THE SOUND OF SILENCE

Sometime in high school ... perhaps it was when I was a junior? I can't be certain. Mainly, because I can't be certain of ANYTHING time-wise these days. I mean, don't you find that your days just bleed together so that you can't tell where you left off and where you should begin?

Or maybe that's just me.

Maybe it's because I am OLD. Y'all. When did I make it to 46 years old?

At any rate, when I was in high school, my English teacher (who was also my History teacher -- it was a SMALL school) taught me to analyze writing, art, media, anything that flitted by my face. AND I LOVED IT! It totally clicked with my writer's mind that, up to that point (and probably beyond -- okay let's be honest here, still today!), felt like it didn't work like every one else's brain.

We analyzed a lot of stuff, but one poem in particular, was Paul Simon's THE SOUND OF SILENCE. Anyone who has studied this poem, these lyrics, knows that this is a commentary on the modern world ... or at least the modern world of Simon's when he wrote this lo those many years ago.

This song floated into my head this morning, and I don't know. My 46-year old self is examining the lyrics of this song today, and I'm thinking Mr. Paul Simon was a bit of a prophet myself.

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 

I mean, hello my friends! This. Right here. "People talking without speaking?" and "People hearing without listening?" Can we discuss our current social media whore-like ways these days?

This morning, I woke up, stumbled into my kitchen to get my coffee, grabbed my phone, and my remote and settled in for the inevitable onslaught of pop culture nonsense. While sipping my coffee, I scrolled through my Facebook feed, and while I saw some things of substance, most of it was one upping each other on what perfect looks like. Instagram was the same thing ... no one was messy. No one was showing their piles of laundry or their massive stacks of bills or their winter-weary flower beds or their complete exhaustion over having to spend one more day on this planet slogging through a life that media promises can be perfect if only we had all these things we are looking at on Pinterest and Instagram and Snapchat and whatever else is out there! I am not even sure any more.

I took a black and white photography class in college. I was naive and stupid when I took that class. So, I took pictures of stuff that wasn't worthy of academic analysis. Let's be honest. Imma still take those types of pictures today. However, I do remember one kernel of wisdom that wind bag of a professor passed on to all of us in that classroom:

"They say that a picture is worth a thousand words, and to a certain extent, that is true. However, pictures are only one second in time. One picture doesn't tell the whole story, and it never will."

We are bombarded with a million pictures in our lives, and we are attempting to compare ourselves to the onslaught. We are trying to measure up....except we can't because those pictures are just telling one tiny second in the story. They will never capture the entire novel. They NEVER will.

Despite how noisy our society is ... Despite the constant, roaring waterfall of STUFF that seeps into our every day life, we are stuck in a world of isolation, in a silence so vast and deep, we are powerless to pull our selves out of the mire of it.

And we don't seem to care. It's like we've been turned into these zombies ... which leads me to believe that perhaps Hollywood is onto something with all this zombie craziness. Perhaps they have a deeper meaning underlying the weekly fight to kill these beasts? Perhaps the zombies are representative of us after we've been bitten by the Social Media bug ... our brains turn to mush, and we seek out others to devour.

Or maybe it's just about zombies ...

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 

Whatever it is, I sorta feel like the neon gods these days are the social media sites that draw us in and promise us a life of picture perfectness, and so then we spend our days chasing after that picture perfect house and that picture perfect spouse and that picture perfect family and those picture perfect clothes and that picture perfect hair and it doesn't get us what we desire most, what is to become of us?

Sounds of silence, I guess, and if I'm going to be surrounded in silence, I'd rather it be whilst enjoying the beauty of life around me rather than ignoring it because I have my nose stuck in someone's Instastory.

This video is of the band Disturbed. I don't know them, but they look hardcore. I mean, the dude pierced his chin not once but TWICE. I'm guessing there's lots of angry metal in their music. I'm including it because he successfully pulls off the anger I feel like we all need to have about the current state of our silence. It's a modern day take on a classic and timeless subject. Our own sounds of silence.

Lyrics: Paul Simon

YouTube video: Distrubed