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Sign sign everywhere a sign lyrics5/10/2023 ![]() ".The Words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls." It is from here we draw the common English expression "the writing's on the wall" as a premonition of doom. ![]() Like Simon's prophecy, the one in Daniel is a warning, in this case about the immanent fall of the king. Simon's respect for graffiti also prefigures (or prophesies, if you will) the forthcoming adoption of graffiti, and its intrinsic social criticism, as the central visual expression of the hip-hop cultural movement (and its subsequent acceptance as a mainstream, but still socially critical, art form in more recent times).Īs Peter Shor noted earlier, there is a notable instance of a prophecy being "written on a wall" in the Old Testament Book of Daniel. Where Dylan instructs "writers and critics who prophesize with your pen," as well as mothers, fathers, senators and congressmen, to reserve judgment on their children and the future they are bringing forth, Simon is telling the same people that the future has already been written down for them in the last places they would think to look. In this, he is in some ways in conversation with Bob Dylan, whose song, "The Times They Are A-Changin'," he covers on the same album where "The Sound of Silence" debuted. In both cases, Simon is instructing us to pay closer attention to the marginalized and the ignored of society, and to give their forms of expression greater respect and attention. Yet here the graffiti artist is being described as a prophet. ![]() Similarly, if we ask ourselves what is written on "subway walls and tenement halls," the answer is clearly graffiti. Some insight can potentially be gained by comparing and contrasting Simon's later song "A Poem on the Underground Wall," in which a graffiti artist's scrawling of a obscenity on the wall of a subway station is described, in deliberately florid language, as the act of a poet.
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