Hello Darkness, My Old Friend

 Hello Darkness, My Old Friend

Friday 9 June 2023

This is the story of Sanford Greenberg, one of the most amazing men of our time which I imagine most of you have never heard of.  This is also the story of Art Garfunkel, yes that Art Garfunkel who is part of Simon and Garfunkel, one of the most famous music duos ever.

 

Sanford Greenberg was born in Buffalo, New York in 1940.  He was a very bright young man.  He was so smart, in fact, that he won a full scholarship to Columbia University where he enrolled in 1958.  Columbia University is part of what we Americans call the Ivy League of colleges.  Cornell, Yale, and Harvard are three other universities which belong to this exclusive set of universities.  It was there he met Art Garfunkel who was majoring in literature.  The two struck up what became a life-long friendship that still endures today.  They became roommates.  They would talk about books and music, and they talked about the politics of the time.

 

During his third year at Columbia Sanford began to have blurred vision.  No big deal, he thought.  He would just go to the doctor and get something corrective done to fix the problem.  Unfortunately, the doctor gave Greenberg devastating news.  He had glaucoma which was destroying his optic nerves.  The bottom line was, he would go completely blind, and it would happen quickly.  Distraught, ashamed, and depressed, Greenberg dropped out of university and went back to his parents in Buffalo to live the rest of his life in isolation and uselessness.  Being blind at that time was no picnic.  It still is no picnic today, but back then (I would be born three years later) it was much more difficult.  His prospects were in ruins.  His hopes and dreams were in ruins.  His life was over.

 

As his best friend, Art Garfunkel refused to allow this to happen.  He showed up one day in Buffalo uninvited and was let in by Greenberg’s parents.  He told Sanford (Sandy) Greenberg that he would not allow him to throw away his life.  He would read for him.  He would walk with him.  He would, in short, be his eyes.  He forced his friend to get off the couch and go out.

 

One day they were at Grand Central Station.  Art suddenly told Greenberg he had to go somewhere and left his friend in the middle of the train station.  By now, Greenberg was completely blind.  Frightened and scared, Greenberg stumbled about, falling a couple of times.  He got up and by asking people, he found the right platform to catch the right subway to get home.  Well, it would have been more than a single subway.  Greenberg finally made it to his home station and as he walked home, hoping he could make it, he bumped into yet another person.  He apologized, then discovered the person he bumped into was none other than Art Garfunkel.  Art had been there the whole time.  Art knew that the only way his friend could pick himself up from the canvas was to become independent.  Greenberg realized he could cope after all.  That Grand Central Station episode was a turning point for his life.

 

Sanford (Sandy) Greenberg went back to Columbia, made up the time he had lost, caught up with the rest of his class and graduated with honors in 1961.    Greenberg went on to found a whole set of companies, married, and became a multi millionaire.  In 1968 he founded Electronic Data Processing (EDP) which was a big deal back in those days.  And while he was doing that, he invented one of the most important technologies of the 20^th century.  He came up with a device which compressed audio without distorting it.  It was his technology, invented when he was completely blind, that forms the basis of audio compression technology of today.  He sold his device to Sony and other consumer electronics companies.  As if that wasn’t enough, Greenberg advised Lyndon B. Johnson and became an important advisor to subsequent administrations.  He donated to charity including a $3 million prize awarded to scientists who do the most to end blindness.

 

With all this accumulated wealth, Greenberg did something else.  His best friend Art Garfunkel asked him for a $400 loan so he and another friend of his, Paul Simon, could make their first album.  Greenberg was more than happy to comply with no questions asked.  Greenberg hadn’t quite made all those millions yet.  Simon & Garfunkel released Wednesday Morning 3 a.m. in October of 1964.  It did not do well, but it was the start of something great.  And it never would have happened without Art Garfunkel’s blind genius friend.

 

One of the songs on that at first unsuccessful album was The Sound of Silence.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkUOACGtGfA

 

Today, this song is one of the most well-known and iconic songs in all of music.  When Art Garfunkel was helping his friend Sandy Greenberg pick himself up off the canvas, Art gave himself the nickname of Darkness.  He used to say to Sandy “Today Darkness is going to read to you,” or “Darkness will walk with you to. . .”  This nickname of darkness became a bond between the two best friends.  Eventually, the blind genius whom the world did not quite know yet, would greet Art Garfunkel with “Hello darkness my old friend.”  And this is where the opening lyrics to one of the greatest songs in modern music history came from.  When Art Garfunkel wrote the lyrics to this song, he was thinking of his friend Sandy Greenberg and now you know the story, you may understand what he was trying to say more clearly.  Art Garfunkel needed to show his friend that true vision is what matters, and true vision comes from within, from within yourself.  It is in the sound of silence as we look within that we find our true sight and that is what guides us.

 

Sanford Greenberg found his inner sight in the sound of silence and went on to achieve great things.  And while he was doing great things, he allowed one of the greatest music acts of all time to start.  That first album was not a success and Paul Simon moved to London to make his first solo album.  But Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel got back together to release a reboot album called The Sound of Silence in January of 1966 and the rest is history.  Greenberg has written a book entitled:  Hello Darkness , My Old Friend:  How Daring Dreams and Unyielding Friendship Turned One Man’s Blindness into an Extraordinary Vision for Life.  The audio book is read by Art Garfunkel.

