Entries from July 2006 ↓

This isn’t my usual quirky petulant rambling for good reason. Syd Barrett, the creator of the band Pink Floyd died last week. I became a big Pink Floyd fan the summer before I went to college. Then I became a rabid fan while in college. I listened to them all the time, I had their album posters on my wall, I had quotes from their songs plastered all over my dorm room door, I used their music as background in various video projects I produced, I even named a major character in one of my shows after the now-deceased founder, Syd.

Reading their incredibly informative and intimate biography, “A Saucerful of Secrets” by Nicholas Schaffner only served to fuel the obsession. It was in this book that I read all about Syd, the guy who brought the band together but then fried his brain so much on drugs that he couldn’t continue with it. Unfortunately for Syd, yet very fortunately for every Pink Floyd fan out there, music history was much better served by his fall from rock stardom. Pink Floyd only became the super, mega, trippy, space age band it became because of Syd’s demise. Roger Waters took over as head of the band, bringing his weird visions and lyrical mastery into the mix. David Gilmour was brought in to replace Syd as lead guitar and vocalist, which gave Pink Floyd their now classic and signature sound. Beyond that, everything great that Pink Floyd has done, every album and song that people know and love them for, was inspired (directly or indirectly) by Syd Barrett’s collapse. Dark Side of the Moon chronicles, through poetry and incendiary guitar licks, Syd’s descent into madness. The Wall is the story of a rock star who allows the pressure of fame and the horrors of the world to drive him deeper and deeper into insanity. Several songs and scenes from the movie depict actual moments of Syd Barrett’s own life, including a night when he locked himself inside his hotel room then sat there catatonic until moments before a scheduled show, while managers, loved ones and the other band members hollered, “Time to go!” from outside.

The song “Wish You Were Here“, from the album of the same name, is an obvious dedication to Syd. I’ve never been to a Pink Floyd concert (I got into them the summer after they stopped touring), but from what I’ve heard, they are visceral orgasms full of lasers and lights and psychedelic images beamed onto a signature circular projection screen above the stage. Yet whenever they sang, “Wish You Were Here”, the lights dimmed, the lasers and the projector were turned off, and the band sang the simple song to their friend, with the audience singing along amidst a sea of lit cigarette lighters.

If only for this I felt a pang of mourning upon hearing of Syd’s passing last week. Honestly I held no special place in my heart for him as a musician. I’ve tried listening to albums Pink Floyd did with Syd at the helm and it is entirely unlike anything they did in their later, more productive, years. During their Syd years, the band had a more Brit-pop sound to them. Basically picture the way the early Beatles sounded… you know, if the Beatles had dropped acid and tried to write songs for children. One of Syd’s most famous lyrics comes from the song “Bike” on the Piper at the Gates of Dawn album and goes, “I’ve got a mouse and he doesn’t have a house. I don’t know why I call him Gerald.” So from a musical standpoint, I don’t like anything except post-Syd Floyd. Some pretentious music buffs will try and scoff and say the band was never the same after Syd left. I agree with that… it got better. Infinitely better. Anybody listening to Piper at the Gates of Dawn side-by-side with Dark Side of the Moon would swear that these were actually two completely different bands.

No, my regrets over Syd Barrett are felt more because I do know his story and it is tragic. Here was a guy who was ruling the musical world at the time and he wrecked it all with drugs. He spent the remainder of his life as a recluse, living in his mother’s house off his Pink Floyd royalties – which the rest of the band made certain he always received. Yet he was the inspiration for the music that defined so much of my late teens and early 20′s. And knowing that these songs originated out of the unravelling life of a real life person who I’d read all about only made the songs hit me at an even deeper level. These days I have to be in a very specific spaced out mood to turn on the Floyd, though their music remains, and will always remain a very fond relic of my college days. If only for that I raise my glass to the late Syd Barrett and say (along with every other cliched Pink Floyd fan), “Shine on you crazy diamond…”

I always think back on my college days with great nostalgia.  When else can you sleep until noon, drink your weight in Yeigermeister, discuss Brady Bunch episodes until 3AM, eat pizza at every meal and meet girls who might actually let you touch their boobs?  But the thing that made it truly great was that you were surrounded by hundreds of people exactly your age, at exactly the same station in life, who cared about exactly the same things you did: which basically consisted of drinking Yeigermeister and touching girls’ boobs.  I had the added privilege of going to school in Boston, widely recognized as the number one college town in America.  For four years it seemed as though the entire world was in college.  No matter where I walked, every store, every restaurant and every bulletin board catered to wall-to-wall 18-to-21-year-olds and the boobs they yearned to touch.

Life has certainly moved on and I’ve settled down with a wife and family in the Philadelphia suburbs.   I love it all and don’t mourn my early twenties for a minute, but lately I’ve started noticing something gone curiously awry.  It’s been almost seven years since I graduated college.  As near as I can tell it’s been the same amount of time for everybody else I graduated with.  A little elementary math indicates that if the whole world was twenty-one seven years ago, then there should be an abundance of twenty-eight-year-olds today.  Eighteen months of living in suburban Pennsylvania has proven that theory to be patently untrue.  By my estimates, everybody on earth is either under seventeen or over thirty-five.

