We debated going. The tickets were expensive, enough to make us uncomfortable. We were also uncomfortable about driving to San Francisco for an 8:00 pm concert. That’s when we turn out the lights at home. Still, and I was the perp here, it was something I needed to do, not just wanted, but something that connected me with my adult life, all of it, beginning in college when I first heard “Sounds of Silence.” I expected chills. Didn’t happen.
First, we decided to eat dinner in SF, went to the Dumpling House and ordered the worst possible choices, finishing more than an hour before the concert. Then Jadyne couldn’t find the tickets on her phone. Frustrated, we managed to find our seats in the topmost tier of Louise Davies hall, far from the singer and the band. Then 8:00 became 8:05, 8:10, 8:15, then 8:20. We thought fondly of Ashland, Oregon, the site of the annual Shakespeare Festival, as patrons who show up a minute late aren’t seated until intermission.
0ut came Simon and the band. The first thirty-three minutes of the concert featured his latest album. “Seven Psalms,” music we hadn’t heard.
After the intermission Paul began with “the hits,” and again, some we didn’t recognize. The ones we did, “Graceland, St. Judy’s Comet, Slip Slidin’ Away, Homeward Bound,”were all backed up by extraordinary musicians, but it wasn’t until he stripped down to “The Boxer” that I felt really moved. And with the final song, performed as an encore, “Sounds of Silence” the chills returned.
We weren’t alone. The hall was stuffed with many of Paul’s and our contemporaries, people who, like us, braved the unaccustomed late night hours to once again revisit an essential part of the soundtrack of our lives.
The five lanes of the Bay Bridge were reduced to two, so traffic out of San Francisco was bumper to bumper at 11:30!. A long trip home. In bed at midnight. Midnight?! I thought that only happened on December 31???