Patrick Hernandez: Born to be Alive (1978)

 A quick share of this, because while I have always enjoyed this quirky song, the official video is so bad that it makes me smile and grin. Dunno why I like this song, but I do.

That dude loves his cane. So gentle with it! It is featured on the album cover too. 😏

The Sound of Silence

     I really like the version of The Sound of Silence by Disturbed. I know some folks won't like it (eg. Idiots, and the tone deaf), but for me, it is almost perfect. It has an emotional intensity that fits the lyrics even better than the Simon and Garfunkel original version. That is not to say that it is better than the original! It is simply an evolution on the original.

The S&G version, to me, gives a feeling of helpless resignation, while the Disturbed version gives the feeling of the anger and frustration of no one ever listening to the warning.

One reviewer on YouTube said that with the original he never really paid much attention to the lyrics, which resounded with me. I knew the lyrics by heart, but when I listen to the S&G version I am mostly feeling the harmony of the duo, and the flow of the music. With Disturbed, oh man! I felt and understood everything in that storyline. Every word resonated in my brain for the very first time.

The version by Pentatonix, while nicely performed, sadly, they just didn't seem to get it; They obviously don't understand the song, what it means, and how it is supposed to be sung in meshed harmony or alone. It is supposed to be lonely, heartrending, emotional and anguished. So, I am not a fan of that version at all. They missed the entire point of it.

It is not bad by any stretch. No! What I saying is they heard the song sung by S&G and wanted to sing it, but without having heard it and understood the lyrics and the message. In that respect... they are on point: They heard without listening.

Of course people have their own opinion on this. I respect that. 

I have heard quite a few reactions where people say they prefer the original version as performed by Simon & Garfunkel - but they are referring actually to the remixed version that is the most famous, and the one used in the movie The Graduate (1967).  The songs producer remixed the track and the song quickly zoomed up the charts all the way to #1. The original version was much more simple, was performed at a faster pace, and with less slow harmony. So, the one that people love and remember is not the 1st version, but the remixed version. 

I am the same in this. I much prefer the remixed version over the original production - probably because I grew up with that song. It is the first version I heard and so it is ingrained in my mind. I later watched a performance of original and I have to say, it didn't grab me at all. It did not connect with me emotionally. The remixed version does connect with me emotionally and that is mostly due to the pace and musical instrumentation, much more so than because of the actual lyrics.

With the Disturbed version, for the very first time, the lyrics became the focal point in my brain. I always understood the lyrics, yet now, at long last, I felt them and understood them completely. It was almost an epiphany. 

 

  

The Unrequited Dream - A Poem

The Unrequited Dream

The Dream, it seeds,
Deeply, it grows.
Colorful, it flowers and fruits,
It expands, modifies, and reshapes.
It begins, and inebriates, with possibilities.

The path of its realization,
That is what is never dreamed,
And is never perceived—
For the point of hope is fulfillment, not transformation.

The dream always has the same name:
Hope, and it is the daydream vintage.

It resembles a wine,
Fine, delicate, and flavor-rich.
But in it is an underlying bitterness,
Hidden by the desperation of thirst.

Ignorance often fills that glass,
With overtone flavors of
Desire, jealousy, envy, and pride,
And long-suffering indignity.

The Dream,
It succeeds in part,
It fulfills in part,
But never to the full glass,
Never nearing satisfaction.

Silently enchains and enslaves,
Advanced with age,
The stolen sips of the mayfly life,
Of the hope called the dream.

The wine: Vinegars.
The glass: It empties.
The hope: It falters and fades.

Age modifies and dissuades.
What the dream calls into existence,
That hope, it betrays.

Daydreams give passion to what hopes decry,
A fruit with no real taste,
A wine born out of time.
Empty glass, and the fruit remains.
Nothing gained.

The dust lingers, bitter on the tongue,
Like the last sip of a dream soured with age.
A silence hangs in the air—heavy, breathless.
Then, from somewhere unseen,
A note wavers, uncertain at first,
Struggling to shape itself from memory.
It is not a song of triumph—
It is a song of longing, of absence.
It is the final echo of what was never fully grasped.

The last note wavers, stretched thin in the gloaming air,
A song never finished, a lyric never fulfilled.
It does not vanish—it lingers, naggingly unheard but ever-present,
A whisper in the silence, a reflection of sound in the glass.
The dream always too long, the life always too short.

Copyright May 2021 M. W. Van Dyke
All Rights Reserved