I hear ya Rich. Don’t know how he got to be a Presidential advisor without
using some kind of travel technique. His body must be covered with bumps and
bruises! Like those he received at the train station when Art left him there.
Oh, maybe he used the clicker technique where you click with your tongue.
Anyway, I totally agree with your statement Rich.
Vickie Rolison
From: Richard McKinley
Sent: Thursday, September 10, 2020 11:34 AM
To: msb-alumni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [msb-alumni] Re: Background to the Song Sound of Silence
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
