The Sound of Silence

Why Simon and Garfunkel’s Song Applies to Us Now More than Ever

Paul Simon’s song The Sound of Silence speaks to me today in this current crazy world of uncertainty.

For many of us, things are quiet right now, our normal career paths have been silenced by the pandemic. I’m an orchestra conductor and I know there are many people in all sorts of places and careers who aren’t working or able to dream right now — and feel stuck.

If you are stopped in your tracks right now, and wonder where you are going in your career or aspirations as you hear the “Sound of Silence” in your own life, Simon and Garfunkel’s story reminds us to hang in there and have hope. It’s a testament to the idea of not giving up.

Simon and Garfunkel recorded The Sound of Silence for Columbia Records in 1964 and it was originally a commercial failure — the disappointment of this even leading Simon and Garfunkel to give up, disband and separate for a while.

But then, a year later, the song slowly started to get some airplay in Florida and Massachusetts and by January 1966 it had climbed its way to №1 on the US Top 100 Billboard chart. There was hope after all — it just needed patience.

Now we read these words and instantaneously hear the beautiful, melancholic music within our heads:

Hello darkness, my old friend I’ve come to talk with you again

Because a vision softly creeping Left its seeds while I was sleeping

And the vision that was planted in my brain Still remains

Within the sound of silence

Garfunkel once summed up the song’s meaning as “the inability of people to communicate with each other, not particularly internationally but especially emotionally, so what you see around you are people unable to love each other.”

As I read the lyrics today, during this time of pandemic, protest, the US leadership race, and so much frustration and fear, these lyrics sound like they were created for this moment.

In fact, Paul Simon wrote this song in response to another moment of unrest and sadness. It was his response to the tragedy of John F. Kennedy’s assassination of 1963.

When I read these first two lines, I am struck by the duality that they have in their meaning, like an optical illusion of the mind where you can read it in the light or dark version of itself.

Hello darkness, my old friend I’ve come to talk with you again

On the light side it’s positive and personal. Simon’s words compel us to connect with ourselves, to cherish being alone with the old friend who is “us”. They remind us that in such confusing times we can listen to our own voice, and spend time alone contemplating with our own thoughts. Truth and serenity will be there for us in the darkness, quietness and peacefulness of our own untouchable, inner world — protected from the outside.

This beautiful side of silence is found when we sit quietly alone, allowing our thoughts to make connections and ask questions, to sort out what life means for us.

But darkness, especially now, can unfortunately also feel too much like an old friend to many of us, and in this way the song offers understanding of that — that we are not alone in our disappointments, struggles or despair.

Music has an incredible and unique way of finding us and understanding our mood and thoughts and reaching us intimately.

Paul Simon’s song finds that way to connect to this melancholy and searching in us. He wrote it to communicate his feelings about J.F.K. and the troubled world in 1964, but somehow the music remains timeless, as music usually does, carrying on through life morphing and reflecting new meaning as it travels through time and to each of us.

As we read the lyrics, we continue walking in the dreamy world that Paul creates for us, a connection to feeling more than reality:

In restless dreams I walked alone Narrow streets of cobblestone

‘Neath the halo of a street lamp I turned my collar to the cold and damp

When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light That split the night

And touched the sound of silence

But here, I think, is the song’s most powerful of message for us:

And in the naked light I saw Ten thousand people, maybe more

People talking without speaking People hearing without listening

People writing songs that voices never share And no one dared

Disturb the sound of silence

During this pandemic, and beyond into the world’s challenges in dynamics, relationships, leaderships, racial discriminations and cultural divides we have become disconnected from each other, and yet yearn to find ways to be together and to find peace.

There is this tension between our desire to get on with life and to reframe what life actually is.

Paul Simon expresses the darkness of silence if we don’t listen to each other and are unable to communicate love to each other.

“…People talking without speaking People hearing without listening People writing songs that voices never share…”

On a personal level, these words make me stop to reflect on who I have stopped talking to, deeply, in my life. Has silence been building within us for a while, hidden behind the invisible walls of texts and social media? How much time do we spend listening, and talking, to each other?

“Fools, “ said I, “You do not know Silence, like a cancer, grows

Hear my words that I might teach you Take my arms that I might reach you”

But my words, like silent raindrops fell And echoed in the wells, of silence

And finally the song comments on where the lost connections might be found.

…”The words of the prophets are written on subway walls And tenement halls”

I had to to ponder this last meaning. Perhaps these words about prophets writing on subway walls and tenement halls tell us that the voices of wisdom are to be found in each of us no matter who we are — everyday people and everyday graffiti found in humble places that offer a voice for all of us. We are all people — we are all connected.

And all of this, finally….

… “whispered in the sound of silence”.

This whisper comes back to the voice that is “us”. It’s a whisper that we could easily miss, if, in normal life, we’re too busy to notice its presence. The “Sound of Silence” reminds us to listen — to each other and to ourselves — to spend this time of silence to reconnect to ourselves and to the whispered voices around us.

As we wait for the sounds of normal life to return to the streets, cafes and concert halls, we can spend this time contemplating about how we can connect more to each other, spend more time listening and caring.

In this way, we can turn a dark time into one of purpose.