Quiet

The obvious reading of this song is that the "time of quiet" Simon refers to is death. But this album came out in 2000, and Simon was born in 1941. So Simon was not even at the usual retirement age when he wrote and released this song. Not very close to death, with the lifespan expectations of today.

Another reason is that Simon used the word "quiet"... and not "silence." We all know Simon's feelings on silence-- the complete absence of all sound-- and he knows that we know that this is a loaded word when it comes to his lyrics. So he avoids that word and chooses the less stringent synonym, "quiet."

I believe, therefore, he was not talking about dying. He was talking about easing up, going into retirement or semi-retirement. And he is looking forward to it.

His "restlessness" will be "past" (not "passed"). Evidently, he has been restless his whole life. Why? Well, now he will get to "release [his] fists at last." Are these the fists of fighting? Or of grasping? We shall see.

He is also looking forward to "solitude." After three marriages, several children, a duo partner and dozens of collaborators, plus legions of fans and who knows how many agents and managers, simple alone-ness might seem a blissful refuge. 

Also, he will find "peace without illusions." This can be read two ways. One is that, without illusions, he will find peace. The other is that this will be a real peace, not one dependent on self-delusion.

The next lines, "When the perfect circle marries/ All beginnings and conclusions," admittedly, does ring a bit like a death knell. The end meeting up with the start, forming a perfect circle akin to the one he quotes in "Sparrow"-- "Of dust were ye made/ And dust ye shall be"-- is a funereal image. And it's not about the start and end to a career (as if artists ever end their careers!) but "all" such starts and ends, including birth and death. 

Then come what sounds like the proffer of career advice, "And when they say/ That you're not good enough/ Well, the answer is..." Oh, we know what comes next! The answer is 'of course you are,' or 'I believe in you,' or something of that encouraging nature. 

"...the answer is/ You're not." Well! Thanks for nothing! But Simon is just being honest. It's not even clear if he has ever lived up to his own expectations, or the standards of his heroes. After all, he reads Wallace Stevens and Derek Wolcott! Never mind the opinions of the critics, the public...

Wait! Read the next line. Simon is going after such critics. He is saying: "Well, they say you're not good enough/ But who are they?" [emphasis mine]. Yes, who made them the arbiters of the "good enough," anyway?

Actually, the "but" starts us off on a whole new thought: "But who are they/ Or what is it/ That eats at what you've got?" Again, there are two possible readings. One is to say that, fine, this is the conclusion of that earlier thought. Who are they to "eat at," to gnaw away at, to erode, what you have made?  

Another reading is deeper. "They" only can call into doubt what you yourself doubt. If you were confident that you were good enough, you simply wouldn't care! Of course you are not good enough for them-- no one is. No one can please everyone. 

So "what you've got" is not what you have made. It's the talent you made it with! You can lose what you have made, but you have truly "got" your talent and skill. What is it that tells you that you are a failure, that eats away your confidence in your talent? Something internal. It's not "they"... it's it.

Let's back up. Why does it matter what the critics and public say? Well, if no one buys your album, you'll go broke! In that sense, it matters a great deal! 

Yes, but, Simon explains, using the same "eating" metaphor, "With the hunger of ambition/ For the change inside the purse/ They are handcuffs on your soul, my friend... and worse." If your work is meant only to please the buying public, you cannot produce work that truly expresses what is in your soul.

A brief historical aside captures this insight. Interviews were done with East German artists some months after the Berlin Wall fell. Rather than reveling in their liberty, they complained! Yes, they were no longer forced to conform to the dictates of the communist government censors... but now they were constrained by the tastes of the capitalist art-buying public, which were just as harsh, and even more fickle! 

These artists, who "hungered" for the "purse," found their "souls" in "handcuffs"... and "worse."

Simon began this album explaining that where he "belonged" was "walking down a dirt road/ To a river where the water meets the sky." He closes the record by saying that he is headed for "a place of quiet/ Where the sage and sweetgrass grow/ By a lake of sacred water/ From the mountain's melted snow."

These two images differ in their presence of greenery, and in their general climate; the "spiny little island man" in the first song may never have seen "snow," but "sage and sweetgrass" grow in Montana. 

