This is a hauntingly beautiful song about introspection, specifically about looking back at a relationship that started bad and ended so poorly, that the narrator wants to go back to the very beginning and tell himself to not even travel down that road. I believe that the relationship started poorly because of the lines:
"Take me back to the night we met:When the night was full of terrors: And your eyes were filled with tears: When you had not touched me yet"
So, the first night was not a great start, but the narrator pursued the relationship and eventually both overcame the rough start to fall in love with each other:
"I had all and then most of you"
Like many relationships that turn sour, it was not a quick decline, but a gradual one where the narrator and their partner fall out of love and gradually grow apart
"Some and now none of you"
Losing someone who was once everything in your world, who you could confide in, tell your secrets to, share all the most intimate parts of your life, to being strangers with that person is probably one of the most painful experiences a person can go through. So Painful, the narrator wants to go back in time and tell himself to not even pursue the relationship.
This was the perfect song for "13 Reasons Why"
It was a slow day
And the sun was beating
On the soldiers by the side of the road
There was a bright light
A shattering of shop windows
The bomb in the baby carriage
Was wired to the radio
These are the days of miracle and wonder
This is the long distance call
The way the camera follows us in slo-mo
The way we look to us all
The way we look to a distant constellation
That's dying in a corner of the sky
These are the days of miracle and wonder
And don't cry, baby, don't cry
Don't cry
It was a dry wind
And it swept across the desert
And it curled into the circle of birth
And the dead sand
Falling on the children
The mothers and the fathers
And the automatic earth
These are the days of miracle and wonder
This is the long distance call
The way the camera follows us in slo-mo
The way we look to us all, oh yeah
The way we look to a distant constellation
That's dying in a corner of the sky
These are the days of miracle and wonder
And don't cry baby, don't cry
Don't cry
It's a turn-around jump shot
It's everybody jump start
It's every generation throws a hero up the pop charts
Medicine is magical and magical is art
Think of the boy in the bubble
And the baby with the baboon heart
And I believe
These are the days of lasers in the jungle
Lasers in the jungle somewhere
Staccato signals of constant information
A loose affiliation of millionaires
And billionaires and baby
These are the days of miracle and wonder
This is the long distance call
The way the camera follows us in slo-mo
The way we look to us all, oh yeah
The way we look to a distant constellation
That's dying in a corner of the sky
These are the days of miracle and wonder
And don't cry baby, don't cry
Don't cry, don't cry
And the sun was beating
On the soldiers by the side of the road
There was a bright light
A shattering of shop windows
The bomb in the baby carriage
Was wired to the radio
These are the days of miracle and wonder
This is the long distance call
The way the camera follows us in slo-mo
The way we look to us all
The way we look to a distant constellation
That's dying in a corner of the sky
These are the days of miracle and wonder
And don't cry, baby, don't cry
Don't cry
It was a dry wind
And it swept across the desert
And it curled into the circle of birth
And the dead sand
Falling on the children
The mothers and the fathers
And the automatic earth
These are the days of miracle and wonder
This is the long distance call
The way the camera follows us in slo-mo
The way we look to us all, oh yeah
The way we look to a distant constellation
That's dying in a corner of the sky
These are the days of miracle and wonder
And don't cry baby, don't cry
Don't cry
It's a turn-around jump shot
It's everybody jump start
It's every generation throws a hero up the pop charts
Medicine is magical and magical is art
Think of the boy in the bubble
And the baby with the baboon heart
And I believe
These are the days of lasers in the jungle
Lasers in the jungle somewhere
Staccato signals of constant information
A loose affiliation of millionaires
And billionaires and baby
These are the days of miracle and wonder
This is the long distance call
The way the camera follows us in slo-mo
The way we look to us all, oh yeah
The way we look to a distant constellation
That's dying in a corner of the sky
These are the days of miracle and wonder
And don't cry baby, don't cry
Don't cry, don't cry
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Each verse also kinda reminds me of reading a news story in a newspaper. A bomb explodes and kills people. A drought kills thousands in Africa. Pop science. Sports. What miracles, what things that civilization and now the technological revolution have brought us.
