Sage, Rosemary and Thyme

Revisiting an old favorite.

I like listening to Simon & Garfunkel’s Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme on Thanksgiving morning. I’ve done this for two or three consecutive Thanksgivings, by this point. This is partially because I help my mother cook, and this is one of the albums that we can agree upon. The album also just feels perfect for this holiday. It practically begs to be listened to on Thanksgiving—it calls out the seasoning of the turkey by name. It captures the spirit of the holiday, too. The music is calm and inviting, the lyrics are realistic yet optimistic. It is the kind of music that reminds you who you are. Songs like “The 59th Street Bridge Song” and “A Poem on the Underground Wall” always remind me of home, and the song “Homeward Bound” suggests that this nostalgic feeling is not an accident. It is a reminder of what life really is, once all other distractions are pushed away.

It’s not a sappy, mushy album; it recognizes all sides of life. Hope, peace, loss, ennui, frustration. Not only are these feelings given their own space within the album, but they actually find a way into every single song. I’ve written before about “The Dangling Conversation”: a song that pairs beautiful finger picking with one of the saddest stories I’ve ever heard. But there’s also “For Emily, Wherever I May Find Her,” whose melody is somber, and lyrics optimistic. “Cloudy” perfectly exemplifies this duality: a cheery love letter to a cloudy sky, a reminder that you can find beauty even in the supposedly dull moments. Songs like “Patterns” and “The Big Bright Green Pleasure Machine” acknowledge the ‘trapped’ feeling we all get sometimes, and our hunger for escapism, but then “Flowers Never Bend With the Rainfall” reminds us that it’s okay, that we must carry on despite our worries, that everything turns out alright in the end.

A song I’ve never given much thought before is the album’s conclusion: “7 O’Clock News/Silent Night.” I’d always seen the political point the song made, layering news announcements about war and destruction atop a classic holiday song, but I never realized the song’s emotional maturity. It perfectly concludes an album whose major theme is duality. The birth of Jesus—the epitome of hope and beauty. War propaganda—human nature at its darkest and most manipulative. Wherever we look, there is both. Even in wartime, the holidays still come. Even in peace, tragedy looms threateningly. There has never been a Christmas where someone wasn’t sad, or a war where no one took a moment to celebrate despite the chaos.

I think music is the most perfect art form. It utilizes language, but it transcends it. You don’t need to speak English to capture the beauty of this music, or even guess at its meaning. There’s something about it that just speak to our soul. Such a thing transcends generations. At the time I’m writing this, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme is fifty-six years old, and yet it could have been written yesterday. And the folk songs it contains have been around for centuries. It is a mystery how music ‘works.’ What is it about a combination of sounds that can reach the heart of us, give us a depth of feeling that is sometimes more intense than ‘real life’? I don’t know. But albums like this capture a warm, fuzzy feeling, remind us that life is good, that we should stop and appreciate it. It starts with Thanksgiving and ends with Christmas, much like the holiday season itself. Much like Thanksgiving itself—how many Christmas decorations will spontaneously pop up before tomorrow?

I can’t think of a better album for today. 
Happy Thanksgiving. 

Let’s start a dialogue. What feelings does this album—or this holiday—evoke in you?

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