Well, we have crossed the 1/3 mark with me and minternational living out our mid-life crisis in a cheap and harmless manner...
I went through a minor Simon & Garfunkel stage a long, long time ago. This song remained lodged somewhere in my head. There's something about it that seems to stop time, with a spine-tingling effect.
I'm sure it must be locked into its 60s cultural background, but to me it is a song which seems to fit many times and moments: that sense of dislocation, and isolation and search for meaning. The idea that things fall apart but maybe in the sound of silence the centre can hold.
Or maybe that's nothing to do with it and I've been overdoing the herbal throat tablets.
However, "The words of the prophets are written on the subway wall", whatever it means, gets me every time.
Here it is.
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3 comments:
Wow, you old hippie you.
Actually, I also had a S&G phase and only last Christmas but one got the whole works as a pressie, including a DVD of the summer 1981 concert.
There's just so much to love about this song, isn't there - he made quite a regular use of Biblical imagery back in those days - people talking without speaking, people hearing without listening and, of course, the prophets' subway musings.
Are you seeing the silence of the song as a positive thing? I wonder - 'silence like a cancer grows' seems quite gloomy to me.
Do you know the original version of this song - the entirely acoustic one that appeared on Wednesday Morning 3AM? Well worth a listen too - in some ways superior.
I think I have heard the acoustic and got muddled between them!
Yes there is a dark side to the song, but maybe there are two values to silence?
I think there are valent values in silence - do you see them in the song?
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