PAUL SIMON: Songs of A Thinking Man

It's an old question. It goes back as far as Bridge over Troubled Water, when Paul Simon gathered some unexpected, tropical-inflected rhythms around him and first really found his voice. His lyrical voice, that is: the tart, tempered combination of irony and melancholy that would turn him into one of the best writers of his generation, either in the grooves or on the page.

There have been, intervening, two decades, a couple of marriages, one son, a hurtful professional divorce and a group of exquisite albums. But that Troubled Water question, framed as an up-tempo goof but phrased suddenly like a suicide note, still stands. Let's consider it more benignly, as a kind of standing offer: "Why don't you write me/ I'm out in the jungle/I'm hungry to hear you." And take him up on it, at last.

/ "Dear Paul: How you doing? I suppose we can all hear for ourselves. Another wonderful new album, The Rhythm of the Saints. A stone beauty. Another stone beauty. They seem to roll around every few years or so, and since Graceland in '86, they seem to come from new territory. Sort of rare and familiar at the same time. Must be you're still in the jungle, if not exactly on safari. Africa for Graceland, Brazil now. All those strange, haunting sprung sounds, gliding guitars and drums echoing like distant dreams. Is this the way your dreams sound? Percussive and persistent? The kind that linger into the daylight, aren't they?

"And while we're at it: What did the Mama Pajama see Julio and his friend doing down by the schoolyard? How come we can call you Al? And in this new song The Obvious Child, what is the cross doing in the ball park?

"Yours sincerely . . ."

"It got me thinking when that first popped out," Paul Simon says, sitting in the living room of his Manhattan duplex, watching an early moon come up over Central Park. " 'The cross is in the ball park.' The first thing I thought of was Billy Graham, or the Pope, or evangelical gatherings. But I came to feel what that's really about is the cross that we bear. The burdens that we carry are doable, they're in the ball park."

Neat enough, especially for a 49-year-old, 5-ft. 5-in. rock 'n' roller who still plays a court-singeing game of one-on-one and pledges allegiance to the New York Yankees. He is, after all, the man who sang yet another, still more famous question ("Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?"). Settling in to watch the Yankees close down a dismaying season a few weeks back, he speculated on the chances for one heavy hitter to grab off a bit of individual glory. "I'm not confident he's going to hit tonight. I saw him last night, and he had that look of defeat in his eyes. I could tell. Popcorn?"