Art Garfunkel knows well the sound of silence. “I’ve crossed Europe, I’ve crossed America. I crossed Japan first,” says the higher-voiced half of the 100 million-selling Simon & Garfunkel. Over the past 40 years, he’s been taking continent-wide solo walks, tackling each stretch in instalments, sometimes over decades, writing poetry along the way. “I fell in love with just being out on the road, walking. I found that the less stimuli you have from media and TV and all that, and the more you’re just encountering your own inner self, the fuller you feel.”
One time, in Wyoming, a police cruiser pulled up alongside him. “I remember the cop saying, ‘What are you doing?’” the 83-year-old chuckles, his once pristine voice now deeper and grained with age. “And I said, ‘You know how Thomas Jefferson says in the Declaration of Independence, we must believe in ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’? Well, this is the pursuit of happiness I’m doing right now, Officer. Just walking.’”