 

https://www.amazon.com.au/Hello-Darkness-Old-Friend-Extraordinary-ebook/dp/B087TVR7PX/ref=sr_1_1?crid=H9QVUYTQAYP5&keywords=Sanford+Greenberg&qid=1686228925&sprefix=sanford+greenber%2Caps%2C276&sr=8-1

 

Wow, what a story!  I got into computers in the mid 70’s when I was in the 8^th grade.  I was part of an experimental program at the University of Hawaii to see if young teenagers could take to computers.  I loved computers and knew about EDP.  But I did not know about it’s founder Sanford Greenberg at that time. 

 

For those who can see, you might not appreciate why the Grand Central Station episode was a turning point for Greenberg.  When you are in a crowded train station and you cannot see which train is what, and back then, announcements were often hard to understand, this is really difficult.  Heck, train station announcements are still hard to understand today.

 

I know what this is like even though I have some sight.  I used to work on St. Kilda Road in Melbourne.  To get home, I went to a tram stop with many trams that would stop there.  There were no announcements.  I needed to catch either the 6 or 72 tram, but there was the 3, 5, 8, 16, 63, and 64 that could come by.  How could I know which tram is what when I couldn’t see the numbers?  Greenberg at Grand Central Station would have been a really traumatic event for him.  At least I was born with blindness.  I’m used to it.  This poor guy had to adapt to a brand-new dark world he knew nothing about.

 

I’ll end this with my own Grand Central Station moment, except that it occurred at a bus stop on Hotel Street in Hawaii way back in 1978.  The following story is absolutely true.

 

Back then, when I went home from church, I did so on the city bus.  I walked about two miles from the church to the bus stop then had two choices to get home.  One was longer but involved no bus terminals with lots of buses.  The other was shorter but involved a bus stop hub on Hotel Street (in those days in Honolulu) with a large number of buses.  The choice I faced was whether to face the very difficult task of catching the right bus at a crowded buss stop hub in order to save time to get home.

 

Yes, I could ask someone for help, and I did this sometimes, but pride got in the way a lot of the time.  This probably sounds stupid and in one sense it is.  Why would I refuse to get help because of my pride?  It is because I was ashamed of being blind.  When Greenberg went blind, he too, felt shame.   To be fair, asking for help is fraught with risk.  For one thing some people give you a bum steer for kicks.  Yes, there are people like that.  For another thing, the person you ask may get on their bus before the one you want happens by, meaning you have to ask someone else.  On this particular day, I braved the terminal.  The sun was strong though and try as I might to move up and down to get close enough to the bus to see the number (this was one of the days my pride got in the way of asking for help) I really struggled.  I had caught the wrong bus before.

 

Then a gentleman asked me if I needed help.  Back then I was about as tall as I am now which is 6’3”.  This guy was taller than I was, at least 6’5” or 6’6” tall.  He was much older in his 50’s or 60’s.  He was a white guy with tanned wrinkled skin.  He wore sunglasses and was dressed in a bright red and white aloha shirt and white pants.  He was slim and fit.  I explained to him that I did not see well, and I wanted to catch the #12 Salt Lake bus.  It turned out he was waiting for the same bus so he told me we could get on together.  What a relief.  My eyes were sore by now because of looking into the sun to try to see bus numbers that I could not see.  His help was great for me.  And sure enough, a couple of minutes later, my bus came.  I got on and he got on right after me.

 

The bus was absolutely packed.  All the seats were taken and the rest of us were pressed against one another in the middle.  Since this is a weird song column, I’ll put in a link to Weird Al’s first recorded song that describes what conditions were like on this crowded bus.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79QxturUolo

 

I always laugh when I hear this song because I have been on this bus.  😊  My point is the bus was backed and the gentleman who helped me was pressed up against me.

 

The doors closed and the bus started to move.  What happened next occurred before the bus got to the next bus stop.  I thanked the gentleman “No problem,” he said.  I turned to look out the window not really looking at anything in particular.  I wondered whether I was being rude by not introducing myself.  Did it matter?  Would he care to know my name.  I decided to go ahead anyway.  When I turned back, the guy was gone.  He literally disappeared into thin air.  The bus was still moving.  He had not sat down anywhere because there were no seats.  He hadn’t moved to another standing position because there was no way for him to do so.  I was kind of freaking out by now and I looked around.  Nothing.  As I said, this guy was taller than I was so even I could have spotted him.

 

I was so perplexed I actually tapped the shoulder of the guy who was sitting on the seat next to where I stood.  I said: “Excuse me, I know this will sound weird, but did you see what happened to the guy I was talking to just now?”  I’ll never forget what he said to me.  He said: “No, I haven’t seen anyone.  In fact, I was wondering who you were talking to.”

 

That is a true story.  I have always believed that gentleman was an angel.  But why would an angel help an insignificant blind person catch the right bus when he could have been solving world hunger?  The lesson I took from this, and the lesson that has helped shape my life is this.  The extraordinary is right here in the midst of the ordinary.  Normal vision allows you to see the ordinary, but true vision allows you to see the extraordinary others cannot see.  Meditation is a part of my life and when I meditate, I enter the realm of silence.  It is the sound of silence that helps us see what is truly important.