I’m sitting here yawning on this Monday morning. It’s 8:30 AM as I write this, and I expect writing this post will take me an hour or so. I went outside earlier to clean up Noyzi’s deposits and noticed the air was a little warmer. We had a nice day on Saturday, but it was chilly and cloudy again yesterday. Consequently, we stayed home and listened to music. At some point during the evening, I heard a song by Carly Simon that is inspiring today’s post.

It was one of my sisters who introduced me to Simon’s song about fake friends, “We, Your Dearest Friends.” The lyrics are pretty scathing, as they call out two-faced, insincere users for feigning affection for them.

I don’t know exactly why my sister identified so strongly with this song. I can only hazard a guess… and knowing her, the identification probably came from a somewhat distorted sense of reality and flawed perspective. I still found the song interesting as I listened to it on YouTube. I ended up downloading Carly’s 2000 album, The Bedroom Tapes. You can click here for the lyrics.

I don’t know much about Carly Simon’s personal life, other than that she was married to James Taylor and had two children with him. I did read her book, Boys in the Trees: A Memoir, which had some interesting details about her life. I think Carly is a fascinating, yet very complicated, person. I suppose most people could be described in that way, because we all have stories.

I know Carly Simon is extremely creative on many levels, and I also realize that being creative can come with some personality traits and eccentricities that can make a person difficult to understand or deal with. However, I don’t know Carly personally, so I don’t know what she’s really like. I only know what I’ve read, heard, and seen in the media. Perhaps it’s a good thing I don’t know her. Conventional wisdom advises against meeting your heroes. They often don’t live up to the hype.

Below is a video clip of Carly Simon talking about “We, Your Dearest Friends.”

Most of my truest friends are really good people. That’s why I don’t have a whole lot of them. I have many “friends”– that is, people I don’t actually know that well. They’re really more like acquaintances. I haven’t spent a lot of time with them, so they haven’t had to endure my cackling laughter or bizarre sense of humor… or love of body humor and bursting into funny songs about vaginas and other unmentionable topics. I probably do that because I’m bored, or feeling silly… not because I’m a pervert. That habit also makes Bill laugh, because he shares a weird sense of humor with me. Bill never does what Carly sings about here:

We, your dearest friends
Are having dinner without you
We´re witty and we use it to be vicious
In just another minute
We´ll be laughing about you
To the untrained eye
It wouldn´t look suspicious

We, your dearest friends
Don´t really care if you have needs
Your hopes and dreams
Are trivial by your standards
We make fun of how you sing
And then we imitate your speech
And the stupid things
You say we like to slander

If you didn’t know me, and realize that I’m just being funny when I say or do something strange, you might assume I’m completely nuts or socially inappropriate. Maybe you’d be nice to my face, but then gossip about me with your other friends… And maybe you and your friends, when you’re not together, will, in turn, gossip about each other, and stab each other in the back. Personally, I think this is just kind of a fact of life. People will certainly talk about each other, even if they aren’t necessarily “nasty” when they do it.

When you trust someone and consider them a true friend, it is very hurtful when you discover that they’ve been lying to you about their feelings. They don’t have the same regard for you, that you had for them. If you’re a very sensitive person, that kind of pain can really cut deep.

I think that’s where Carly’s lyrics come from. She was deeply wounded by people she thought were true friends to her. So, she got even by penning a scathing song about THEM… and she put it out into the world, never letting on who they are. Those “friends” probably know who they are… and if they have any decency, they probably feel some shame. Or, maybe they’re narcissists, and they don’t care.

I’m inspired to write about Carly Simon this morning because someone hit my review of A Stopover in Venice, a novel written by James Taylor’s second wife, Kathryn Walker. That book, which I read and reviewed a couple of years ago, has a lot of thinly veiled references to Walker’s life with James Taylor. It also has a character which, it seems likely, was based on Carly Simon. Carly was James’s first wife, and is the mother of his two eldest children.

In her book, Kathryn Walker makes the “Carly” character out to be eccentric, demanding, and a bit batty. Based on accounts I’ve read about Carly Simon, it wouldn’t surprise me if there was some truth to that characterization. However, I’ve also read that she is a very kind, generous, and empathic person. I remember years ago, when I read a review of Carly’s opera, Romulus Hunt, a person who had been cast in it as a youngster mentioned that Carly had given him a beautiful vase as a gift.

In her song, Carly writes this:

We remember how
You bought us all those gifts
You liked to make us think
You were so generous
Be careful in the future
Of everything you say and do
`Cause it can and will be used
Against you by us

Maybe this group of “friends”, who inspired Carly’s accusatory song, felt like she was trying to buy their goodwill? I don’t know. But obviously, something went very wrong, and Carly now realizes that there was a facade erected. Instead of breaking off the relationship with her, the “friends” made fun of her among themselves. Or, maybe that was just her impression of what they were doing.