But in both cases, Simon dreams of being at the water's edge. From the River Styx to the River Jordan to the Rubicon, the idea of the passage over water being a passage of no return is an ancient one. But in neither case does Simon actually mention crossing the water-- no bridge or boat is described. In neither case does he even mention another side of the water.

So again, I do not believe this is a song about death. It is a song about exactly what it says in the title: quiet. Of hushing the voices of "not good enough." He releases his fists, which have been grasping hungrily at success and wealth, and trying to sate an insatiable audience.

And simply by unclenching his fists, he allows these "handcuffs" to slide right off. So farewell to trying to restlessly please people so that they will buy his records. He is 60, and still productive, with nothing left to prove or pay back.

It's a relief, and a release, and he finally feels he has earned the right to chart his own course. Maybe we should not have been surprised that he called his next album... Surprise.

Next Song: How Can You Live in the Northeast?

Hurricane Eye

This is actually a very "political" song. It is about, mostly, environmentalism and civil rights, and the people who ignore these issues... at their own peril.

The first four lines make fun of the whole idea of "history" as a definitive thing-- it is, at base, a story with an author, with all of the bias that implies: "Tell us all a story/ About how it used to be/ Make it up and then write it down/ Just like history."

Simon fixes on a particular story, "Goldilocks and the Three Bears," which, he posits, is about "Nature in the crosshairs."After all, didn't a human invade and disrupt a perfectly happy animals' abode in that tale? In this reading, Goldilocks might as well have, in Joni Mitchell's image, "paved Paradise and put up a parking lot."

But how did humans come to be outsiders in Nature? After all, "we all ascended/ From the deep green sea," according to evolutionary theory. Citing Goldilocks' desire for a perfect balance in porridge temperature-- "not too hot/ Not too cold"-- as a guideline, "Where it’s just right and you have sunlight," then, Simon explains, "we’re home/ Finally home."  In other words, when the chemistry is optimal and a source of energy is available, life can blossom.

But what if we are "home" in the sense of "at the height of evolution" but are "home in the land of the homeless," and not everyone has a literal home? Then we have reached a physical peak, but fallen short of a moral one.

The song continues in this social justice vein, with one person voicing concern over the state of society-- "Oh, what are we going to do?"-- and the other not accepting this "we" at all: "I never did a thing to you." Why do I have to help fix this injustice-- I didn't cause it!

The next line is a cautionary one "Time peaceful as a hurricane eye." A hurricane's eye is peaceful, but it is only the calm before the rest of the storm arrives after the first edge. It is, as they say, a false sense of security. You have to help fix this injustice because, even if you did not cause it, you are still affected by it!

The next verse seems to be about the oppression of the Native Americans. "A history of whispers" is fair enough; most history lessons are about the Western expansion of the Whites, not about the Reds they swept aside. This "White cloud," came in, followed by the "black crow," the carrion eater. Again, the image of the Western "Crucifix" conflicts with that of the Native "arrow," only it was the Natives crucified this time. All that's left are "a shadow of a horse" and "faces painted black in sorrow and remorse." The Natives feel sorrow, and the Europeans the remorse. We know this is about the Natives, again, because it is "the oldest silence," before the other American slaveries and discriminations.

Then Simon offers this bit of passive-resistance advice: "When speech becomes a crime/ Silence leads the spirit/ Over the bridge of time." This applies to the silence of all martyrs, from before the Holocaust up through the age of AIDS. How do we know that a mass death happened? Well, where are all those people? Where are the children they would have birthed, the works they would have created? Silent. It is simply the absence of these people that creates the memory of their loss. It creates a vacuum that our very nature abhors.

"Over the bridge of time," Simon repeats, "I’m walking with my family/ And the road begins to climb." It is supposed to get easier, but instead the incline becomes steeper. This is a possible reference to advancing age; the road is the same, but it feels steeper.  

"And then it’s, oh, Lord, how we going to pray/ With crazy angel voices/ All night/ Until it’s a new day." It is unclear, from the word "with," whether these voices are their own resembling those of "angels," or those of angels praying alongside their own. But it hardly matters. After such a steep climb, how can one find the energy... to pray for the energy for the next day's hike? And what does this "new day" look like? Well, it's "peaceful as a hurricane." Not the eye, mind you!

