The ineffable genius of Paul Simon

I was going to write a whole thing just now about this quote from the song "Hurricane Eye" by Paul Simon:

"You want to be a writer,
Don't know how or when?
Find a quiet place,
Use a humble pen."

A whole post about the nature of audacity and humility in the life of a writer, and how they can - and must - coexist if that writer hopes to get anything of any real value done. I was going to spit out an entire discourse, full of links and words of wisdom from my mother's refrigerator ("Quiet women rarely make history"). I had a plan. I had an outline. I had slightly more energy than I usually do at 10 pm on a Wednesday night.

And then I started to write.

Which is about the time that the true meaning of humility blossomed in front of me in much the same way that a traffic jam can blossom in front of you while you're driving 64 m.p.h. on the Hutchinson River Parkway at 8:03 on a Monday morning. My mind seized.

And here I am again. Seizing.

There's something inside me, swimming around in the axons and glia of my brain. I don't know how to spit it out. I just don't know. But I know it's right. I know it's true. And it is quickly becoming the source of unimaginable frustration. Why? Because I'm forgetting my humility. What do I want to say? I want to say this:

Tell the truth. Tell it fearlessly.

That's all. Six humble words. But I wasted 250 gaudy ones before I found them. And I think that's what Paul Simon was talking about when he said, "Use a humble pen." Tell the truth and nothing else - as simple as it may be, it's the only thing worth telling.

I hate to say it, but the poets might be right.