We note our place with book markers/
That measure what we’ve lost.

The couple in Simon and Garfunkel’s “A Dangling Conversation” are intellectuals. Not just intelligent people, but the stuffy intellectual types who don’t own a TV, who talk about talking about intellectual conversation. They read literature because it is known it is “good literature”. You know the type.

High Society might look at these two and think they have it all: they speak of important matters like theater and philosophy and they are voracious readers—though it almost seems like a contest. But they seem out of sync.

It also appears that the couple in “Dangling Conversation” is slightly older: Simon speaks of kissing a shadow of a former person and how they are living the ‘border of our lives’. Was this once a young, passionate couple? Is Simon fretting about growing older and the superficiality of life once the passion in a relationship is gone? Or is he commenting– in particular–on the intellectual classes’ seemingly sterile relationships?

I like that this is a somewhat unique concept for a rock/folk song. It explores love and relationships from a new angle. All the while it still has the requisite Simon melodies and S&G harmonies that we have come to expect from the group. The orchestration sounds different than most of their other work. It sounds like it is going for a more classic sound. Note the large array of instruments used such as the timpani, harp and xylophone. It feels stuffy and uptight…like something the couple would be into.

The Dangling Conversation Lyrics

It’s a still life watercolor
Of a now-late afternoon
As the sun shines through the curtain lace
And shadows wash the room

And we sit and drink our coffee
Couched in our indifference, like shells upon the shore
You can hear the ocean roar

In the dangling conversation
And the superficial sighs
The borders of our lives

And you read your Emily Dickinson
And I my Robert Frost
And we note our place with book markers
That measure what we’ve lost

Like a poem poorly written
We are verses out of rhythm
Couplets out of rhyme
In syncopated time (in syncopated time)

And the dangling conversation
And the superficial sighs
Are the borders of our lives

Yes, we speak of things that matter
With words that must be said
“Can analysis be worthwhile?”
“Is the theater really dead?”

And how the room is softly faded
And I only kiss your shadow, I cannot feel your hand
You’re a stranger now unto me

Lost in the dangling conversation
And the superficial sighs
In the borders of our lives

Songwriters: Paul Simon