I had a friend in high school who introduced me to Pink Floyd. I liked them but didn’t quite get them. I rediscovered them during a cross-country book tour for Sky Blue. I could pick quite a few Pink Floyd songs to make my top 100 songs list, but for this particular list, this song works.
You fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way
Tired of lying in the sunshine
Staying home to watch the rain
And you are young and life is long
And there is time to kill today
And then one day you find
Ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run
You missed the starting gun
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
Every year is getting shorter
Never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught
Or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone
The song is over
Thought I’d something more to say
Home, home again
I like to be here when I can
When I come home cold and tired
It’s good to warm my bones beside the fire
Far away across the field
The tolling of the iron bell
Calls the faithful to their knees
To hear the softly spoken magic spells
I appreciate Floyd now more than I did as a youth. Then: overproduced "stoner" music. Now: presage of future, calm before apocalypse.
There's a laser light show in a central IL planetarium, and I am always planning to go but something comes up, and it plays the entire Dark Side of the Moon, shooting beams all over the place. Sounds like fun after a few cocktails,
Finally, sometime when you're taking a break from writing, youtube search Dark Side Wizard of Oz. You know the old rumor about the DSofM album being precisely a soundtrack for Wizard of Oz? Well, sure enough some one has loaded –in segments—the W of Oz perfectly synchronized with DSofMoon —sure enough, seesm to fit (for the most part). Worth a look.
Ciao.
Dark Side Wizard of Oz is fun to see–had heard about it but hadn't actually seen it until those clips. Cool.