Sounds of Silence

Walking to a team meeting this afternoon, I was listening to my iPod and “Sounds of Silence” by Simon and Garfunkel came on.  I immediately thought of Foe and our discussions about the significance of silence.

We talked about how silence is a common thread throughout our lives—that no matter what, in trying to understand our world, we are reinforcing the silence that is keeping us from reaching this understanding.  These ideas portray silence as something concrete, which is the opposite of what it is—the lack of substance.

Here are the lyrics:

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.


And 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 whisper'd in the sounds of silence. 

The song illustrates this concrete quality in the last lines of the verses—you can be in it, you can touch it, you can disturb it, it has hollowness (“wells”), etc.  Our constant efforts to fill silence is what makes it more concrete.  Silence makes us so uncomfortable that we either run from it or try to squelch it.  Either way we address it, we are reinforcing its existence.

Furthermore, the idea that silence can have a sound is confusing.  When I thought about it, it made me think about how we define “sound.”  If we only think of sound as noise, then of course, silence doesn’t have a sound.  But a sound carries more power than something that is simply heard.  We are so used to communicating through words that sometimes, we notice their absence more than we notice what is said.  Friday, for example, cannot say anything, yet is one of the most profound and powerful characters in the novel.

            The line that says, “People writing songs, that voices never share” can be related to the complexity of silence in storytelling illustrated in Foe.  Stories can be written by anyone about anything, that’s what makes them so interesting—what is “true” has different definitions based on perspective, and is therefore impossible to define.  In literature, as illustrated by Coetzee, truth is both silenced and illuminated by silence.  That is why people can write songs “voices never share”—because they can write anything about anything, stories and significance can emerge from the silence.

*Thanks Hayley for reviewing my post!