Your Lips Move, But I Can't Hear What You're Sayin'

It was with some degree of sadness -- nay, nostalgia more like it -- that I noted the death of Syd Barrett earlier this week. A very un-MarthaWho like topic to say the least, I know. But I believe buried deep in the collective memory of people of a certain age, there exists one or two moments in one's life than can be defined, or at least underscored, by a Pink Floyd refrain.

Mine:


When I was a child I caught a fleeting glimpse,
Out of the corner of my eye.
I turned to look but it was gone.
I cannot put my finger on it now.
The child is grown, the dream is gone.
I have become comfortably numb.

1988. I was 14 and had just become the lead singer (ha!) of a garage hair band called Atrocity -- with all senior boys who had to pledge an oath to my parents that my innocence would be protected during the year I would be playing out with them. I was well taken care of that year, but it was a year of revelation regardless. Comfortably Numb makes me think of the first time I ever saw anyone smoke pot. I did not try it myself at the time, but I remember thinking it felt so illegal and dangerous and crazy to be with these crazy people listening to this whacked out crazy music.

You reached for the secret too soon, you cried for the moon.
Shine on you crazy diamond.
Threatened by shadows at night, and exposed in the light.
Shine on you crazy diamond.
Well you wore out your welcome with random precision, rode on the steel breeze.
Come on you raver, you seer of visions, come on you painter, you piper, you prisoner, and shine!

1989. A really close friend moved away -- far away -- after sophomore year of high school. This was her favorite Pink Floyd song, and for reasons I did not understand, she would weep like a child every time she heard it. Sometimes we'd sit in my room or her room on a Friday night and just listen to it over and over again. In the last almost 20 years, I've only seen this friend once or twice, and have all but lost contact with her, but every time I hear this song it reminds me of her.

Good morning, Worm Your Honour!
The Crown will plainly show,
The prisoner who now stands before,
Was caught red-handed showing feelings.
Showing feelings of an almost human nature.
This will not do.

1992. Every bus trip for every field trip, school event, sporting event -- anything -- two of my friends in high school, self-nicknamed "Beak" and "Baba" would all but humiliate themselves and anyone within spitting proximity, as they would blast the Trial on a portable tape deck and sing themselves hoarse while acting out the entire thing. In a startlingly conformity-efficient manner, everyone in the class could recite the entire Trial, from to the Judds to the Mollys to the Anthony Michaels to the Emilios to the Allys. Anyway these guys were ruthlessly passionate in their recitation of the Trial, and after a while it left the confines of bus trips and could pop up Tourette's like in any setting from the cafeteria to spanish class. Senior year they sat me down and forced me to watch The Wall (and Tommy and a few other things of the ilk) to broaden my horizons I suppose. And for graduation they made me a "box set" (aptly titled "Beak and Baba's Greatest hits") which included The Wall and a few home made movies on VHS, and a 2 tape audio musical odyssey of Pink Floyd, The Who, and Jethro Tull, so that I would not forget my roots when I went off to college.


There are dozens of other great and memorable Pink Floyd songs (including many many that are not on the Wall albums of course) but these three are the ones that come to mind first for me. It was part of the musical soudtrack of my coming of age and will stay ingrained in my memory as such. Certain songs will always conjure up memories of black lights and lava lamps and dark bedrooms and tie die t-shirts with peace signs and the smell of marijuana and laying in fields under cold night skies and talking about the meaning of life and the endlessness of the universe and wanting to leave town and get away from the suffocation of well, being 14. Feelings of being utterly dangerous, yet somehow still knowing deep down, as I know now, that those were still times of great innocence. None of us really knew what hippies did or what it meant to be bohemian. And certainly we thought nothing of what the song lyrics were really about -- not too many people in my circle of friends at 14 thought much about mental illness and really being at the end of ones rope and not being able to take it anymore and believing that all of the crap in the world that we were getting from THE MAN was some part of a vast global conspiracy targetted at each and every one of us. None of us really shaved our eyebrows off or jumped off hotel balconies into swimming pools or nearly died from overdoses of hallucinagenic drugs. We all went off to college and got degrees and become lawyers and engineers and grossly overpaid consultants and got married and had kids and bought houses in the suburbs.

But I bet that everyone had at least one fleeting memory this week while Pink Floyd was momentarily in the news.

I believe that true true artistic creativity requires a certain amount of legitimate crazyness. That it is something coded deep in one's DNA that allows minds to think a certain way, to see light in a certain way, or understand the way paint moves on a canvas or how to articulate an earth-shattering feeling in two lines of musical verse. Maybe people like Syd Barrett just could not bear the burden of their artistic genius and had to shut down into seclusion for the rest of their lives. Topics for another time.

And you run, and you run to catch up with the sun, but it's sinking.
Racing around to come up behind you again.
The sun is the same in a relative way, but you're older.
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death.