Hello Darkness My Old Friend

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 turn 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

- The Sound of Silence, Paul Simon. 1964

Amusingly coiffured pop legend, Art Garfunkel, when asked to throw a little light onto what The Sound of Silence was actually about, chin-strokingly interpreted his warbling partner's lyrics as an attempt to elucidate "the inability of people to communicate with each other, not particularly internationally but especially emotionally, so what you see around you are people unable to love each other."

Last night, numbed by the remarkable ineptitude of Liverpool's away defeat to FC Basel, your scribbler stumbled across this quotation and thought it a thoroughly apposite description of the shambolic Keystone Cop-ery beamed to us from St Jakob Park. Lack of communication? Absence of love for each other during the game and in the aftermath? 'He's nailed there, has Paul,' I thought.

It was as though Simon had actually penned his profound words during one of those mystical drug-addled 60s moments experienced by the likes of Jim Morrison and Lou Reed, in which the artist felt capable of some kind of magical augury. Surely, the diminutive world music legend had seen the future and been inspired to write a musical accompaniment to Liverpool's difficult season of transition.

Then it hit me. The beautiful juicy irony. Art's version of what Paul meant was almost entirely irrelevant. Despite the intimate intricacy of their famously soaring harmonies, the famously squabbling duo were often guilty of a complete communication breakdown themselves. Just when I felt I'd hooked into something that could help explain the demoralising chaos and decipher the maelstrom of emotions violently buffeting Liverpool fans, it was cruelly snatched away, leaving the entire premise of today's offering critically undermined. Perfect really.

Frankly, dear reader, I don't have the heart or the moral courage to engage in a lengthy treatise about the travails of our beloved team. I doubt you would even want me to. Positivity will be derided as dewy-eyed gullibility and an overly morose reflection on the current situation will help nobody's fragile state of mental equilibrium. So, in place of the usual analysis and exegesis of who said what and why X happened when we wanted Y, here's a little musical interlude which, despite the confusion over it's real meaning, seems at least thematically appropriate.