Story of "High Performance" Sort of

The Kid was and The Old Goat is a fan of Simon and Garfunkel. One day in a record shop in Philly, probably before 1970, The Kid came across an album by them before they were Simon and Garfunkel, an album when they were Tom and Jerry. He was going to buy it, but didn't. Instead The Kid bought an album by The Seeds. The Old Goat has long regretted that choice.

That has nothing whatsoever to do with the poem "High Performance".

Although The Old Goat liked the tunes and the harmonies of the duo, he was most taken with Simon's wonderful lyrics. There is something to take note of in poems and lyrics, probably in all writing, which is a phrase that doesn't fit. Often when you see a word or sentence seemingly out of place, it indicates something important or points to a disguised meaning.

"Bridge Over Trouble Waters" on the surface appears to be a song of encouragement, perhaps of a relationship or of friendship. An assurance that one person will be there when another is in need. Maybe you could even interpret it as a faith in a greater power.

But there is one phrase, a bridge in the song that did not seem to fit: "Sail on silvergirl".

It came out of left field and what could it possibly have to do with the rest of the song?

Then one day The Old Goat learned that "silvergirl" was street slang for a hypodermic needle and the song took on new meaning for him. He doesn't know if this was Paul Simon's intention or not. Perhaps it is just a song of inspiration, but The Old Goat could never hear that way again.

He feels much the same about the Uncle Kracker song, "Follow Me". Although it seems to be about an adulterous love affair there is something jarring about the lyrics of "swimming through your veins like the fish in the sea" and other passages.

At any rate, he came up with a storyline for a long poem that linked its beginning and its end together within a period of time between these two songs.