My Musical Odyssey, Part IV: What I'm Looking For
Paul Simon slip-slid his way into my musical vocabulary right alongside gospel music. By the time I graduated from seminary, I had acquired the complete Simon & Garfunkel collection and was well on my way to a full set of Paul Simon's solo outings. With these influences in place, I was primed for the final revelation. In the summer of 1991, I returned to Oregon, and picked up a pile of cassettes from my brother Jon's garage sale. They sat in my car, unplayed, until one day a few months later I was driving between Medford and Talent, the two United Methodist churches that made up my first Oregon appointment. Things were not going well in Medford: I was constantly butting heads with my senior pastor; he was triangulating his anger at me through my wife, who was also on staff at Medford; and there were a number of extended family conflicts that were heating up. Add to this the loss of my best tension relief, running, due to my first attack of plantar fasciitis, and...