Time & Perspective Quote by Paul Simon

Paul Simon is describing a power shift that happens the way so many breakups do: quietly, pragmatically, under fluorescent studio lights. The line "more and more me" sounds like a triumph of selfhood, but it’s also a confession of how authorship gets claimed when someone else stops showing up. In a band, absence isn’t neutral; it’s permission. Simon frames his growing control - "making the tracks and choosing the musicians" - as a natural response to logistical reality, not a coup. That’s the deftness here: he turns what could read as betrayal into workflow.

The context is Bridge Over Troubled Water, recorded at the peak of Simon & Garfunkel’s fame and near the end of their partnership. Simon was already the primary songwriter; the quote reveals how the studio became the arena where that hierarchy hardened into fact. He’s not talking about inspiration, but infrastructure: tracks, hires, decisions. Those are the levers of identity in recorded music, where the person shaping takes and arrangements becomes the de facto author, even if the public face is shared.

The subtext about Artie "not there" is pointedly gentle - no direct accusation, just a repeated vacancy. It hints at Garfunkel’s outside pursuits and emotional distance, while casting Simon’s control as necessity rather than ego. The brilliance is its ambivalence: Simon both justifies and mourns the moment the duo’s "we" turns into an "I", and the record’s immaculate cohesion starts to look like the sound of a relationship dissolving.