Simon & Garfunkel - The Dangling Conversation

I started listening to this when I was 6, sometime in 1967. It eventually went out on the LP. It was on FM radio. Paul Simon was writing full-steam. The music matches the angst. It's a beautiful thing. The timpani drum ends the conversation well.

Beautiful song. I often think it is about an older, middle-aged relationship that has died away!

I only kiss your shadow, I cannot feel your hands, you're a stranger now unto me. What an incredible description of going through the motions sexually. Simon was only 25 years old when they recorded this, I'm gobsmaked.

Simon wrote this visiting an English farm with a stream water-wheel over an age-old rock sluice and foundation barn. He finished Sartre's 'No Exit' in 1 reading, intense night, and woke up like Frost, renewed with Camus close to his side. A girl friend too. The lyrics were not short or fleeting: a perfect iambic pentameter song.

S&G definitely has something magical in their music

This song reminds me of Curly shaving a block of ice (3 Stooges), he asks the imaginary customer, "tell me, are you married or happy"? Some couples stay together for 40-50 years, are they really happy after the TV interview is over?

I heard this in 1976 as a 16 year old. And it introduced me to Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost. I feel that the director of The Graduate missed a trick as this music could be used as a montage for lovers getting used to living together

I am just utterly fascinated by the title of the song "Dangling Conversation", and then add to it the imagery of a late afternoon, when the evening shadows are just about to loom. The mood that is created is so beautiful. There is always a debate in the world of songs as to whether the tune is supreme or the lyrics/poem. In this case, I am convinced that the lyrics are indeed the real flowers of a garland and the tune is the pegs on the wall for the garland to hang on to.

Where have the great artists gone?

Dylan said it all, but Paul Simon wasn't far behind....

A master piece... thank you Paul Simon for making me an English Teacher 💖

Excellent.
And why not laugh at the absurdity, as did Woody Allen:"Can analysis be worthwhile? Is the theater really dead?"😂😅😎🤣

I first heard this in 1971 and I am still in awe even after more than 50 years and decades of life experience......how can a man in his 20s come up with this?

I was 0 years old in 1966, still growing up on the these guys. I have no idea what "anylise" is. Some weird Pschyo thing. and the Theatre is obviously not dead.
Still a very beautiful poem that one can make of his one...

Still a fantastic song after hearing it first in 1970. Love it❤

Deep.

A song about the gulf between a couple drifting apart.

Marty Robbins alamo

So much beauty. That’s what pop music lacks today: genius and beauty. Lots of noise and flash, and idiocy.

Beautiful composition. When love dies.

I still love you Ted, I always wiĺl❤

It is of a sad beauty, almost unbearable, so poetic.

The lyrics transcend the artists, reaching a height bordering heaven.

It's one of my favorite unrecognized songs of Paul's, .

My dad played this song on his guitar. He passed in 2022 just before his 75th birthday.

Faith...you are...not forgotten

Masterpiece..

I love the words..and the dangling conversation and the superficial sighs..to me it felt like a universal yearning for connection. We yearn for deep
conversations, but I believe fear gets in the way of intimacy.

I have always loved S & G… never lost track of them… even to this day 50 years later!!!

Paul Simon walks on water.a genius

Hats off to Paul Simon, one of the best song writers of the 20th century.

Still listening in 2024. So many years after first hearing it and still in awe of it. Fabulous

Thank you.

I think these two are way more talented than bob dylan
sincerely a bob dylan fan

I was very surprised by Simon once saying that he greatly disliked this song because it was so pretentious of him to have had this view. I love this song

The masters of metaphoric hyperbole

I was 15 when this came out and loved it. Still do. It's a beautiful match of melody and lyric.

Curtonio we still love you

This

The Dangling Conversation.
Paul Simon must have written this when he himself was only about 23 years old. Perhaps he observed the situation with his parents.
It's a beautiful song.
I was reminded of William Butler Yeats:
Much did I rage when young, Being by the World oppressed, But now with flattering tongue It speeds the parting guest.

Song of the century!

Yeah

I to find this song compelling. It rolls through my head almost everyday. I have known it for years since high school. I am 70 years old now it's still touches my heart and my life

Simple. Beautiful. Aural

A great 20th century poet!

in syncopated time..

I know this was probably written about romantic lovers drifting apart, but I had a very complicated relationship with my father and thought about this song as we scattered hia ashes today. From that lense it pretty perfectly sums up what we experienced while he was with us. Such a sad beautiful song, full of lost potential and whispers of what could have been.

A song intended to be “pure poetry” isn’t. Impossible. That’s what Paul Simon meant when he said it was, “trite” himself. Merely and exercise in songwriting.

Paul Simon admits that he’s now embarrassed by this song, and doesn’t perform it.