Paul Zollo: You described yourself when working on the Graceland album, sitting in a room and tossing a ball against a wall while working. What effect, if any, does that physical activity have on your mental activity?

Paul Simon: I think it’s very calming. It’s like a Zen exercise, really. It’s a very pleasant feeling if you like playing ball. The act of throwing a ball and catching a ball is so natural…and calming that your mind kind of wanders. And that’s really what you want to happen. You want your mind to wander, and to pick up words and phrases and fool around with them and drop them.

As soon as your mind knows that it’s on and it’s supposed to produce, either it doesn’t or it produces things that are very predictable. And that’s why I say I’m not interested in writing something that I thought about. I’m interested in discovering where my mind wants to go, or what object it wants to pick up.