The soundtrack of our lives

Kiama, NSW

Songs, great songs, have the power to transport us back to significant years or moments in our lives. Some speak of this evocative effect as a ‘soundtrack’ which is embedded within us… and try as we might we can neither delete nor outrun it. At other times a song can prepare us for what is still ahead and make it more bearable, or force us to re-evaluate our relationships and even our beliefs. One of these “great songs” for a large number of people is Simon and Garfunkel’s The Sound of Silence.[1] The haunting and unforgettable lyrical ode to the deep aching of loneliness and insufferable loss: “Hello darkness, my old friend, I’ve come to talk with you again…” In 2013 the song was added to the National Recording Registry in the Library of Congress “for being culturally, historically, or aesthetically important.”[2] But even today it is being discovered anew outside any allegiances to genres. Why? It speaks to the core of our shared sense of alienation, of our needs and fears, of what we could confess to each other when down and vulnerable. It is a song with soul it has been somewhere said. “In restless dreams I walk alone/ Narrow streets of cobblestone…”

The song has been covered countless times, sometimes very well, other times brilliantly and yet on other occasions very poorly. Not surprisingly, it is one of the most-performed songs of the 20th century.[3] When I fall in love with a song I will invariably seek out covers, and quite often I am amazed at how beautiful and true to the spirit many of these covers are. Sometimes we find that the cover can be even more powerful (or at least equal) to the original, and here I am particularly thinking of Johnny Cash’s cover of Nine Inch Nails disturbing and yet surprisingly redeeming Hurt.[4] The covers of Paul Simon’s folk rock classic offered here are outstanding examples of how a great song can be reinterpreted to express different nuances or to reach a new audience without damage to the intent of the original. Of interest from these offerings below: a poetical reading from Leonard Cohen; a startling delivery from Sharleen Spiteri; and yet another from the heavy metal American band, Disturbed.

“We human beings are tuned such that we crave great melody and great lyrics. And if somebody writes a great song, it’s timeless…” (Art Garfunkel, b. November 5th 1941)

“Music is forever; music should grow and mature with you, following you right on up until you die.” (Paul Simon, b. October 13th 1941)

“This deep relation which music has to the true nature of all things also explains the fact that suitable music played to any scene, action, event, or surrounding seems to disclose to us its most secret meaning, and appears as the most accurate and distinct commentary upon it.” (Arthur Schopenhauer, 1788-1860)

On a personal note, The Sound of Silence has been on my ‘soundtrack’ since about the time of the First Gulf War (1990-91). When during those imperilled months I was preparing to leave for London and Madrid, to come face-to-face with a much smaller crisis of my own.

“But my words like silent raindrops fell, And echoed/ In the wells of silence…”

 

Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, Paul Simon and Bob Dylan, Disturbed, Mike Masse and Jeff Hall, Sharleen Spiteri, Nouela, Emilίana Torrini, Leonard Cohen, Dana Winner

[1] The song was recorded and released by Columbia Records in October, 1964. It was included in Simon and Garfunkel’s first studio album, Wednesday Morning, 3AM. It was famously written by Paul Simon over a number of months.

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sound_of_Silence

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sound_of_Silence

[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vt1Pwfnh5p

I have been here before

Gerringong, NSW

I have been here before, this much I do know, ever since the dream.

But how and why have I arrived into this fearful place and will it ever be possible to escape its dark and terrifying rooms? “Tell me little boy, tell me that together we might deal the huge dragon a mortal blow.”

Outside the early sunlight is bending through the cactuses. One can learn a lot from the improvisation of a cactus, but when pressing our flesh against its secret we must not be afraid of the stabs. Redemption is not a bloodless exercise. For those stubborn enough to hold out to the end they would hope the price of admission into this world was worth the cost. And that the need to understand was greater than the darkness. These are the deep mysteries which beckon us to search for the soul and like the private imaginations of a good monk, they will both fascinate and repel.

The one thing I must now do is to write. Write, Michael, it is your only way out of the abyss.

To keep on writing until the larger pieces to this puzzle begin to fall into some recognizable pattern or shape. How many times have I made this promise to myself? Only to see it broken when the story became too hard or when gripped by the dread that it would sound too improbable, if not unbelievable, to most. Maybe, too, it is the fear of writing itself, vox audita perit, literra scripta manet: the heard word is lost, the written letter abides. Then again, this ancient maxim takes on new connotations in the age of uberveillance.[1] The delete option will increasingly become one of those fantastic recollections of the past and the “heard word” too, is not lost. All will become video and uploaded to be re-run by the collectors, the controllers, and the hunters.

It has now been almost twenty years since my exile. An exile both forced and self-imposed for the crime of refusing to accept privileges and honour but also for daring to suggest that the “sheep” are not dumb. I cannot but recall those telling lines from Dostoyevsky’s Notes from Underground, “I have been living like this for a long time now – about twenty years. I am forty… [a]fter all, I didn’t take bribes, so I had to have some compensation.”[2] Unlike Fyodor Mikhailovich’s “bad civil servant”, however, I am now approaching my fiftieth year and was once a young and highly idealistic clergyman.

As for my own compensation? Hope. And only heaven and hell would ever know how much of it I would truly need. For, I too, am not entirely blameless. Yet even our ruins carry our legacy from which we pick up the pieces to rebuild. Nothing should be wasted. “There is always another story” writes W. H. Auden, “[t]here is more than meets the eye.” We are all looking to be saved by somebody or from something and so every last piece of this big heap of fabulous rubble will find its rightful place. Like great cathedrals and national monuments rebuilt after the bombings of war.

[1] Michael, M.G. and Michael, K. Uberveillance: Microchipping People and the Assault on Privacy, Quadrant LIII (3), 2009, 85-89.

[2]  Dostoyevsky, F. Notes from Underground/ The Double, (trans.) J. Coulson, (Penguin Books, London, 1972), 15.