I attended an open, on-stage conversation with Paul Simon at Skidmore College a couple of nights ago.  The nine hundred, or so, packed into Zankel Hall, were there for various reasons; he’s a bona fide celebrity, a musical legend, (I’d say genius), he’s nutty-professor whimsical, and he was more than likely to perform a tune or two…it was free.  The interviewer was Skidmore’s affable and musical president, Phillip Glotzbach, whose questions led to a rambling, stream-of-consciousness retelling of easily Googlable information about a sixty-year arc of an amazing musical career.  That’s a fact, not a criticism, as it was still engaging and entertaining end-to-end.  Several audience members lined up to ask uninteresting questions, (in one case, when a student began to ask about his troubled-water relationship with Art Garfunkel, Paul instructed the poser to take a minute to come up with a better subject), thankfully interrupted by performances of “Questions for the Angels” and “An American Dream” to end the evening.

The highlight, (for me), was a too brief moment that touched on Paul’s thirty-year commitment to his co-founded charitable enterprise, Children’s Health Fund, that provides free medical care to millions of underprivileged kids and their families, and an impassioned speech about the dire consequences of climate change.  His words rang truer in the context of an audience member’s question about the meaning of a phrase in “The Sound of Silence”.  Paul’s reply was, “that the power of poetry is in the imagery of its reader’s interpretation and, that, by the way, these were thoughts of a still-developing 22-year-old mind.”  I, (pardon my hubris), have always been convinced that this, (self-proclaimed songwriting epiphany that spawned a remarkable 52-year body of work), is a timeless anthem to the power of things left unsaid.

The notion of keeping mum, maybe best illustrated, (literally), by Hans Christian Andersen’s 1837 tale, The Emperror’s New Clothes, has historical and biblical roots as old as language itself, (I guess, before language, silence would have been expected).  It was probably a quickly learned and passed on defense mechanism that went something like…

“Hey, Norg!  You stink!”

“Oh, yeah.  You should have kept that to yourself,” said Norg, as he crushed his accuser’s skull with a rock.

History is thankfully littered with the tragic biographies of those who did not keep it to themselves, speaking out against injustice and treachery only to be hauled off to dungeons and guillotines and inescapable desert islands by despotic bullies who demanded that only praise of their appearance, personality and agenda was fitting for open discourse.  Threats against the safety of those who would give voice to the opposition of evil, (too strong?), are the currency of tyranny.  The deafening quiet, (“Silence like a cancer grows…”), which implies a tacit acceptance by those who could otherwise tip the scales away from the dark side, is the most palpable threat to our humanity.

What’s that, leaders of the free world?  I can’t hear you.