Wow! That was very interesting.
Peggy.
On Sep 10, 2020, at 2:34 PM, Richard McKinley <mcfurbie@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I'm not impressed with the guy. Not using a cane or a dog is just stupid.
On Sep 10, 2020, at 2:03 PM, Steve <pipeguy920@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Well, apparently that Youtube video was removed.
Here's an article I found about it on Rock 'n Roll Garage from a couple
months ago.
Frankly, the guy sounds like he's accomplished a lot although he is pretty
idiotic for not using a cane or a dog.
Steve
Art Garfunkel’s blind friend who inspired “Sound Of Silence” tells his story
By
Rafael Polcaro
Published on 07/19/2020
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Simon and Garfunkel’s “Sound Of Silence” is one of the best songs of all
time and was inspired by Sanford “Sandy” Greenberg, Art Garfunkel roomate
and best friend who lost his vision. Sanford released a moving new memoir
named “Hello Darkness, My Old Friend: How Daring Dreams and Unyielding
Friendship Turned One Man’s Blindness into an Extraordinary Vision for Life”.
Having inspired the lyrics “Hello Darkness my old friend, I’ve come to talk
with you again,” he said that Garfunkel helped him to recover his will to
live again after the blindness. “He lifted me out of the grave.” The 79
year-old man says that they met each other during their first week studying
at the Columbia University in New York. “A young man wearing an Argyle
sweater and corduroy pants and blond hair with a crew cut came over and
said, ‘Hi, I’m Arthur Garfunkel’.”
“Every night Arthur and I would sing. He would play his guitar and I would
be the DJ. The air was always filled with music. Still teenagers, they made
a pact to always be there for each other in times of trouble. If one was in
extremis, the other would come to his rescue,” he said.
Blindness and Art Garfunkel’s friendship
Some months later “I was at a baseball game and suddenly my eyes became
cloudy and my vision became unhinged. Shortly after that darkness
descended.” The doctors said it was conjunctivitis, assuring it would pass.
However, days later Sandy went blind and they realised that glaucoma had
destroyed his optic nerves.
Sandy was from a Jewish immigrants in Buffalo, New York, son of a
rag-and-bone man. They had no money to help him. So he had to quit college
and gave up his dream of becoming a lawyer. In addition he plunged into
depression.
“I wouldn’t see anyone, I just refused to talk to anybody. And then
unexpectedly Arthur flew in, saying he had to talk to me. He said, ‘You’re
gonna come back, aren’t you?’ “I said,: ‘No. There’s no conceivable way.’ He
was pretty insistent, and finally said, ‘Look, I don’t think you get it. I
need you back there. That’s the pact we made together: we would be there for
the other in times of crises. I will help you’.”
The comeback with the help of Art Garfunkel
Together with Garfunkel he returned to the university, where he became
dependent on Garfunkel’s support. He would walk him to class, bandage his
wounds when he fell. Also filled out his graduate school applications.
Garfunkel called himself “Darkness” in a show of empathy. The singer
explained: “I was saying, ‘I want to be together where you are, in the
black’. He would come in and say, ‘Darkness is going to read to you now.
Then he would take me to class and back. He would take me around the city.
He altered his entire life so that it would accommodate me.”
Writing “Sound Of Silence”
Art Garfunkel talked with his high-school friend Paul Simon about him, that
used the story as one of the inspirations for writing the song. Art
Garfunkel guide Sandy through New York one day. When they were in front of a
vast forecourt of bustling Grand Central Station, Garfunkel said that he had
to leave for an assignment.
Then he abandoned his friend alone in the middle of the crowd. Terrified,
he stumbled and fell. “I cut my forehead. I cut my shins. My socks were
bloodied. I had my hands out and bumped into a woman’s breasts. It was a
horrendous feeling of shame and humiliation. I started running forward,
knocking over coffee cups and briefcases, and finally I got to the local
train to Columbia University. It was the worst couple of hours in my life”,
said Sandy.
However, when he got back in the campus he bumped into a man that apologised:
“I knew that it was Arthur’s voice. For a moment I was enraged, and then I
understood what happened: that his colossally insightful, brilliant yet
wildly risky strategy had worked”. Garfunkel was with him all the time,
watching his friend trying to go back to the university.
“Arthur knew it was only when I could prove to myself I could do it that I
would have real independence. And it worked, because after that I felt that
I could do anything. That moment was the spark that caused me to live a
completely different life, without fear, without doubt. For that I am
tremendously grateful to my friend.”
Sandy graduated and went on to study for a master’s degree at Harvard and
Oxford. While in Britain he received a phone call from his friend – and with
it the chance to keep his side of their pact. Garfunkel wanted to drop out
of architecture school and record his first album with Paul Simon, but
explained: “I need $400 to get started.”
Sandy, by then married to his high school girlfriend, says: “We had $404 in
our current account. I said, ‘Arthur, you will have your cheque.’ “It was an
instant reaction, because he had helped me restart my life. His request was
the first time that I had been able to live up to my half of our solemn
covenant.”
The 1964 album, Wednesday Morning, 3 AM, was a critical and commercial flop.
However, the track “The Sound Of Silence”, which was released as a single
the following year, went to No 1 across the world.
“The Sound Of Silence meant a lot, because it started out with the words
‘Hello darkness’ and this was Darkness singing. The guy who read to me after
I returned to Columbia blind,” says Sandy. Simon & Garfunkel went off later
with hits like Bridge Over Troubled Water and Mrs. Robinson.
Sandy’s Life
Sandy carried on having extraordinary success as an inventor, entrepreneur,
investor, presidential adviser and philanthropist. He is the father of
three, and launched a $3million prize to find a cure for blindness. He
always refused to use a white cane or guide dog. “I don’t want to be ‘the
blind guy. I wanted to be Sandy Greenberg, the human being.”
Him and Garfunkel remain best friends being credit by the musician as
someone who changed his life. With Sandy, “my real life emerged. I became a
better guy in my own eyes, and began to see who I was – somebody who gives
to a friend. I blush to find myself within his dimension. My friend is the
gold standard of decency,” Art Garfunkel said.
“I am the luckiest man in the world,” Sandy stated.
----- Original Message -----
From: Vickie
To: MSB Alumni
Sent: Wednesday, September 09, 2020 11:38 PM
Subject: [msb-alumni] Background to the Song Sound of Silence
Here is a youtube link to the story of the writing of the song Sound of
Silence, and how it connects to blindness.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deZKEy3nVyU&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR0ldDQ22Xx-dPOa7AvdyRNNm9n3wEMAXxCp15O3cOaEgzSx08yYvIsnSw0
