A winter’s day
In a deep and dark December
I am alone
Gazing from my window
To the streets below
On a freshly fallen silent shroud of snow
I am a rock
I am an island
I’ve built walls
A fortress deep and mighty
That none may penetrate
I have no need for friendship
Friendship causes pain
It’s laughter and it’s loving I disdain.
I am a rock
I am an island.
Don’t talk of love
Well, I’ve heard the word before
It’s sleeping in my memory
I won’t disturb the slumber
Of feelings that have died
If I’d never loved,
I never would have cried
I am a rock
I am an island
I have my books
And my poetry to protect me
I am shielded in my armor
Hiding in my room
Safe within my womb
I touch no-one and no-one touches me
I am a rock
I am an island
And the rock feels no pain
And an island never cries.
Simon and Garfunkel
“I am a Rock”
How timeless and wise those old Simon and Garfunkel songs from the 60s seem now. “The Sound of Silence.” “Mrs. Robinson.” “Scarborough Fair.” “I am a Rock.” I say this with the studious repose of decades’ distance from the youthful scene of those word’s birth. How cool they seemed then. How poetic. And they were.
I remember as if it was yesterday sitting in a movie theater, probably in the winter of 1968, with my brother and a couple of kids we knew in the neighborhood, feeling very mature watching “The Graduate.” The soundtrack featured three songs from the “Sounds of Silence” album. The movie had one of those new R-Ratings that had just been invented, and we just barely squeaked by to see that and later “Barbarella,” with Jane Fonda, very risqué for those times. I was the only one of the four of us who was 17 and technically admissible to the movie. The other three were in 9th grade, but got in anyway. I must have appeared mature enough to be responsible for them.
Immortal lines from one of the songs included, “Where have you been, Mrs. Robinson?” and from the movie: “I just want to say one word to you. Just one word. Plastics.” This was spoken by Mr. McGuire (played by Walter Brooke) to Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) early in the film, as career advice at Benjamin’s graduation party.
Sixty years later we’re bombarded from land, sea and air by the destructive legacy of the Plastics Age: Countless trillions upon trillions of micro and nano plastic particles which are deposited in us from the food we eat, the water we drink and that same air we breathe. None of this could have been foretold in the Sixties, of course.
To me the most haunting and unforgettable song by Simon and Garfunkel is “I am a Rock.” I have a history with that song, and I’m sure a lot of others who grew up in the 60s do as well. It always struck a nerve for me, ever since I first heard it on the radio in 1966. This was when I was in 9th grade when my family loved in the suburbs of New Orleans. It was my last year of junior high, and I was more than ready to move on to high school. I had few friends, and as the decade progressed, I withdrew more and more into myself and my main pursuits at the time: stamp collecting, my lawn mowing business and schoolwork. I was a very conscientious student.
“I am a Rock” is often interpreted as “an anthem of isolation and guardedness.” That rather well describes me in high school, and then during my four years of college at the University of New Orleans. My hand-written college journal from 1970-73 reveals just how introspective, withdrawn, and often lonely I was, but I was so busy trying to graduate in four years that I couldn’t dwell but so much on my worries, preoccupations, latent depression, and what is now referred to as OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder). I had that really bad my second year of college.
The music and lyrics of “I Am a Rock” were truly great stuff, iconic actually. These many years later the song plays across my mind still. I merely have to hear it and I am silently singing. I certainly don’t do that very often. That’s what Simon and Garfunkel do to you. Their body of work will continue to live on because what they sang still resonates so powerfully. I was awe-struck when I first heard the group Disturbed’s cover version of “The Sound of Silence” a couple of years ago.
“Homeward Bound” is another one that’ll stay with me forever. And the magisterial, soaring voice of Art Garfunkel in “Bridge Over Troubled Water” helped get me through my first year in college, one of the worst years of my life.
It has been a very quiet afternoon. A serious thunderstorm has just finished rolling through bringing with it lightning and thunder, heavy rain, and a damper on plans to go to the beach. The calm after the storm. I am here in my quiet apartment. It’s very nice, you see. No one to yell across the room to. No TV on. No music. No voices. No doors slamming in the bathroom. No microwave popcorn to pour out of the bag and share with someone. No this, no that, and on and on.
It’s very quiet. Too quiet. I go from the living room to the bedroom, toggling back and forth. Such is the state of my attention span.
Now as I write, the piles of books on boxes that have no shelf home can wait a while longer. But just knowing they are there, knowing what wisdom is contained within, knowing how many hours of pleasure they could bring me if I would just attend to them — all this comforts and protects me. As the song says.
No one, not me, nor anyone who loves life, can disdain love and laughter. There are things about “I Am a Rock” that I don’t like. I think it is rather superficial in some of its aspects. But it grabs me, nevertheless, with its blatant, powerful, and scarcely hidden meaning and implications. But isn’t that the way the deepest truths hit home — obvious to anyone who really thinks things through and has a modicum of self-knowledge?
So I see myself in that song, but only a part of me, that part of me that I don’t particularly like, but which I can’t deny because it is so true. When you have lived your life alone, you are, if not an island, then a fortress, carefully constructed over years. You become more impervious to emotional pain. You have countless ways of coping with solitude that veers occasionally into the deepest pit of loneliness.
But this rock does feel pain, even if it cannot cry.
“I am a Rock”
The original version of “The Sound of Silence”
“The Sound of Silence” by Disturbed (This video has more than 1 billion views on YouTube.)
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