OK, so we have all of these problems. Well then, let's do something! Oh, so  "you want to be leader?/ You want to change the game?" Counter-intuitively, Simon advises: "Turn your back on money/ Walk away from fame." This is certainly the approach followed by everyone from Buddha, Moses, and Jesus to Gandhi, King, and Schweitzer. 

"You want to be a missionary?/ You got that missionary zeal?" Don't start a church, Simon says, but join the Peace Corps: "Let a stranger change your life/ How’s that make you feel?" 

And "You want to be a writer/ But you don’t know how or when?" Well, Simon is one of the best writers we have, so yes, we'd like his advice! "Find a quiet place/ Use a humble pen." The advice in any case is the same-- be "humble." Seek to learn, not to teach... to be of service, not to be served.

With "you want to talk, talk, talk about it/ The ocean and the atmosphere," Simon returns to the environment. "Well, I’ve been away for a long time/ And it looks like a mess around here." This could refer to Simon's long hiatus between albums, or his long hiatus from political songwriting. In either case, its does not seem to him that things have substantially improved, environmentally, since the beginning of that movement.

"And I’ll be away for a long time," probably means "...once I'm dead." Knowing this, Simon feels obliged to sum up his life's learning and pass it on: "So here’s how the story goes." We lean forward to listen...

...and hear a nursery rhyme! "There was an old woman/ Who lived in a shoe." But his version is different: "She was baking a cinnamon pie." Well, pies figure in many nursery rhymes, from "Little Jack Horner" to "Sing a Song of Sixpence" to "Simple Simon."

The rhyme now ends: "She fell asleep in a washing machine/ Woke up in a hurricane eye." Few places are as agitated as the inside of a washing machine. In fact, the pole with angled fins inside the top-loading kind is called an "agitator." When our old woman woke, though, there was calm. Or, at least, calm where she was. 

The song as a whole is about the activists' mission: to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. Throughout, we have characters who think they live in a world of calm. Well, their world might be calm, but the whole world is not! We have "nature in the crosshairs." Homelessness. Genocide and forced expulsions. 

There is a hurricane of trouble out there! And we should know this, even if it we live in the eye. If for no other reason than that the hurricane moves... and we could at any moment find ourselves not in calm but in 75-mile-an-hour winds.

Next Song: Quiet

Silent Eyes

Paul Simon, most people know, is Jewish. In the song "Hearts and Bones," he states this outright calling himself and is recent ex-wife Carrie Fisher "one and one-half wandering Jews."

While he discusses religion in general at various points through his songs, his earliest religious recordings are Christian in nature (he and Garfunkel were singing on a Christian radio show in England around the time of their first official album), and there are references to Christianity, and other faiths, throughout his repertoire, from "Old" to his recent "Getting Ready for Christmas Day."

And while these other faiths do include Judaism, this is one of his most openly and outwardly Jewish songs. It is about Jerusalem, Judaism's most sacred city and the capital-- ancient, modern, eternal-- of Israel.

The last line in the song, "what was done," does not seem to refer to any particular event, or news item, regarding Jerusalem, at the time of the song's release (1975). In fact, the most recent major news about Jerusalem was (from a Jewish and Israeli perspective) the best news the city had received in centuries-- that its most sacred section, The Old City, with The Western Wall-- was once again in Jewish hands (as of the 1967 Six Day War). The reunification itself was such a historic milestone that it is celebrated annually in Israel with its own holiday.

So the profoundly mournful tone of the piece must refer to Jerusalem's millennia of suffering. According to the Jewish periodical Moment Magazine, "During its long history, Jerusalem has been destroyed twice, besieged 23 times, attacked 52 times, and captured and recaptured 44 times."

The line "bed of stone" refers to a particular material called Jerusalem stone, a local grade of limestone used to build everything from The Western Wall to modern office buildings and homes. It has a reflective quality, and in many lighting conditions, the city does seem to glow yellow, as referenced in an Israeli songwriter's beloved song "Jerusalem of Gold."

It is an ongoing source of worry, in the Jewish community, that Israelis themselves see Jerusalem as a proud, thriving, and even glowing city while American Jews see it much as Simon does-- a city shrouded in mourning. American Jews are raised with stories of Jerusalem's fall at the hands of the Babylonians and Romans, and we see media coverage of various wars and terror attacks today, and assume that the city is a battle zone and always has been. Slightly fewer than half of American Jews have been to Israel-- the last number I saw was 41%-- so the kind of personal familiarity with the city that would belie this image is lacking as well.

