Simon & Garfunkel’s famous song has always touched my soul, but it wasn’t until I was watching figure skaters Vanessa James and Morgan Cipres performing to a remake that I fell in love with the depth and sentiment of the lyrics.
I am a talker. I love to talk, I think it’s important in any relationship to have intimate discussions about deep rooted thoughts and feelings.
Art Garfunkel explained the meaning of the song once 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.”
The darkness of words unspoken genuinely crushes me to my core. But it happens, two people sit quietly, desperate to break the silence. but filled with fear of how our words might affect the other person.
“Hear my words that I might teach you, Take my arms that I might reach you” – how noisy the world would be if we weren’t so afraid of our words, if we were willing to both share and receive words in love.
When we give into silence, we create division – we cause ourselves and each other to walk alone. Imagine what would happen if we Disturbed the sounds of silence.
Links
Sounds of Silence – Disturbed remake
Sounds of Silence – Simon & Garfunkel Original
Lyrics
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
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
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
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”
PhilippiJoy 