The Sounds Of Silence
Simon & Garfunkel Lyrics


Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴  Line by Line Meaning ↴

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
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

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
No one dared
Disturb the sound of silence

"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 the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made
And the sign flashed out its warning
In the words that it was forming

And the sign said, "The words of the prophets
Are written on the subway walls




And tenement halls
And whispered in the sounds of silence"

Overall Meaning

The song "The Sounds Of Silence" is a powerful and introspective reflection on the concept of communication and the lack thereof in modern society. The lyrics paint a picture of a person seeking solace in the darkness, only to be struck by thoughts and visions that leave an indelible mark on their psyche. The imagery of walking alone on narrow streets, under streetlamps, and eventually encountering the bustle of a city that feels uncommunicative and stifling reinforces the sense of isolation that the singer is feeling. The people they encounter seem to be talking past each other, writing songs that go unshared, and bowing before false idols of their own creation, all while ignoring the true prophets whose messages are whispered in the sounds of silence.


The chorus is where the song's central thesis is clearly stated, as the singer realizes that the sound of silence itself holds a power and a truth that cannot be ignored. The final verse is a cautionary tale, warning of the dangers of dismissing the value of communication and allowing the noise of everyday life to drown out the voices of reason and wisdom. In this way, "The Sounds Of Silence" is a timeless hymn to the beauty and importance of human connection, and a reminder to listen closely to what's being said and unsaid in the world around us.


Line by Line Meaning

Hello darkness, my old friend
The singer is personifying darkness as a friend who has been around for a long time.


I've come to talk with you again
The singer has come to the state of emotions he associated with darkness, to start a conversation.


Because a vision softly creeping
The singer is describing an idea that is slowly taking shape in his mind.


Left its seeds while I was sleeping
The idea started to take shape in the singer's unconscious state of mind.


And the vision that was planted in my brain
The idea has taken root in the singer's mind.


Still remains
The idea is still there and has not been forgotten.


Within the sound of silence
The idea is part of the singer's inner dialogue that he experiences in the silence of his surroundings.


In restless dreams I walked alone
The singer is describing a dreamlike state where he is feeling anxious and isolated.


Narrow streets of cobblestone
The singer is describing a physical environment which adds to his feeling of being constricted and confined.


'Neath the halo of a street lamp
The singer sets the scene for his feelings of loneliness and isolation.


I turned my collar to the cold and damp
The singer is trying to protect himself from the unpleasant environment.


When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
The singer is being confronted with a bright and unsettling image.


That split the night
The bright image changed the entire atmosphere of the surroundings.


And touched the sound of silence
The bright image intruded into the sanctuary of silence the singer was experiencing.


And in the naked light I saw
The bright light revealed a new reality for the singer.


Ten thousand people, maybe more
The singer is describing a large, anonymous crowd.


People talking without speaking
The people are communicating without really saying anything of substance.


People hearing without listening
The people are not really giving their focus or attention to what they hear.


People writing songs that voices never share
The people are creating art that is never truly revealed or expressed to the world.


No one dared
No one had the courage or ability to break the silence and speak the truth.


Disturb the sound of silence
The silence represented the absence of real communication, so the people were afraid to break it.


"Fools" said I, "You do not know
The singer is unilaterally defining the crowd as foolish and ignorant.


Silence like a cancer grows
The silence is like a disease that grows, spreads and afflicts people if it is not broken.


Hear my words that I might teach you
The singer is offering his words as a way to educate and help the people.


Take my arms that I might reach you
The singer is using 'arms' as a metaphor for a way to connect with the people.


But my words like silent raindrops fell
The singer's words were not heard, like rain that falls unheard in the silence of the night.


And echoed in the wells of silence
The singer's words echoed back to him in the void of the silence, with no one to listen to them or respond.


And the people bowed and prayed
The crowd is now religiously inclined, perhaps due to the unsuccessful efforts of the singer to educate them.


To the neon god they made
The people put their faith in material things such as signs and lights.


And the sign flashed out its warning
The sign is being possessed by a sort of universal wisdom that predicts negative consequences.


In the words that it was forming
The words the sign was flashing carried a warning or message.


And the sign said, "The words of the prophets
The sign is reaffirming the importance of the message of prophets such as the singer.


Are written on the subway walls
The message is not limited to official channels, but can be found in unexpected, mundane places


And tenement halls
The message can be found in places where poor people live.


And whispered in the sounds of silence"
The message is expressed in the absence of communication and the underlying thoughts and emotions of people.




Lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group, Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC
Written by: Paul Simon

Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
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Beth Bailey

Aragon Courts 1967

Most interesting comments from YouTube:

@mickflaire

Hi Kerri,
Yours was the last comment to this video before this one, and I decided to reply to you because this song meant so much to meas well, as an 11 year old in November 1965 when the 2nd version with the electric overdubs was released.

A little over an hour ago (12:35 am, PST, on Wednesday, December 28, 2022) I recorded a version of me singing along with Paul Simon who performed "The Sounds of Silence" at the end of the "Homeward Bound: a Grammy tribute to the Songs of Paul Simon" that CBS broadcasted on one week ago, on Wednesday, December 21, 2022.

This song was the life soundtrack of our generation!

Love & cheers,
Mick Flaire



@johnbergstrom7045

Incredible Story . . . . . “Hello darkness, my old friend…” Everybody knows the iconic Simon & Garfunkel song, but do you know the amazing story behind the first line of The Sounds of Silence?
It began 62 years ago, when Arthur “Art” Garfunkel, a Jewish kid from Queens, enrolled in Columbia University. During freshman orientation, Art met a student from Buffalo named Sandy Greenberg, and they immediately bonded over their shared passion for literature and music. Art and Sandy became roommates and best friends. With the idealism of youth, they promised to be there for each other no matter what.
Soon after starting college, Sandy was struck by tragedy. His vision became blurry and although doctors diagnosed it as temporary conjunctivitis, the problem grew worse. Finally after seeing a specialist, Sandy received the devastating news that severe glaucoma was destroying his optic nerves. The young man with such a bright future would soon be completely blind.
Sandy was devastated and fell into a deep depression. He gave up his dream of becoming a lawyer and moved back to Buffalo, where he worried about being a burden to his financially-struggling family. Consumed with shame and fear, Sandy cut off contact with his old friends, refusing to answer letters or return phone calls.
Then suddenly, to Sandy’s shock, his buddy Art showed up at the front door. He was not going to allow his best friend to give up on life, so he bought a ticket and flew up to Buffalo unannounced. Art convinced Sandy to give college another go, and promised that he would be right by his side to make sure he didn’t fall - literally or figuratively.
Art kept his promise, faithfully escorting Sandy around campus and effectively serving as his eyes. It was important to Art that even though Sandy had been plunged into a world of darkness, he should never feel alone. Art actually started calling himself “Darkness” to demonstrate his empathy with his friend. He’d say things like, “Darkness is going to read to you now.” Art organized his life around helping Sandy.
One day, Art was guiding Sandy through crowded Grand Central Station when he suddenly said he had to go and left his friend alone and petrified. Sandy stumbled, bumped into people, and fell, cutting a gash in his shin. After a couple of hellish hours, Sandy finally got on the right subway train. After exiting the station at 116th street, Sandy bumped into someone who quickly apologized - and Sandy immediately recognized Art’s voice! Turned out his trusty friend had followed him the whole way home, making sure he was safe and giving him the priceless gift of independence. Sandy later said, “That moment was the spark that caused me to live a completely different life, without fear, without doubt. For that I am tremendously grateful to my friend.”
Sandy graduated from Columbia and then earned graduate degrees at Harvard and Oxford. He married his high school sweetheart and became an extremely successful entrepreneur and philanthropist.
While at Oxford, Sandy got a call from Art. This time Art was the one who needed help. He’d formed a folk rock duo with his high school pal Paul Simon, and they desperately needed $400 to record their first album. Sandy and his wife Sue had literally $404 in their bank account, but without hesitation Sandy gave his old friend what he needed.
Art and Paul's first album was not a success, but one of the songs, The Sounds of Silence, became a #1 hit a year later. The opening line echoed the way Sandy always greeted Art. Simon & Garfunkel went on to become one of the most beloved musical acts in history.
The two Columbia graduates, each of whom has added so much to the world in his own way, are still best friends. Art Garfunkel said that when he became friends with Sandy, “my real life emerged. I became a better guy in my own eyes, and began to see who I was - somebody who gives to a friend.” Sandy describes himself as “the luckiest man in the world.”
Adapted from Sandy Greenberg’s memoir: “Hello Darkness, My Old Friend: How Daring Dreams and Unyielding Friendship Turned One Man’s Blindness into an Extraordinary Vision for Life."