Turning back to the song itself, the speaker of the song seems helpless and helplessly detached. He "watches" in "silence." In other words, not only can he not help Jerusalem, but he can't put himself in a position to do so. In fact-- no one can: "No one will comfort her/ Jerusalem weeps alone."

Nevertheless, he feels that he should feel an attachment: "She calls my name." The city "burns like a flame"; it is not actually afire (as it has been during various battles); it burns "like" a flame, not "with" one. Instead, it is undergoing an intense emotion, as in the Sting song "I Burn for You." This "burning" is linked to the "calling," they are connected by the word "and."

So here is the city, yearning and begging for his attachment. The choir surges, then subsides. Has the connection been made? Maybe not... he still watches with "silent eyes."

Only now, his eyes are "burning" like the city. He has caught the fire. He feels the desire for connection welling within him, and he even starts to move toward the city.

But as he pushes on through the "desert," he only gets "halfway to Jerusalem." He can see the city, but he can't get all the way there, which would mean to speak for her. The "desert"--the empty space between himself and the city, is too intense (the word "burning" might also apply here), and he cannot complete his journey. He can see the city's "sorrow," he can even share that sorrow... but he still cannot speak words of comfort or defense to mitigate that sorrow.

We have instead, for most of the song, silence: "Silent eyes," "watching," "no one will comfort." Then the city "weeps" and "calls." And only gets silence in response. Movement, yes-- but not a completed one, only a "halfway" one.

This state cannot last, he concludes. God will judge him for not completing the journey. In the end, God will force him to speak-- to defend himself as if in court ("called as witnesses") --and explain why he did not speak to console or uphold Jerusalem.

The song phrases that idea differently. He-- and in fact "we... all"-- will have to "speak what was done." This is more profound, in that "we" what will have to say... is nothing. Because nothing was done. Nothing was even said. We stood there and watched Jerusalem "weep."

You know that thing parents say when children cry over, say, not getting ice cream: "I'll give you something to cry about"? Well, this is a similar situation. God's point? "You want to say nothing? I'll give you the chance to say nothing. I'm going to ask you what you did when Jerusalem wept. Then-- then!-- you will really be saying nothing."

On a larger scale, the speaker implies, we must all answer for what we did not do to stop suffering in general, in Jerusalem or during the Holocaust or at any time or place. We see the devastation wreaked by war and nature, we hear the "weeping," but we only watch with "silent eyes."

And if we say nothing, then when we are asked to speak for ourselves, we will have nothing to say.

The theme of "silence" has been part of Simon's lyrics since "Sound of Silence." The inability to connect on an interpersonal level runs through songs like "Dangling Conversation," "Most Peculiar Man," "Sparrow," "Bleeker Street," and many others. Here, Simon explores what happens when that detachment is writ large, on the stage of world events and history. Or rather, what doesn't happen.


IMPACT: The song appears in the soundtrack of the Warren Beatty movie Shampoo. "Have a Good Time" was also supposed to appear in that movie, but did not. "Feelin' Groovy" also makes a very brief, but recognizable, appearance.

The song was sampled by Access Immortal for a track titled "Authentic Made."

Next Song: Late in the Evening

The Dangling Conversation

Simon is on record as saying, in interviews, that this is one of his least favorite of his own songs; the other I am aware of is "I Am a Rock."

The two share a sense of unease with the world, and a retreat into literature as a way of avoiding social contact. In "I Am a Rock," the speaker declares: "I have my books and my poetry to protect me." Here, the tone is softer, but the result is the same: "You read your Emily Dickinson/ And I my Robert Frost/ And we note our place with bookmarkers/ And measure what we've lost."

This song also shares an image with "Bleeker Street," which says, "I saw a shadow touch a shadow's hand." Here, "I only kiss your shadow, I cannot feel your hand."

And again, "Sounds of Silence," in which communication is lost in "the wells of silence," in an nightmarish, abstract dreamworld. Only here, the setting is a parlor of some sort, and communication just drifts off, time and again.

