Power.

Though his own mortality looms, Simon said he doesn’t feel that death is imminent for him, despite a close call with COVID-19 in early April. When Power suggested that Seven Psalms is about wrestling with belief, Simon replied, “I think that’s closer to a description that I would agree with than the question of mortality.

“Yes, the mortality is in there, certainly in the last piece [Wait].… I had a reason for having that subject be the conclusion of the album. It felt like this is a final statement after all of this other exploration of belief, disbelief — whatever it is that seemed to be on my mind and in my subconscious.”

WATCH | Trailer for Seven Psalms:

For Simon, there’s something indelicate about exploring belief through his music, particularly as it relates to the question of God’s existence.

“That question is a tough question to think about,” he said. “As a writer … I often thought, ‘Should I say this?’ It’s almost awkward to say, ‘Well, I’ve been thinking about this big subject’ — or awkward to write it in a song and say, ‘Here is my opinion,’ because I could also say, ‘I’m not really sure what my opinion of my opinion is.’ But I put it out there because it was an honest expression of how I was feeling.

“The awkwardness is I didn’t know whether my honesty was really honest enough. When you get into really big questions — questions that are bigger than your capacity to understand … you have to somehow keep saying, ‘You know, I really don’t understand what I’m saying.’ I feel it, but I didn’t know how a listener would take what I did.”

In the opening movement of Seven Psalms, Simon portrays God as both protector and destroyer. “The Lord,” he sings, “is a virgin forest / The Lord is a forest ranger.” In the final verse, he describes God’s wrathful nature: “The COVID virus is the Lord / The Lord is the ocean rising / The Lord is a terrible swift sword.”

“I didn’t ask the question ‘If you think that there is a God, where is He?’ And I didn’t then say, ‘My answer is everywhere,'” Simon told Power. “‘The Lord is a terrible, swift sword,’ which is a [reference to] the Battle Hymn of the Republic. We happen to be in a battle right now. So yeah, that answers that question. But I didn’t pose that question to myself and then answer it.…

“This is what came out. And when things came out, I said, as I always do, ‘Well, do I believe that? Did I just say something that I think is a fair expression of what I feel?’ And if I said, ‘Yeah, I do. I believe that,’ I don’t know if it’s right or wrong, but yeah, if I have to express myself, I’ll do it that way and I can live with that. I never get to say it perfectly, but it’s a pretty good try, and I’ll leave that there and move on to the next line.”

When Power asked who Simon thinks gave him the psalms, the singer-songwriter replied that he had no idea.

“I wouldn’t have even said it was a who,” he said. “Who do I think? I think it was I. It was I. I think this is within all of us to grapple with these questions. And since I express myself more easily through music than I do through any other medium, that’s how I’m addressing these issues, which are hard to define.”

The full interview with Paul Simon is available on our podcast, Q with Tom Power. Simon also talks about the early days of his music career and how he began working with Art Garfunkel. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Interview with Paul Simon produced by Ben Edwards.