2.13.24

It’s about that time of year again.

Pink Floyd season.

Late-winter to early-summer is the time of year when I break out the Floyd most frequently. I think it’s mostly because of this song.

Back in the mid-1990s, the world was opening up to me. I was experiencing all sorts of new things. Some due to college. Some because I was off the farm. And some because I’d realized the world wasn’t the demon-infested place my religious years had convinced me it was.

It was a combination of all three factors that found me sitting in a muddy driveway, butt firmly planted in a half-broken lawn chair, listening to Pink Floyd’s 1994 album, The Division Bell, on an unexpectedly warm late-winter night.

I’d been told more than a few times in the years leading up to this that Pink Floyd (among other dangerous rock ‘n rollers) was a sure-fire way to become a Satan-worshipping junkie. Nothing had happened when I listened to Slayer, though, so I figured, “What the heck?”

Adding a bit of grease to the potential hellfire, I drank my first (underage by a few months) beer as I listened to Floyd. Note that I didn’t say I enjoyed my first beer. It was a Grolsch, which the guy I was hanging out with described as “good fucking shit.” He was one-third correct. To this day, I’m not a beer drinker, and I think Grolsch has a lot to do with that.

Anyway, the song …

The opening instrumental — profound and mournful — was a beautiful thing to consume as I sat beneath a clear-but-not- crisp winter sky, the twinkling stars stretching on forever above me. The world felt big and small at the same time.

David Gilmour began to sing. Then he unleashed the powerful lines:

While you were hanging yourself on someone else’s words

Dying to believe in what you heard

I was staring straight into the shining sun

And this unleashed a torrent of tears. I sat there quietly sobbing, faced with the reckoning that so much of what I held dear and true in recent years did more harm than good to me, my friends, and the world in general. I don’t know if I did a good job hiding my crying that night or if the dude I was with was just too wasted on Grolsch to notice.

Either way.

Later in the song (in lyrics I’ll post at the end of the piece), Gilmour sings of not just letting go of the past, but killing it, in order to move on with a new life.

I don’t think such an extreme approach is necessary for all things long since passed. But as I’ve grown older, I’ve come to see the value in saying, “You know what? This no longer does me any good. I’m learned the lessons this thing was here to teach me, and now it needs to go.” I’ve also experienced the harm that comes from clinging to things that simply are not anymore. It bogs down the present and stunts the future.

In summary, that night made me a Pink Floyd fan. I did not become a Satan-worshipping junkie. And my first beer sucked. Good memories. Not to be killed. Other memories from around that time … may they rest in peace.

I took a heavenly ride through our silence

I knew the moment had arrived

For killing the past and coming back to life