Paul Simon / There Goes Rhymin' Simon (Bonus Tracks Edition) / 1973
Learn How to Fall
warm, sermon-like, gently admonishing
A short, gospel-tinged homily built on a single paradox: mastery of failure precedes any real ascent. Simon frames the idea in plain, proverb-like language, pairing it with a sailing metaphor before pivoting to a wry indictment of humanity's blind rush toward success.
failure as preparation humility versus ambition folk wisdom spiritual instruction critique of ego-driven striving
Who's speaking
An unnamed speaker addressing a general 'you' and, briefly, a maternal figure — functioning almost like a preacher or elder dispensing wisdom rather than a personal narrator confessing experience.
What happens
The song opens with a direct statement of its thesis, then extends the idea through a second image of drifting before setting sail. It broadens into a general observation about human nature — everyone chases glory without pausing to examine their motives — before returning to the opening refrain, now anchored by a concrete, worldly image of small towns, to close the loop.
How it's built
The song is built almost entirely from a repeating instructional couplet that opens and closes the piece, functioning as both verse and refrain rather than a conventional chorus. A middle section breaks the pattern with a more discursive, moralizing verse, then the repeated line about failing to examine one's own ambition acts as a kind of incantatory bridge before the return to the opening formula.
Craft
- parallelism
- The falling/flying and drifting/sailing pairs are built on identical grammatical structures, reinforcing the didactic, proverb-like tone.
- extended metaphor
- Flight and sailing stand in for ambition and achievement, while falling and drifting represent the necessary groundwork or humility that precedes them.
- anaphora
- Repetition of the line about no one pausing to examine their own plan builds incantatory emphasis, mimicking the way people mindlessly repeat behavior without self-reflection.
- apostrophe
- Addressing 'mama' briefly personalizes an otherwise universal statement, grounding an abstract lesson in an intimate, familial register.
Reading it
most straightforwardly a piece of folk-wisdom songwriting: an argument that competence and grace come only after enduring failure, and that most people skip this step in their hunger for glory. A secondary reading treats the song as spiritual or even musically self-referential — Simon, writing in the aftermath of Simon & Garfunkel's breakup, could be describing his own need to fall (commercially or artistically) before finding his footing as a solo artist. The text doesn't confirm this autobiographical angle, but the timing invites it.
Context
Released on 1973's There Goes Rhymin' Simon, an album steeped in gospel, R&B, and Southern recording traditions (parts were cut at Muscle Shoals). The song's proverb-like structure and warm, hymn-adjacent phrasing fit that album's broader interest in vernacular American music and moral simplicity. I don't have confirmed biographical detail linking this song to a specific event in Simon's life, so any autobiographical reading should be treated as speculative.
Listen for
- the near-liturgical repetition of the central falling/flying image
- the shift in tone in the middle verse from personal address to general moral observation
- the way the closing verse swaps abstract flight imagery for a grounded, small-town image
- the incantatory triple repetition of the line about nobody examining their motives
- the gospel-inflected phrasing and cadence throughout
About Paul Simon
Paul Frederic Simon is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist, known for his solo work and his collaborations with Art Garfunkel. He and Garfunkel, whom he met in elementary school in 1953, came to prominence in the 1960s as Simon & Garfunkel.
b. 1941 / United States
Full biography and catalogue