@cecilferrell3479

John Bergstrom, I'm 58 yrs old and remember when Simon and Garfunkel were making hits, The Sound Of Silence. Thank you so much for sharing the knowledge you learned from Sandy's Documentary. I really am impressed by the life experiences that made that song between Art and Sandy. Again, thank you. I want to share with you since you shared knowledge with me.
This is a spiritual poem Jesus inspired me to write about the wife I'm waiting for him to bring to me. It's titled, She.
She
To awaken then see the beauty lying next to me.
Immediately I give thanks to He whom created she.
Can it be that she loves me as much as I love she.
So important to me happiness fills she to be a heart complete.
She fulfills me, dreams to reality, God made me One with she.
Can I be complete without she, I think not by me God's decree.
Love she for God and me need the bond three can be.
Holy Father, Holy Son, Holy Spirit are One, One then me with she are One.
That's she then me with God the way He meant it to be.
Love and thanks He that created me fused bond with she,
One love to be.

Copyright
Cecil Ferrell
6 - 17 - 2015
9:30 A. M.
Thank you again for sharing your wisdom, knowledge and understanding with me, John Bergstrom.
God bless you and family eternally. I love you as Jesus does. Be well, safe and happy, then walk complete in love.



@fntime

Nicholas Riley In that era, people still had the ability to think and feel.
They weren't 'downloaded' by politicans, media or levithan corporations.
Today, people have a tendancy to walk around self righteous
or waiting to be offended. There were more individual personalities, not
just sterotype TV cartoon characters, which many today resemble.
Like it or not, the era was more creative and free at least in America.
Was it perfect, not at all, but compared to what passes for culture
and intelligence it was light years ahead of today. You take the cellphone
and I'll take the 'liberty'.
 



@dumpster_mcgee_96

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
In restless dreams I walked alone
Narrow streets of cobblestone
'Neath the halo of a streetlamp
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
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 shared
No one dared
Disturb the sound of silence
"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 the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made
And the sign flashed out its warning
In the words that it was forming
And the sign said
"The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls
And whispered in the sounds of silence"



@jeanniebee61

"I guess I had other things on my mind in the sixties, but I never knew the background of this song. A much kinder and gentler world back then and an example of ever-lasting friendship. Read below for context, but make sure to listen to the song, it is wonderful. 'Hello, Darkness, My Old Friend,' a Simon and Garfunkel song inspired by a College roommate who went blind - reveals an untold story. Enjoy and then listen to the song itself."




One of the best-loved songs of all time. Simon & Garfunkel's hit The Sound Of Silence topped the US charts and went platinum in the UK.

It was named among the 20 most performed songs of the 20th century, included in Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, and provided the unforgettable soundtrack to 1967 film classic The Graduate. But to one man The Sound Of Silence means much more than just a No 1 song on the radio with its poignant opening lines: "Hello Darkness my old friend, I've come to talk with you again."


Sanford "Sandy" Greenberg is Art Garfunkel's best friend, and reveals in a moving new memoir, named after that lyric, that the song was a touching tribute to their undying bond, and the singer's sacrifice that saved Sandy's life when he unexpectedly lost his sight.

"He lifted me out of the grave," says Sandy, aged 79, who recounts his plunge into sudden blindness, and how Art Garfunkel's selfless devotion gave him reason to live again.


Sandy and Arthur, as Art was then known, met during their first week as students at the prestigious Columbia University in New York.

"A young man wearing an Argyle sweater and corduroy pants and blond hair with a crew cut came over and said, 'Hi, I'm Arthur Garfunkel'," Sandy recalls.

They became roommates, bonding over a shared taste in books, poetry and music. "Every night Arthur and I would sing. He would play his guitar and I would be the DJ. The air was always filled with music."



Still teenagers, they made a pact to always be there for each other in times of trouble. "If one was in extremis, the other would come to his rescue," says Sandy They had no idea their promise would be tested so soon. Just months later, Sandy recalls: "I was at a baseball game and suddenly my eyes became cloudy, and my vision became unhinged. Shortly after that darkness descended." Doctors diagnosed conjunctivitis, assuring it would pass. But days later Sandy went blind, and doctors realized that glaucoma had destroyed his optic nerves.



Sandy was the son of a rag-and-bone man. His family, Jewish immigrants in Buffalo, New York, had no money to help him, so he dropped out of college, gave up his dream of becoming a lawyer, and plunged into depression. "I wouldn't see anyone, I just refused to talk to anybody," says Sandy. "And then unexpectedly Arthur flew in, saying he had to talk to me. He said, 'You're gonna come back, aren't you?' "I said,: 'No, There's no conceivable way.' "He was pretty insistent, and finally said, 'Look, I don't think you get it. I need you back there. That's the pact we made together: we would be there for the other in times of crises. I will help you'."



