The Sound of Silence, or, The Dark Age of Art

in which I discuss [some of] the woes of art in modernity

Over the past several years—at least ten—I’ve noticed a growing trend in what we call “the arts.” Maybe you’ve noticed it, too, and it’s this: Redundancy.

It’s true, there’s nothing new under the sun, blah blah blah; every story is inspired by something else, blah blah blah. This is not that. This is not turning the vase to see how the light plays in a new angle off the same subject. This is not a fresh take on an old theme. This is something dead, soulless, and empty. The height of mediocrity. An insect buzzing in your ear.

It’s the twentieth Marvel movie that’s exactly the same as all the others—Bang: explosion! Run: one-liner.exe. It’s the “updated” versions of old [good] stories that do nothing but transform them into the likeness of every other Current Thing. It’s the incessant drone of modernity.

And it’s nothing.

I’m sure you’re familiar with Simon & Garfunkel’s The Sound of Silence, but, if you’re like me, you never really thought much of the words—

“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 shared / And no one dared disturb the sound of silence”

The more redundancy I see in “the arts,” the more I think the people making the “art” aren’t doing it because they have something to say, but rather, because they want to be talking. Because if you preach The Message, there are brownie points to be had. A nice little statue of a golden man, or a publishing contract with Penguin, maybe.

Likewise, as people living in this era—this dark age—we are consumers of…absolutely everything. And nothing. How many hours have you spent scrolling mindlessly through social media, watching reels and TikToks you’ll forget in ten minutes? I do it and it’s depressing AF.

And yet, 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”

It’s pretty depressing to think that this song was written in the 60s, and that Paul Simon had this to say about it: “[…] we have people unable to touch other people, unable to love other people. This is a song about the inability to communicate.”

But then, how can we communicate when no one is allowed to deviate from The Message? Indeed, how can we touch others? Or even love? Do we even know what that means? Do we even understand the purpose of art at all?

Recently, I saw a post on Instagram in which someone was reposting a tweet bemoaning the woes of modern Disney’s storytelling (of which there are many), and the comment was, “Sorry to be reposting a popular tweet, but this. A thousand times this. A million times. Disney is the worst thing ever to happen to art.”

However, as much as I despise what Disney has become, it is still only a symptom—not the disease. Unfortunately, the disease is far, far more pervasive than that. What happened to art happened to Disney.

“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 sound of silence’”

It’s so pervasive, in fact, that often, one must pick up the works of obscure artists—indies, the dregs—to find anything else. Anything fresh. Those whispered bits of insight, of perspective, of honest-to-God art that really has something to say.

Sometimes I wonder, as an artist myself in this dark age, is it worth it? Why bother to graffiti the subway walls when The Message is blared from glowing rectangles 24/7? Who will stop to read it? Will anyone? Is there any future where art can be art again?

And then I realize: There can’t be. Not unless we do something about it. Not unless we continue to persist, continue to create, continue to whisper—and eventually—to speak, and dare to disturb the sound of silence.