There are three types of communication this time. There is silence, which is uncomfortable. Then there is the meaningless, yet high-sounding and academic "conversation" about "analysis" and "theater" and the popular poets they are reading. Both of these do happen.

But the scholarly chitchat only serves to break the silence, which itself replaces the third subject. It is that which really should be talked about, only no one wants to. And that's that this relationship is in serious trouble. That conversation is yet to get started.

"We are verses out of rhythm, couplets out of rhyme," he explains, using the metaphor of the poems they are reading instead of talking about their relationship. "I cannot feel your hand/ You're a stranger now unto me."

The silence in "Sounds of Silence" was bad enough. Now, as there, we have "people talking without speaking, people hearing without listening." But here, it is not society at large that suffers in the abstract, but two lonely people making believe to be keeping company.

Why can neither speak of the distance they feel? Partly because it would not be proper. Partly because it is easier to pretend to converse than to truly interact, in the "Honey, we need to talk" sense.

But mostly, because of their basic "indifference" to one another. They don't care enough about how little they care about each other to trouble the silence with a whole discussion about how they'd rather be with other people. Better to be together with the pretense that all is fine than rattle the coffee cups and upset the "curtain lace."

Except that, while they are reading to themselves, they "measure what we've lost." The time spent in this limbo-like relationship is time lost. The passion, the romance, is not there; they do not write poems to each other. And so the conversations start, and then trail off, leaving both of them "dangling"-- attached at only one end.

Lyrically, there is only one jarring image. Everything else in the poem follows the metaphor of things found in a living room-- bookmarks and poetry, watercolors and coffee cups. And then there is the word "couched"-- again , a living-room image-- but one followed by beach images of "shells," the "shore," and the "ocean." Pretty, but out of place.

As to the music, the sound is lush, and the orchestration seems like one of the chamber pieces this couple must enjoy. But once again, the beauty of the music belies the emotional turmoil in the lyrics...

...Just as this lovely drawing room with its polite erudition is, in reality, awash with "shadows," barricaded with "borders," and permeated with frustration and resentment.

Simon explained that he did not like this song because he felt it sounded like a college student wrote it. But it could just have easily been because it was hard to talk about, well, not talking about things.

Next song: Flowers Never Bend With the Rainfall

The Sound of Silence

The entirety of the song is the tale of a recurring dream. One might imagine yet another occurrence of this "restless" dream-- a nightmare, truly-- shaking the speaker awake again while it is still night. Alone in bed, he has no one to tell the dream to but the "darkness" of the room itself, which he finds an "old friend," a welcome comfort from the bright but disturbing images of the dream. (In a later song, Simon will describe a couple of "Old Friends," both human.)

"Darkness," the absence of light, may be a "friend," but "silence," the absence of sound, is "like a cancer." The song as an entirety is an exhortation against the dangers of silence, so it is fitting that the song is wholly a conversation: "I've come to talk with you again." The dream is so disturbing that the only relief is speech, even if only to the darkness of the nighttime bedroom.

The dream, the "vision," describes two scenes. The first is one only of the speaker. The second is of a crowd, and the speakers attempt at interaction with it.

The first scene is very short, confined in some four lines. The speaker is "alone," in "narrow streets." The "streets" are not smoothly paved, but "cobblestone," an image both archaic and tumultuous-- anyone who has walked on cobblestones knows they are uneven and uncomfortable. The light is dim, from a lone "streetlamp," yet it is somehow authentic, even holy-- the glow is described as a "halo." The only protection from the "cold and damp" is the "collar" of his coat. The image altogether is one of isolation and discomfort. The scene is also somewhat British: narrow cobblestone streets, a gaslight shimmering in the infamous London fog, a trenchcoat's collar pulled up ever more snugly against the mist.

The second scene is its complete opposite. It is announced by rending, slashing pain, a "stab," a "split." It is a "flash" of synthetic, "neon" brightness. The speaker is suddenly in Times Square or the Las Vegas Strip.

This new light is also no holy "halo." No, it is "naked." This may be reference to the nakedness that caused the expulsion from Eden. If so, the next image is that of the shiny Golden Calf: "The people bowed and prayed/ to the neon god they'd made."

