The Sound of Silence
Simon Garfunkel Lyrics
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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
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"
The lyrics of Simon and Garfunkel's "The Sound of Silence" describe the sense of isolation and disconnection that can exist in modern society. The singer is personifying darkness as an old friend whom he has come to converse with. He then goes on to explain how he was visited by a vision while he was asleep that planted a seed in his mind, a vision that remains within the sound of silence. The singer then describes walking alone through cobblestone streets in a dream, turning up his collar to the cold and damp while surrounded by the neon chaos of city life. He witnesses thousands of people speaking without saying anything, hearing without listening and writing songs that will never be shared, stuck in the silence.
The singer tries to impart some wisdom upon these "fools" by explaining that silence can fester like a cancer. He wants to teach and reach them, but his message falls on deaf ears like "silent raindrops" that echo in the wells of silence. Instead, the people worship the neon god they have created, and are warned in the words that the signs are forming. The song ends with the refrain that the words of the prophets are written on subway walls and tenement halls and whispered in the sounds of silence.
Line by Line Meaning
Hello darkness, my old friend
The singer is addressing their feeling of loneliness, which they have known for a long time and are familiar with.
I've come to talk with you again
The singer is acknowledging that they have reached a point where they feel like they need to connect with their feelings of loneliness.
Because a vision softly creeping
There is an idea or thought that is slowly taking over the singer's mind.
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
The idea or thought came to the artist during a time when they were not actively thinking about it.
And the vision that was planted in my brain
This idea or thought has taken hold in the artist's mind.
Still remains
The idea or thought has persisted in the singer's mind since it was first introduced.
Within the sound of silence
The idea or thought is present in the quietness and emptiness of the singer's mind.
In restless dreams I walked alone
The artist is conveying a sense of unease and dissatisfaction with their life.
Narrow streets of cobblestone
The streets are a metaphor for the path that the artist's life is taking.
'Neath the halo of a street lamp
The street lamp represents a source of light in the artist's otherwise dark and lonely life.
I turned my collar to the cold and damp
The cold and damp weather is a metaphor for the singer's inner turmoil and emotional state.
When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
The neon light represents a sudden interruption to the artist's lonely life.
That split the night
The neon light created a moment of shock and disorientation for the singer.
And touched the sound of silence
The neon light penetrated the quietness of the singer's life.
And in the naked light I saw
The singer is referring to a moment of clarity or realization.
Ten thousand people, maybe more
The artist is observing a large group of people.
People talking without speaking
The artist is commenting on how people can be physically present but not communicating effectively.
People hearing without listening
The singer is commenting on how people can listen to words but not truly comprehend what is being said.
People writing songs that voices never share
The singer is suggesting that people can create art that is never truly appreciated or understood.
No one dared
No one is willing to challenge the status quo and change the way people communicate with one another.
Disturb the sound of silence
The artist is referring to the general sense of apathy and lack of communication among people.
"Fools" said I, "You do not know
The artist is recognizing that the people around them are ignorant to the true nature of their lives.
Silence like a cancer grows
The singer is suggesting that the lack of communication and connection among people is a negative force that is spreading through society.
Hear my words that I might teach you
The artist is attempting to convey a sense of wisdom to those around them.
Take my arms that I might reach you
The singer is trying to make a physical connection with those around them in order to form a deeper emotional connection.
But my words like silent raindrops fell
The singer's attempts to connect with those around them are not being met with any enthusiasm or interest.
And echoed in the wells of silence
The general lack of communication and connection among people echoes the singer's lack of success in connecting with those around them.
And the people bowed and prayed
The people around the artist are acknowledging their own powerlessness and are seeking guidance from a higher power.
To the neon god they made
The people around the artist have created an idol out of the neon light, which represents the empty and meaningless nature of their lives.
And the sign flashed out its warning
The neon light is warning the people about the negative nature of their lives.
In the words that it was forming
The neon light is communicating a message to the people, although it is unclear what that message might be.
And the sign said, "The words of the prophets
The neon light is suggesting that there are certain people who have a greater understanding of life and can serve as guides for the rest of society.
Are written on the subway walls
The words of wisdom are found in unexpected places and are not always easy to recognize.
And tenement halls
The words of wisdom are found in the most basic and mundane parts of life.
And whispered in the sounds of silence"
The wisdom that the singer is trying to impart can only be heard in the moments of quiet and reflection that are missing from the lives of those around them.
Lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group
Written by: Paul Simon
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
@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.
@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"
@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.
@serdelag100
Rip
@lauriejackson8351
So sorry to hear that
@LaskyLabs
My dad loved this song too. He died last year during the summer. I played it in the room after he died as well as southern nights, it was never so fitting.
The room was so quiet, it was saddest I've ever felt.
@bettyemanuel1367
88 years old now. Listening to Simon and Garfunkel Sound of Silence. 6 a.m.
@knowledgeseeker9756
70 and listening at 5:00am
@ew1745
32 & listening at 2:27pm.
@exdemocrat9038
❤️🙏