Musical Interlude

Notes from Paul Simon at Ravinia Park, July 18, 2026

Ravinia Park, an outdoor venue in Highland Park, IL, just outside of Chicago. It’s a giant bring-your-own-food-and-alcohol picnic/party. (photo taken by author)

It’s soft, quiet, older. A goodbye of sorts. Not a guaranteed end, not a ‘final farewell’, but an innate knowledge that there is an end, and it’s closer than not. That’s how it feels. How I feel in it. It’s not sad in a ‘trying too hard to hang on to something’ sense. It’s like a wave from the platform as the train pulls away from the station.

Which is not to say it is without celebration. I think I would like my funeral song to be Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes. And I want people to play air drums with glow-in-the-dark, sparkly things while they leave.

Fighting the same fights, the same battles still exist, but the borders and tactics have changed so much that this form of protest feels almost quaint. That feels uncomfortable to say, but not untrue. (*I wish I had made a note of which song this was.)

(photo taken by author)

The slightly drunk, older woman running into someone’s cooler in front of us; pause, step right, step right, step right, forward. If you pretended you were intentionally dancing that way, would that hide it from any but the most attentive eye?

Does his music crescendo particularly appropriately, or is my concept of ebb and flow more rooted in Paul Simon/Simon and Garfunkel than I was aware of?

Rene and Georgette Magritte With Their Dog After the War is outdoor, nighttime, interpretive dance that makes absolutely no sense, but somehow makes perfect sense. Like you’d see it as a scene in a movie and be like ‘that had no place being there’ but also, ‘of course, that’s exactly where it belonged.’

The funkiest version of 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover.

(photo taken by author)

(*dialogue notes on a scene in my head)

• May I have this dance? (with a bow)

• There’s no music.

• Of course there is. (a smirk) I can lead, until you figure it out.

• I think I’ve got it. (and they dance)

On the train, on the way back to Chicago proper, someone turned on a speaker and played Paul Simon songs, and everyone danced and sang together. Seriously. A whole train car. What would the world be like if we all did that more often?

In Great American Musical (*the musical I will write someday, which I had just named, as of the notes in my phone) everyone on the subway/train, nodding in time to a droning song. Noise cancelling headphones, staring at phones, mindlessly head-nodding along.

(*overheard conversation, after learning that the man with the speaker was merely the dancer, his wife was curating the music.)

• “Girls can DJ too, Courtney.”

• “You mean, beyond handling all the shit behind the scenes too? Shut up.”