The song The Sound of Silence has been on my mind, and ... what if they actually meant the lyrics? What if in lots of popular songs, people were actually trying to tell people a thing?

I know that "popular music contains messages for me" is a typical crazy-person thing to say. But, to be fair, they are literally messages! They are arrangements of words that convey content! And, if you're hearing it, it's for you - they're designed to appeal to as many people as possible.

Of course, I don't mean a secret coded messages - I mean the explicit content of the lyrics. (Occasionally broadcast media will still warn viewers that they are about to hear or see explicit content, but I don't notice that the things that follow are any more or less clear than usual.)

If I wanted to transmit a short verbal string to as many people as possible, and get them to listen to it enough to know all the words, I can't imagine much of a better medium for that than a popular song. People sing along to them, after all.

But, what if our society is such that you can get people to mimic the word-patterns, but not engage with the content of the message? Maybe you'd want to complain about that, warn people about it. And, maybe instead you'd watch your horror as they sang along to your warning of our society's diminished ability to process verbal content, without processing the verbal content. As your song climbed the charts, but there was no public deliberation about the issues you'd raised.

Well, that already happened. The song is called The Sound of Silence. The lyrics are fairly explicit:

Hello darkness, my old friend
I've come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence

In restless dreams I walked alone
Narrow streets of cobblestone
'Neath the halo of a street lamp
I turned my collar to the cold and damp
When my eyes were stabbed by
The flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence

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 share
And 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

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."

So, yes, I think that popular songs contain hidden messages for me.

But today, I'm going to try acting like a sane person. I'm not really going to engage with the content of the song in this post, and am instead just going to treat the melody and words as an art object.

Recently, my friend Light posted about a cool deep sea creature:

typhlonectes:

Munnopsid isopods are often found walking along the abyssal plain.

These “Daddy Long Legs” of the deep have long walking legs and antennae making them well-suited for this habitat, but they can also swim by paddling their legs.

This species, Paropsurus giganteus, can get quite large. Lasers mounted on the ROV’s camera housing (the red dots you see) measure 29 centimeters (11.4 inches). This species lives deep on the seafloor, over 3,000 meters, but there are other species of munnopsids that live in the water column with feathery legs that are well adapted for pelagic life.

Munnopsids are a type of crustacean, in a totally different class than the sea spiders (Pycnogonids) with which you may be more familiar.

Learn about this and other munnopsid isopods at our Deep-Sea Guide: http://ow.ly/n1OT30gJEMh

via: Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI)

HELLO GANGLY OCEAN FRIEND

I couldn't help but read Light's comment - "HELLO GANGLY OCEAN FRIEND" - to the tune of the first line in the song. So I continued in the same vein:

Hello, gangly ocean friend.
I've come to talk with you again
Because I see you softly creeping,
On a seafloor of great deepening.
And by paddling your legs you’ve learned to swim
In oceans dim,
You Isopod Munnopsid.

Abyssal plains you walk all day
Finding your path with antennae.
'Neath three thousand meters of water
This crustacean found its own quarter,
When your length was marked by the light of two laser beams
30cm’s
That bracket this isopod Munnopsid.

Between the laser lights I saw
Six spindly legs, but maybe more.
Like eggs of Turdus Migratorius,
This Paropsurus Giganteus
Has a body of palest robin blue,
And none dare to
Disturb this isopod Munnopsid