Dark Side of the Moon

I was sound asleep for the lunar eclipse on Sunday night, but on Saturday night, I was outside on a balmy night, gazing at an almost-full moon and a handful of stars . . .  and blinded by a Pink Floyd Laser Light Show, enhanced by cheapo 3D paper glasses. Two handsome men, one on each side of me, kept me comfortably numb and ruminative throughout the two-hour show. The southern breeze seemed to be part of the experience, one that tapped into all my senses.

I still cannot understand how and why I was absent the day that Pink Floyd appeared on the music scene. I have always prided myself on being up on all aspects of that music renaissance of the 60s and 70s, but somehow, I missed out on Pink Floyd. Well, not entirely. I do remember struggling with "The Wall" in the early days of my teaching career. ("We don't need no education," if nothing else, demanded a lesson in double negatives. It was an awkward time to be an educator. "Teacher, leave them kids alone.") Maybe my unintended dismissal of the album is because I never did hallucinogenics?

Regardless of whether or not I was paying attention, fifteen million copies of Dark Side of the Moon have been sold, and the album spent 937 weeks on the Billboard 200. It was the first Pink Floyd album to break into the U.S. Top 40. Yes, that was over 45 years ago, but given that a Pink Floyd Laser Light Show still commands a sell-out crowd, the story lingers on. And the themes called up in the album are certainly present today: wealth ("Money"), armed conflict ("Us and Them"), madness ("Brain Damage"), squandered existence ("Time"), and death ("The Great Gig in the Sky") all speak to the Age of Trump.

The cartoon video that accompanies the song "Money," which includes sound effects of ringing cash registers and rattling coins, shows persistent, flying coins stamped with the letter "B." All I could think of was "bitcoin," a monetary concept which I do not pretend to understand. My subsequent research could not find a reason for the "B," so I am left pondering if the retro video has been updated to reflect the money of today? Or was Pink Floyd prescient?

Well, surely they were. Why did it take me so many years to take them seriously? I don't have the answer to that, but I know that whenever I hear "Comfortably Numb," I become aware of my need to escape from the politics of the day, to immerse myself in music and color and light, enough to blind me from the reality that we are on the precipice of darkness.

Photo by Matthew Van Houten