Together they returned to Columbia University, where Sandy became dependent on Garfunkel's support. Art would walk Sandy to class, bandage his wounds when he fell, and even filled out his graduate school applications. Garfunkel called himself "Darkness" in a show of empathy. The singer explained: "I was saying, 'I want to be together where you are, in the black'." Sandy recalls: "He would come in and say, 'Darkness is going to read to you now.' “Then he would take me to class and back. He would take me around the city. He altered his entire life so that it would accommodate me."



Garfunkel would talk about Sandy with his high-school friend Paul Simon, from Queens, New York, as the folk-rock duo struggled to launch their musical careers, performing at local parties and clubs. Though Simon wrote the song, the lyrics to The Sound of Silence are infused with Garfunkel's compassion as Darkness, Sandy's old friend. Guiding Sandy through New York one day, as they stood in the vast forecourt of bustling Grand Central Station, Garfunkel said that he had to leave for an assignment, abandoning his blind friend alone in the rush-hour crowd, terrified, stumbling and falling. "I cut my forehead" says Sandy. "I cut my shins. My socks were bloodied. I had my hands out and bumped into a woman's breasts. It was a horrendous feeling of shame and humiliation. "I started running forward, knocking over coffee cups and briefcases, and finally I got to the local train to Columbia University. It was the worst couple of hours in my life."


Back on campus, he bumped into a man, who apologized. "I knew that it was Arthur's voice," says Sandy. "For a moment I was enraged, and then I understood what happened: that his colossally insightful, brilliant yet wildly risky strategy had worked." Garfunkel had not abandoned Sandy at the station, but had followed him the entire way home, watching over him.

"Arthur knew it was only when I could prove to myself I could do it that I would have real independence," says Sandy. "And it worked, because after that I felt that I could do anything. That moment was the spark that caused me to live a completely different life, without fear, without doubt. For that I am tremendously grateful to my friend." Sandy not only graduated, but went on to study for a master's degree at Harvard and Oxford.



While in Britain he received a phone call from his friend - and with it the chance to keep his side of their pact. Garfunkel wanted to drop out of architecture school and record his first album with Paul Simon but explained: "I need $400 to get started." Sandy, by then married to his high school sweetheart, says: "We had $404 in our current account. I said, 'Arthur, you will have your cheque.' "It was an instant reaction, because he had helped me restart my life, and his request was the first time that I had been able to live up to my half of our solemn covenant."



The 1964 album, Wednesday Morning, 3 AM, was a critical and commercial flop, but one of the tracks was The Sound Of Silence, which was released as a single the following year and went to No 1 across the world. "The Sound Of Silence meant a lot, because it started out with the words 'Hello darkness' and this was Darkness singing, the guy who read to me after I returned to Columbia blind," says Sandy.



Simon & Garfunkel went on to have four smash albums, with hits including Mrs. Robinson, The Boxer, and Bridge Over Troubled Waters. Amazingly, Sandy went on to extraordinary success as an inventor, entrepreneur, investor, presidential adviser, and philanthropist. The father of three, who launched a $3million prize to find a cure for blindness, has always refused to use a white cane or guide dog. "I don't want to be 'the blind guy'," he says. "I wanted to be Sandy Greenberg, the human being."



Six decades later the two men remain best friends, and Garfunkel credits Sandy with transforming his life. With Sandy, "my real life emerged," says the singer. "I became a better guy in my own eyes, and began to see who I was - somebody who gives to a friend. "I blush to find myself within his dimension. My friend is the gold standard of decency." Says Sandy: "I am the luckiest man in the world"



All comments from YouTube:

@TrapMusicNow

Being a late 20's person having a potential identity crisis with no real direction in life brought me here.

@____Michael_____

I just keep coming here to compare it to the Disturbed cover, not that im biased towards either, I just love them both and enjoy talking to my father about both coming from his time and mine

@TrapMusicNow

Michael Farmer Very true, mate. That's pretty cool to hear though. Music is like a language of it's own.

@cisco3111

At least your girlfriend didn't leave you for a lesbian like mine.

@TrapMusicNow

Cisco Blue Ouch. She wasn't worth it anyway mate. You'll have someone better soon.

@cisco3111

Trap Music NOW. Doubt it for quite some time

218 More Replies...

@Casino3082

My father passed this morning in his sleep. This was his favorite song. RIP Pappy

@elizabethmelo6261

Great song! I lost my beloved daddy last year, & this song was played @ his funeral.

@olgacesp7120

So so sorry for your loss. Just put this song on because it reminds me of my childhood best friend who passed away 3 years ago. Strength, hold onto the good times, remember the smiles. Be well.

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