"The way we look to a distant constellation that's dying in the corner of the sky." -- ever wished upon a star? or looked at the heavens and prayed, or wondered if there's a god out there, if suffering has meaning, or the reason for your pain in the world? I think that's what's meant, but we're out praying on a star that long ago died out, even though we don't know it yet...
"the way the camera follows us in slo-mo, the way we look to us all" -- for some reason this reminds me of those save the children ads, showing children with bloated bellies running, turning slowly. i think it means there's a certain humanity to be recognized if we really look at any other person.
There's definitely a juxtaposition in this song between the developed, civilized world and those that still have to deal with rampant poverty, wars, /drought/disease, and so forth.... perhaps while many of us still sit in relative comfort and luxury, only giving the passing thought to the problems of the world, a passing prayer, but not realizing how our lives and lifestyles are intertwined with their suffering... I feel I see those that are horribly affected by these tragedies are out there praying as well, but perhaps in the song it mostly focuses on the passing thoughts of privileged western peoples... I can't help seeing it from the POV of those who experienced these things though.
Sorry if this is piecemeal, but to me this song is still vignettes. This is what I see so far in this song.
I think you're right about the juxtapositions, especially with regard to the miracles and wonder of modern science and the opposite uses they're put to use for. The age which can keep a boy alive in a bubble send remotely guided missiles to destroy, can look at particles from the edge of the universe but can't see what's happening here on earth. Brilliant song.
Yes, the key to the song is the juxtapositions. (See comments of theofromcanada.)
Think most people here are a bit off the mark.
I take the lyrics pretty straightforwardly within the context of the recording of the album. Simon was recording with artists in apartheid era South Africa.
The opening verse is highly reminiscent of the political violence that was pervasive in 1980s South Africa. The South African (ie, white) military machine couldn't be confronted directly by the liberation fighters but the ANC set about to make the country ungovernable, and embarked on a campaign of sabotage and bombings - hence "the soldiers on the side of the road" and "the bomb in the baby carriage."
I also think "the lasers in the jungle" and the "loose affiliation of millionaires and billionaires" must be viewed through the lens of the struggle against apartheid. The conflict in SA spilled over to Namibia and Angola and involved fierce and brutal violence throughout Southern Africa - not to mention the civil wars in Mozambique and Zimbabwe.
South Africa was, and is, a nation defined by resource extraction. Gold, diamonds, platinum. There were millionaires and billionaires there fueling untold misery for the sake of holding onto their economic privilege on the continent.
Paul Simon had his reasons for being oblique with his political commentary regarding apartheid South Africa on this record - but I think it'd be a mistake to think it was absent from a song like this one.
Does anyone (else) see a connection between the lyrics of Paul Simon's "The Boy in the Bubble" and Arthur C Clarke's short story "The Star"? Specifically, "... the way we look to a distant constellation that is dying in a corner of the sky ..."
@dankauppi Absolutely, though the reference to cameras following in slo-mo reminds me of Vietnam...it was the first time journalists sent back images and footage of war. Yeah for technology, but it also turned America's collective stomach, and is part of why the vets were ignored when they returned...we didn't want to think about what we'd sent them to do and what they'd subsequently done.<br /> <br /> So, war in general, though I agree a good bit of it comes out of South Africa.
The boy in the bubble refers to those children with Severe Combined Immune Deficiency (SCID) who have to live in sterile environments because they lack the ability to fight off disease. The original "boy in the bubble" was referred to only as "David" and died in 1984 following an unsusccesful bone marrow transplant.
The baby with the baboon heart refers to a case in 1984 when a baby (Fae) who was born with hypoplastic left-heart syndrome, which is a lethal underdevelopment of the left side of the heart. In an effort to save her life, surgeons transplanted a heart from a baboon into her. It initially looked like it had worked, but baby Fae ultimately died.