No matter where we go, it’s the same two looks on everybody’s faces.  Either, “I’m jaded because I have another prostate exam tomorrow,” or “I’m jaded because my parents won’t let me listen to Eminem in the house anymore.” Lauren and I try, but it’s tough to identify with people talk incessantly about their cholesterol levels or about last night’s episode of Everwood.  Where are all the mature yet energetic mid-to-late-twenty-something’s of our generation?

I’m starting to think this part of Pennsylvania might actually be a vortex in the space-time continuum.  Or at the very least, it’s some kind of temporal black hole that prevents people in their twenties from entering.  Perhaps it wasn’t just perception back in Boston.  Maybe the whole world really was in college.  Perhaps my age group radically expanded in the late nineties as some kind of generational supernova that ultimately collapsed in on itself.  Perhaps Lauren and I are the proton nucleus of an age-gap nebula with negatively charged thirteen and forty-year-olds swirling all around us.

I know that sounds crazy, but the only other plausible explanation is that Lauren and I are actually the only two survivors of our entire generation.  Whatever the case, it can be a lonely way to live when there are no friends around to commiserate with over age-specific topics.  The irony is that most everybody on our upper terminus is at the same station in life as we are; married, with kids running around and others on the way.  Maybe that’s the reason we ended up here in the first place.  Maybe the act of bringing a child into the world opened a wormhole that sucked us into the vortex we’re in now.

That would explain how my single friends, who I hear from occasionally, continue to tell fun and interesting stories involving throngs of others our own age.  I’m not sure how Einstein’s Theory of Relativity works in practice, but perhaps the fast-paced singles lifestyle causes time to move slower in relation to the people around you, allowing all involved to remain the same relative age.  Having exchanged rings and genetic information, Lauren and I have somehow sliced open a hole in the fabric of time, shooting us into this strange eddy where time expands parabolically on either side of us.

We are making the best of it though.  Without other contemporaries around, we’ve turned to each other more and more.  We bond over games, late night talks and the child we’ve created – the one who opened this alternate reality to begin with.  And while we don’t know exactly what has happened to every other member of our generation, Lauren and I are genuinely enjoying our time together in this vortex of Pennsylvania.  If nothing else, I get to touch her boobs every day.

Has anybody else from my generation noticed how the classic story “The Three Little Pigs” has been changed to become more “accessible” and “kid friendly”? Everybody remembers the basic story structure. There are three brother pigs who go off to build houses. Two of the pigs are lazy and build their houses out of straw and sticks respectively. But the third little pig is an industrious forward thinker. He knows there are wolves out there who would try to eat him, so he builds a strong house out of bricks. Well lo and behold, along comes the Big Bad Wolf who proceeds to “huff and puff and blow the house down” on the first two pigs. But the third little pig’s brick house is too strong and the wolf is foiled. Exactly how the wolf is foiled has evolved over the years.

First of all, in older versions of the story, the Wolf actually eats the first two pigs. I don’t think there is a version around anymore where this grisly turn of events still takes place. Generally speaking, straw-pig and stick-pig run to the house of their better-prepared brother. This specific rewriting doesn’t bother me all that much. I know the original intent of that particular plot line was to reinforce a Christian work ethic in kids by implying: “Don’t be idle and lazy or you’ll DIE!” But it’s hard to enjoy good lighthearted literature if two such lovable characters experience such a gruesome death. So I’m cool with that kind of creative license taking.

What bothers me is how history has tried to rewrite the ultimate fate of the Big Bad Wolf. Again, in the versions I always read, the Wolf died at the end of the story. After failing to blow down the brick house, he comes down the chimney where the little pig (or pigs depending on the version) have put a kettle of boiling water into the fireplace. The Wolf lands in the water and is boiled to death. Again, depending on the version, his death goes down in one of two ways. Either a) the little pig(s) cook the wolf and eat him or b) (the more palatable version) the wolf simply boils away into non-existence. Either way, the wolf gets his comeuppance and the little pigs are freed from his reign of terror.

Well, that is not how it happens today. In every modern version, the Wolf slides down the chimney, burns his bottom on the boiling water then runs into the woods, never to bother the little pigs again.

(((I guess I should acknowledge the caveat that this isn’t necessarily a new way of telling the tale. The popular Disney version of the story includes this kid-friendly non-violent ending—and that cartoon came out in 1933. But as of the early 80′s, when I was growing up, there were still plenty of printed versions of the story that included the wolf’s boiling demise.)))

I know we’re trying to save our children’s frail psyche’s by eliminating all mention of death and violence in their stories, but I must state for the record that I HATE this version of “The Three Little Pigs” with its non-violent climax. From a purely storytelling point of view, there is nothing satisfying about the Wolf escaping with just wounded pride and a sore bottom. I mean he just spent the better part of the story doing everything he could do to kill and devour three helpless oinkers whose worst sin was being a little lazy. Why shouldn’t the Big Bad Wolf die at the end? Do the rewriters really expect us to believe that this Wolf is just going to sit around moping in the woods and never bother the pigs again? Please! As soon as his butt heals, he’ll be back, and with a vengeance. Knowing he can’t penetrate the house, he’ll just wait patiently outside, knowing that these pigs are going to have to come out eventually. No, in order to have full closure on this story, the wolf has to die… or at least be subdued in some way. Maybe the pigs could tie him up and send him to Abu Dhabi or something. (and pat yourself on the back if you caught the Garfield reference).

I know I’m overreacting, and I know it’s just a kid’s story, but come on now, let’s give that Wolf what he’s got coming!