At the age of 15 or so I discovered Pink Floyd.
I must have bought Dark Side on CD for my Dad as a gift a few years before. I didn't really pay much attention, but some of the songs are ok. Actually, my first memory goes way back. I remember listening to Another Brick in the Wall Pt. 2 when we had JR, so I couldn't have been any older then five.
For whatever reason, my interests/tastes in music started changing when I got to high school. Like a lot of kids now, I went through a very strict Beatles/Floyd/Zeppelin stage. I still LOVE all of these bands, but I feel like that classic rock sound was IT during my teenage years, and nothing else really mattered.
There was something about the Floyd that really stuck out to me. They seemed....different, smart. Their core albums came together as pieces and as a unit. Each song flowing into the next, the music never ceasing. All amazing in their own right, but none of them as influential as The Wall.
From sophomore year through graduation...this was my go-to album. As far as I was concerned, nothing else mattered. Crafted solely at the hands of leader/bassist Roger Waters, telling the story of a washed up rock star looking back at what brought him to his isolation.
I always felt like Waters was talking directly to me. Like he knew exactly what I was going through. I was by no means a loner, but I wasn't exactly the most popular kid in school. I had my few freakish friends....and that was it. With no nerve to tell my beautiful best friend how I really felt, and a starving Mother that I tried to avoid, I always felt so alone. I could lock myself in my room and drift away to The Wall and everything just seemed alright....
I guess as I grew up, and matured a little bit, I lost touch with some of these feelings, though the album still remains a big part of my life. When I heard that Waters would be doing a tour recreating the album and bringing it back to life, my jaw dropped and I knew I couldn't miss it.
Last night nostalgia (x100) really set in as I sat through the performance in Boston with my Dad. It was so emotional on so many levels, it's hard for me to put into words. The excitement of actually being able to see this come life really floored me. I never thought in a million years I'd see the day.
But at the same time, sadness. Hearing the music and seeing those images brought me back to dark room on Lunns Way and being by myself. Images of her sitting in Mullet's passenger seat pulling out of the PSHS parking lot. Images and nightmares of finding Mom passed out in her room. Threatening to call 911 or finally toss that damn bottle of wine against the concrete floor. It also reminded me that these memories don't really go away, and they crafted the person I am today.
After last night, it donned on me. Roger Water's was the savior of my teenage life, and gave me a reason to wake up every day. I am forever grateful.
Monday, October 4, 2010
The Man Who Saved My Life
Posted by Nick at 7:35 PM
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So I was thinking about this post where I do all of my best thinking…the shower. And this is what I thought about:
I sometimes envy the way many of my friends have such a deep, personal connection to music. I don’t. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I enjoy music. And I enjoy really, really good music. And I love concerts. And I love the poetry of perfect lyricism. And the poetry of the beat. And I respect the way in which through gentle manipulation what could be a cacophony of unique sounds is turned into something truly euphonic and harmonic. But I don’t have stories that connect my life to music. And when I listen to stories like this one, Nick, I often wonder if I’ve missed out on something really great. And then I had this “eureka” moment where I realized that the way you feel about music is how I feel about books. Or maybe not even books, but the words themselves. The way somebody might play an album over and over again until its worn thin (well, proverbially wearing now at least) is the way I will read a book over and over again until the spine cracks and the binding glue loses its stick. Maniac Magee transports me to 4th or 5th grade and finding within Jerry Spinelli’s quick words, a life I wouldn’t mind living. Tired of being different and just set aside, Jeffrey Magee just starts running. And as he runs, he confronts human worlds unknown and, with a beautiful innocence, becomes something of a legend. Or The Great Gatsby in 9th grade. Even now, I dream about that green light. Gatsby believed in it. And while he might have been more than a little unhinged, I can see it too. Beckoning us onward. As a junior and senior, I fell in love with a man name Meursault and declared myself an existentialist in the styling of one Albert Camus. And The Stranger was the first book that I read cover to cover in French. And then are those that chose me. There was a period in my life where everything I touched seemed to echo with the words of Samuel Coleridge Taylor’s opiate-induced and terribly unfinished poem…In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree…and now, as it has always been, Alfred Lord Tennyson reminds me always that it is not too late to seek a newer world…The esteem I have for books, for literature, for the art of words, is my connection to a higher art form. And while it may not be as easy to sing along with, I’m quite content to recite Shakespeare’s sonnets to the beat of an iambic pentameter, if not exactly the beat of a drum.
That's funny because my bf says the exact same thing about Pink Floyd. I think they speak to a lot of people like they spoke to you.
He is going to see Roger Water's play The Wall in late October!
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