As I sit here reading Carly’s scathing lyrics, I realize that even though she’s no longer a “chart topper” per se, no one can take away her songwriting genius or her unique voice. She became a star in a time when there was no auto-tune. She has a unique ability to string together words in such a way that they lend themselves to a melody and tell a story in a sophisticated, astute manner. Consider this revelatory verse, that lays Carly’s soul bare:

We your dearest friends
Judge you “guilty“ 
Here and now
Of thinking you´re a star
When it’s all over
Nobody wants you
And we the least of all
It´s been a long time since
You had those famous lovers

I’m immediately reminded of Carly’s most famous song, “You’re So Vain”, which had people talking and speculating for many years. Fans wondered who the song was about… and it could have been about a number of famous men. Mick Jagger sang on the chorus, and heaven knows, Mick has had a lot of “lovers” in his day. “You’re So Vain” is a classic song, masterfully written and coy. It could have been a novel. I think that song, alone, makes Carly forever a star. But apparently, based on that verse, her “friends” didn’t think so. They ridiculed her behind her back.

And yet, when I look at the credits for Carly Simon’s song, “We, Your Dearest Friends”, once again, I am astounded by her prodigious talents. Five other musicians besides Carly had a hand in playing this song, but this is all the work Carly did, besides writing the song: Carly Simon: Electric & Acoustic Guitars / Keyboard bass / Keyboards / Drum Programming / Percussion / Background vocals. Why shouldn’t she think she’s a star? To me, it seems to be a statement of fact. It doesn’t take away from anyone else for Carly to think that about herself… unless, of course, she expects people to defer to her because of her genius.

When I read lyrics like this, though… I get the sense that a lot of people have taken Carly Simon for a fool, and assumed she never noticed. She clearly did notice, but simply never confronted them. Instead, she’s turned their misdeeds into a creative endeavor. I can relate to that. I do it, too.

You have an unforgivable personality
Unforgettable, yes
We were so happy once in the Garden of
the Finzi-Continis
Oh, yes we were
Never more, never more
Here comes the waiter
We´ll just put it on your house charge
You´ll never know the difference
Never notice

I’ll be honest. As I listened to that song last night, I felt kind of uncomfortable. It sounded like a direct confrontation to me, even though I don’t know Carly, and Carly doesn’t know me. I remember when my sister told me about this song, and I wonder why she identified with it so well. And then I realized that I identify with it, too.

I used to have a “best friend” who I thought would always be a part of my life. I think I always knew, deep down, that she wouldn’t be… but she always said she’d be there for me, and I believed her. Now that I’m older, and I look back on the years when we knew each other, I recognize a lot of the behaviors Carly sings about in her song. I remember the unprovoked mean comments she would make about other supposed “friends”. I remember the bizarre way she tried to keep information from them. And then it happened to me, too.

For some reason, when she realized I knew what she’d done, she had the nerve to try to make up with me. But she had other people approach, rather than doing it herself, which only made me see her as pathetic and weak. I realized, with a lot of sorrow, that I was never anything more than a warm body to her… someone to up her Facebook friend count, even before Facebook ever existed… someone to make her look like she had a higher ally score and more social approval than she really did. And I shudder to think about the mean comments she’s no doubt made about me to her “dearest friends”. I’m glad she’s now out of my life, and I’m sorry I wasted so many years being in hers, and I have so many memories attached to those times.

Anyway… I am grateful to all of my real friends, few as they are. Especially the ones who love and accept me for who I am. And I’m glad for the fact that my husband, Bill, is my true best friend. I wish everyone had someone in their lives with whom they can be themselves and never have to worry about betrayal. As I’ve written many times… I am an extremely blessed person on many levels. Every day, I continue to shake my head and wonder how I’ve managed to be so fortunate. But maybe it’s because I really do try to accept people for what and who they are, rather than try to mold them into someone they aren’t.

Carly Simon may be annoying and scorned among the insincere people who have infiltrated her life and inspired her more scathing songs, but to me, she’ll always be a star. Only a star could come up with those evocative lyrics that are so close to home and relatable to “normal” people. We’ve all been there, on some level, when it turns out someone we thought was a friend or a loved one was really just exploiting and abusing us for their own personal gain and entertainment. It hurts, and sometimes it enrages.

If we’re wise, when disingenuous people behave in that way in an attempt to use and demean us, it makes us love and appreciate the real friends we have all the more. Another pearl of wisdom from this song is that one should always be careful when screwing over a writer of any kind… but especially if they are a world famous singer-songwriter. 😉