I'd say these are invoked in the song as instances where technological advances keep alive people who would have died at birth without modern medicine - hence "These are the days of miracle and wonder".
Oball is correct. Incidentally, and significantly, the baby with the baboon heart was killed by a creationist. Yes, dramatic effect..."doomed" would be more accurate. The doctor who implanted the heart chose a baboon heart without regard to medical compatibility because he didn't believe humans and baboons are related. Consequently she died earlier than she might have with a more compatible heart (see conradaskland.com/blog/2007/07/baby-fae-the-unlearned-lesson-of-evolution/).<br /> <br /> The "Boy in the Bubble" was David Vetter. The bone marrow transplant was a new, experimental procedure they had just come up with to resuscitate his immune system. (The hospital's experiment with David was basically over, and it was looking for ways to divest itself of him.) It might have worked, but a virus crept into the transplant material which caused rampant cancerous tumors in little David. The cruel irony is that the donor was his older sister. As an older sibling (and parent of small children) myself, I've often thought about the mental anguish she must have gone through, that in her attempt to free him she effectively killed him--and I wish I could tell her that She Did The Right Thing. For what little consolation that would be.<br /> <br /> Simon's references to David are to him as he was portrayed in the press--as a little boy bravely facing his affliction. In reality he became psychologically unstable due to lack of human contact, the seeming hopelessness of his situation, and the looming (to his mind) threat of disease all around him / his bubble. Similarly, the images on the song's video aren't an accurate portrayal of what he or his bubble environment looked like. Then again, what's known about him now wasn't widely available in 1984 when the video was released.
Does anyone (else) see a connection between the lyrics of Paul Simon's "The Boy in the Bubble" and Arthur C Clarke's short story "The Star"? Specifically, "... the way we look to a distant constellation that is dying in a corner of the sky ..."
He seems to be exploring the dual nature of the advances in technology. We're doing amazing things with medicine but we're producing increasingly sophisticated weapons at the same time. It's almost impossible to make sense of it all; "these are the days of miracle and wonder". While the song is beautiful, I don't find it very uplifting. I find it kind of cynical.
Does anyone (else) see a connection between the lyrics of Paul Simon's "The Boy in the Bubble" and Arthur C Clarke's short story "The Star"? Specifically, "... the way we look to a distant constellation that is dying in a corner of the sky ..."
@b-rad1796 Definitely NOT uplifting for sure. I think he wants people to "think" and not become too infatuated with technology. (See my comments - theofromcanada.)
I think the boy in the bubble is a reference to Americans and their lack of interest of the issues going on in Africa. Since a bubble is protective and leaves you secluded from the world, it is possible that the American government provides that bubble around us and leaves us excluded from the real issues that Paul Simon experienced in Africa.
@msulli05 You just blew my mind about the bubble analogy,
this is an excellent song
oball, good research. creepy that both those things happened in 1984 of all years.
This is such an uplifting song if you don't listen to most of the damn lyrics!
@Reynard Muldrake You have hit the nail on the head. Listen to the Peter Gabriel version to hear music that more appropriately fits the lyrics.
I think its basically asking "In a time of such technology, where we can perform such medical feats as those listed, why is there still war, poverty and famine?" And "Why are we using this technology to make the rich richer and fight our wars?"
@Thesmellyone Short and sweet - good interpretation. I just added my interpretation - see theofromcanada. Outstanding song, eh !!!
The second verse might refer to nuclear contamination.
Maybe due to the nuclear tests in Nevada or even due to the core melt in Chernobyl (April 1986; Graceland album was released in August 1986; recorded till June).
It was a dry wind And it swept across the desert
it curled into the circle of birth: damage of DNA caused by nuclear radiation
And the DEAD SAND FALLING on the children the mothers and the fathers: nuclear fallout
And the automatic earth: the damage of electronic devices caused by the Electromagnetic Pulse of a nuclear explosion