Simon noticed signs of Parkinson’s during her recovery from multiple knee and hip replacement surgeries due to arthritis. As months went by, mobility issues persisted. “Once seated,” she writes, “I could feel as though I had been swallowed by the chair and might remain there permanently, like a guest who had badly overstayed her welcome.”
Since the formal diagnosis, Simon has reckoned with the psychological toll of the chronic illness while receiving treatment and medication for its physical effects. “Parkinson’s is usually associated with movement, tremors, and balance, but it can affect much more than the body,” she writes. “It can bring anxiety, depression, exhaustion, and apathy. The apathy is particularly strange. You can find yourself lying there like a starfish drying in the sun, arms pointing in all directions, while nothing inside is telling you to get up, read, watch, write, sing, call someone, or do much of anything at all. That has been one of the hardest things to explain. It is not simply sadness or laziness. It is as though the part of the brain that sends out invitations to participate in life has temporarily misplaced the guest list.”
At the same time as the Parkinson’s diagnosis and treatment, Simon underwent surgery for basal cell carcinoma, a type of skin cancer, on her face. Although the cancer was removed, she writes, “the surgery affected my appearance and made me more self-conscious about being seen in public. I have always been more critical of my appearance than anyone else could possibly imagine (check out the irony of having written ‘You’re So Vain.’), and this gave my inner critic quite a lot of new material.”
Working on music while housebound, however, “gave shape to days that did not always have much shape,” she adds. “I have not stopped living, and I have not stopped working.” The new album, Comes in Waves, includes “songs and fragments” stored away for many years: “melodies, verses, and ideas written down and tucked away for some unknown future when I would have the time and attention to finish them. Apparently, that future is now.”
Comes in Waves arrives on August 14. Simon co-wrote and produced the album with David Spencer, and enlisted the late Fugees producer John Forté—a longtime friend of Simon—in one of his last recorded appearances.
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