Today it is snowing.  This will be the biggest snowfall of winter….  That’s right, it’s spring already.  Yet another reminder that Heraclitus was right.  Change is the one thing we an depend upon.  You cannot step into the same river twice.  Something worth thinking about.

I shoveled mulch yesterday.  Shoveling, spreading mulch is not hard labor.  No heavy lifting, just the methodical one shovel full after another into the wheelbarrow.  Then you roll the wheelbarrow piled with mulch to the patch of bare ground, and commence spreading.  Like most work, no advanced degree is required, just dedication to basic hand and eye coordination, along with the motivation to spread the ground-up hardwood residue evenly.  One is gratified to see that the pile grows smaller as one works.  Unlike Sisyphus, there is a defined reward for this effort.

I worked and listened to a playlist of favorite tunes that I saved on Spotify.  The playlist is seldom listened to, so the tunes seem fresh, like something old and familiar which you discover by accident.  In a sense each song is new, all over again when it is heard because I am a different person now.  Life, experience has changed me since the last time I had opportunity to hear a particular song.  The “I” who listens, is hearing as if for the first time.

Additionally, there is the fact, that a creative work, — a composition of music, lyric, painting, poetry etc.  (the list could be very long) says more than it’s creator knows.  Yes, there is more meaning implicit in the melody/harmony or in the lyric of a tune than its writer had in mind, on the occasion of the works creation.

Yesterday afternoon, as I worked,  I happily listened to my favorites recognizing them as if hearing for the first time.  Two of the songs are iconic of the late 20th century which was my time and place to be alive. The songs disclose the texture of life in late 20th century, post world war II capitalist America, and concurrently pose a critique of that form-of-life.  You Can’t always Get What You Want by the Rolling Stones, the song title alone is a courageous statement of fact, and resistance to the ethos of affluence; some would say decadence. 

The line that spoke to me yesterday was about “going down to the demonstration expecting a fair share of abuse.”  The times continue to change and now public demonstrations, even massive ones count for very little, if for anything at all.  Public opinion does not hold a candle to the influence wielded by corporate, and wall street donors in the shaping of public policy.  

Here is a magnificent rendition of the tune by the Rolling Stones.  What meanings do you “hear” as you listen?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqfID282ZhE

What can I say about The Sound of Silence by Simon and Garfunkel?  The tune served as one of my life-lines after stepping off the boat in Japan, learning to life in a strange city, unfamiliar with the customs, able to speak only a few words of the language: I felt as if I were in exile.  Yes, I cried tears more than once from loneliness.

The lyric presently speaks to me the same message that it did in 1969, a commentary upon the existential consequence of capitalism’s success. A society that is a thorough-going materialism, consumption of ever-more things being the prime value, — ends in the abyss of loneliness. “The people bowed and prayed to the neon god they made, and the sign flashed out its warning…”  Psychological dis-ease awaits when we imagine happiness in the form of affluence, luxury.

I imagine that I’ve listen to a recording of Simon and Garfunkel singing this theme song of the 20th century West over a hundred times.  I can hear their harmonies in my head.  Here is a cover of the tune by a contemporary group, that you will find compelling as did I.  What meaning do you find in the tune and lyric as you listen?

The Sound Of Silence

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 streetlamp
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
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 whispered in the sounds of silence.”