It’s funny how a song you haven’t thought of in a long, long time will just suddenly come to you in a moment. This morning the sunshine was sparkling outside, and I was quite apprehensively getting ready to embark on yet another vet trek to try to solve an enigmatic issue.
Suddenly Paul Simon’s lyrics and tune trickled in, from a mysterious source, like a meandering stream-
People say she’s crazy
She got diamonds on the soles of her shoes
Well, that’s one way to lose these walking blues
Diamonds on the soles of her shoes
And I smiled. I hadn’t thought of this song in a long, long time. It was released by Paul Simon in 1986, I was still a young child. Dad of course was quite taken by Graceland’s release, I heard it a lot around the house, and in the car on the tape deck.
An odd secret about me is that I think of this song every time a pair of shoes have chosen me over the years. The sparklier the better, and they always symbolically represent my heart. I wear my soul.
I know and understand the standard interpretation of the song, but on another level I suppose everyone brings their lived experience and being to a song, merging with it to create a transformational experience of sorts. For me, the song has always been about wealth, but a very different kind of wealth.
Even as a child I knew intuitively what it meant. Diamonds on the soles of your shoes meant experiencing reality in tune with the spark of life, of living deeply and in touch with the soul. Once I encountered Joseph Campbell and some of the great romantic writers in High School I understood this to be following my bliss, living a life of sensations, and having one’s heart pulse with the rhythm of the Universe. It also meant self actualization and being true to your innermost self. Society will not stifle or shape the spark that is within.
Dad experienced life differently than most. He drank life in deeply, savouring the sublime. Life was richly experienced and interpreted through the great artists and thinkers of hundreds of years; a tapestry of great thoughts and metaphors interweaving with raw experience and leading to a transcendent experience. His poetry was a beautiful manifestation of that way of living.
He taught me so much about experiencing the world. He showed me the diamonds on the soles of my shoes, my inner jewel. I think deeply, feel deeply, experience deeply, too. In some ways I’m almost too much hampered by my senses, being absolutely wired to fire. I frequently experience sensory overload.
There is something special when you connect with someone else who experiences life on a deeper level and higher vibration. I’ve had this connection with Dad, and I’ve been blessed to have it with others. It is also possible sometimes to draw another into that alternate plane of experience, the interior world, and into living an authentic life. In the case of the song, to me, the “she” has done just that. By the end of the song the pronoun has shifted, from “her” shoes to “our” shoes.
And everybody here would know what I was talking about
I mean everybody here would know exactly what I was talking about
Talking about diamonds
People say I’m crazy
I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes, yeah
Well, that’s one way to lose these walking blues
Diamonds on the soles of our shoes