Paul Simon: “The Sound of Silence”
In 1964, Paul Simon wrote what would become one of the most enduring folk songs in American music history, “The Sound of Silence.” Simon’s song won him and his partner Art Garfunkel worldwide fame in the mid-1960s. Its inclusion in the film “The Graduate” cemented its importance to the counter-cultural generation of the 1960s. By Simon and Garfunkel reunion concert in New York’s Central Park in 1981 the song was legend. Simon’s 2011 rendition of “The Sound of Silence” at the ten-year September 11th memorial service transformed it into a national ballad of mourning. The song revolves around a revelatory dream.
“The Sound of Silence” begins with a nameless narrator, perhaps Simon himself, addressing a personified “darkness.” The narrator wants to tell of sleep-visions or dreams he has been experiencing, which culminate in a set of revelations from an ill-defined source. The first stanza introduces the notion of the dream, the revelation it inspires, and the eerie context of silence that pervades the sleeping state. It will be this “silence” that provides thematic unity to the song:
Hello darkness, my old friendI've come to talk with you againBecause a vision softly creepingLeft its seeds while I was sleepingAnd the vision that was planted in my brainStill remains Within the sound of silence
The second and third stanzas take us directly into the dream content:
In restless dreams I walked aloneNarrow streets of cobblestone 'Neath the halo of a street lampI turned my collar to the cold and dampWhen my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon lightThat split the night
And touched the sound of silenceAnd in the naked light I sawTen thousand people, maybe morePeople talking without speakingPeople hearing without listening
People writing songs that voices never shareAnd no one daredDisturb the sound of silence
Two central ideas have been introduced at this point in the song. The first is the issue of conformity. The narrator sees ten thousand people basically doing the same thing. This is a crowd – a social construction antithetical to a notion of individuality or individual creativity. The line “and no one dared disturb the sound of silence” is an indictment of conformist behavior. At the same time, the stanzas capture the opposite notion of individual alienation – one person’s inability to connect in a meaningful way with another. In a Dionysian sense (see Mann’s “Death in Venice”) a group can subsume the individual or bind the individual to the collective in a powerful and meaningful way. Simon’s crowd of ten thousand, however, is a crowd of individuals, atomistic and alienated from one-another. Conformity has not won them meaningful personal bonds. The opposite seems to be the case. The conformity has sacrificed their individuality while at the same time increasing their alienation. It is such a realization that caused the narrator to lash out in prophetic style:
"Fools", said I, "You do not know
Silence like a cancer growsHear my words that I might teach youTake my arms that I might reach you" But my words, like silent raindrops fellAnd echoedIn the wells of silence
What is the message that Simon is trying to convey to the crowd in this dream? “Silence like a cancer grows,” Simon tells them. This is a strike against the conformity he sees in the crowd. “Speak up,” he says, do not remain passive and silent. Embrace your noise, your personhood. But the prophetic message, like most prophetic messages, is ignored by the people. The revelation that conformity is killing individuality does little to influence the crowd. The narrator’s voice is itself rendered mute “like silent raindrops.”
And the people bowed and prayedTo the neon god they madeAnd the sign flashed out its warningIn the words that it was formingAnd the sign said, "The words of the prophets are written on the subway wallsAnd tenement halls"And whispered in the sounds of silence
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