Paul Simon's Heart

Speaking of "heart related/focused" artists, I am a huge Paul Simon fan. For one I think what he did on the Graceland and Rhythm of the Saints albums, drawing on African and South American music, most closely resembles the literary style known as "Magical Realism" that comes from those "third World" cultures (I put it in quotes because sometimes I think it is they who are rich and we moderns who are really impoverished in our way of looking at the world). This is really what "symbolist" literature is about: the way in which the magical penetrates the gritty details of reality, the way the supernatural penetrates the natural, the way the wonder of imagination penetrates the mundane details of every day "muggle" life. But in regards to this "matter of the heart," there are two instances that have risen to my mind from Simon's music since writing the post on "A Wrinkled Face and a Brand New Heart." The first is a line from the song "She Moves On" from the Rhythm of the Saints album: "It's a fine day, I feel so blessed, My heart still splashes inside my chest." I love that idea of the heartbeat as a "splashing." The second is the title of a song from his middle, more jazz, years. I am not sure what album it is on originally but I encountered it on the second disk of the boxed set. The title is, "How the Heart approaches what it yearns." I have posted on Simon's music before in reference to mythic/classical literature (Dante Aligheri and Beatrice as Al and Betty from "Call me Al") and here is just one more instance of why somebody like me who is so into mythopoeic literature is also so into Paul Simon.