The speaker, in this new, bare light, sees an enormous crowd: "ten thousand people, maybe more" (a concert audience?). But they are even less communicative than the darkness the speaker "talk[s] with" at the beginning. They "talk" without "speaking." Worse, they "hear... without listening." And worst of all (at least, one may guess, to a songwriter), they write "songs that voices never share." Somehow, they even manage to "pray" quietly.

Why? They do not "dare/ disturb the sound of silence." Yes, but again, why? Why not interact? What is so important, or intimidating, about this "silence" that it must not be breached?

The speaker, new to this realm, finds no ready answer, and so breaks the silence with a jeremiad. He warns the assemblage against the dangers of distancing themselves from each other: "silence like a cancer grows." He tells them there is a solution in communication--"hear my words"-- and offers himself as an example, teacher, and confidant: "Take my arms, that I might reach you."

He might as well have said nothing, as all they heard from him was silence; his proffered "words" are but "silent raindrops." He might have expected as much-- he asked them to "hear" his words after he had observed them "hearing without listening." But the danger of silence forced him to try anyway.

And here is a chilling double irony-- what are these misdirected throngs worshipping? A sign that is "forming" "words". And words about what? "Words"! But as they are formed out of neon lights, they are not spoken, sung, or even heard. These words, whose light can "touch... the sounds of silence," are silent themselves.

"The sign said: 'The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls." (To find out what those words may be, we need to see a later song, "A Poem on the Underground Wall.")

Who are the "prophets"? The disenfranchised, the downtrodden of the "tenement." Here, Simon engages in a bit of inverted logic. If no one listens to prophets, and if no one listens to these people, then these people must be prophets. And, in fact, no one will listen to them, even if they did have a voice, which they do not. The speaker, addressing the oblivious crowd with prophetic, outstretched arms, is just another street urchin with nothing to his name but a threadbare coat. He is invisible beside the overwhelming flash of the neon sign, and his words merely "echo" in the bottomless "wells of silence."

The men who sleep in the alleys of Bleeker Street were truly poor. The Sparrow was a metaphor for the homeless and ignored. But this "vision" shows a new level-- depth, rather-- of alienation. But the people here could speak, listen, and sing together. They are not kept silent out of disenfranchisement or poverty.

They are kept silent by the simple fear of communicating. Of opening up, being vulnerable, possibly mishearing or mis-speaking... and then what? No, better to keep chit-chat cursory and instead focus on the "neon" of the bar sign, the Times Square advertisements, the jukebox... the television tube or movie screen (or computer monitor..?).

The streetlight's halo contrasts with the neon flash to show the difference between radiance and radiation, brilliance and mere brightness. The speaker alone in his room-- with his only "friend," the darkness-- has more company than the myriads of silent worshippers.

The song does not explicitly wrap around; the speaker, having told the darkness his dream, does not ask the darkness for an interpretation of the dream. He does not thank the darkness for its attention and companionship, then rise to greet the day's rising sunlight.

Still, there is closure. The song begins with a wakeful dreamer retelling his dream to the darkness. It continues with the dream of the loneliness of aloneness, then with the loneliness of anonymity.

But it ends by noting that the "words of the prophets" are also "whispered in the sounds of silence." A whisper is the barest hint of speaking, but also the most intimate. The wisp of a whisper might carry the messianic power of prophecy... and connection.

IMPACT:
This was the first Simon and Garfunkel hit, and it remains one of the most popular songs in Simon's entire catalog. He still closes shows with it, to this day. For Simon, it meant the beginning of his folk songwriting career, and that Simon & Garfunkel were a hit-making duo.

It reached #1 in 1965, and stayed on the charts for 12 weeks altogether. It would go on to be one of the top-20 most performed songs of the 20th Century (as far as could be tracked for royalty purposes). Rolling Stone magazine ranked it in its top 200 songs "of all time," and it was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.

The Library of Congress (which would later bestow upon Simon its first George Gershwin Award) inducted the song to its National Recording Registry, meaning that it was to be preserved indefinitely.

Other artists continue to sample it to this day, from Rush and Nirvana to Eminem. In 2015, the heavy metal band Disturbed took their menacing cover version to #42 on the Hot 100, and #1 on both the Mainstream and Hard Rock charts. 

Next Song: He Was My Brother