The Dark Side

19. August 2008 by Paulo.

I’m at work, So it goes without saying that the coffee I am drinking is good. However, it is caffeinated, which may not be such a good thing this late in the evening.

Elsewhere in this Tardis called Espresso Paulo, celebrated local ghost hunter,Dave Retalic is enthralling an audience with his tales of haunted happenings. He has presented this lecture here a number of times, so I really don’t want to hear it all again. So, as I compose this, I am shuffling Eric Clapton, Robert Johnson, Pink Floyd, The Commitments and The Allman brothers. Multiple versions of “Rambling” have just finished and “Dark Side of The Moon” is just starting. Can you imagine how much work as involved in making DSOM a single piece so that its parts could not be shuffled? Excuse me while I lose myself and ramble even more than usual.  I think I remember the first time I heard DSOM. It was, you might say, an enhanced experience. The flashing lights and drifting spirits then, made the Microsoft Media Player  visualisation screens  now, seem pretty tame. While nobody jumped out of the window, we did attempt to walk across the lake in the park afterwards. My impression at the time was that we went quite a way before sinking.  What you might call a sobering experience. It was not long after that that LSD was outlawed. Amazing to think that the “authorities” went that long before outlawing the most mind bending of substances, particularly when they were already trying to jail Mick Jagger for smoking pot! Strange days. Of course, I’m a much more respectable citizen now (though not of this country - which is one reason why I don’t go near those substances now - . I have no wish to be banished back to the old world) . Now it’s “Eclipse”, with ‘phones at full belt, giving final, full, expression of the angst of a post war generation which could not comprehend man’s inhumanity to man. The heart beat slowly brings one back to earth.

It is, perhaps, entirely appropriate that across the room from me while I type this is the sensational display of surreal paintings by Framingham artist Stella Perlov which make up the November/December exhibition in the gallery. The dogs rocketing to space, the rippling multi-coloured ribbons wafting dragonflies and butterflies through the ether, the old man faces on the tide washed rocks, the cat with the butterfly in its hand, and the other cat licking its fingers, a haunted face zooming through the atmosphere on the crest of a storm. Beautiful, but disturbing. That suits my current frame of mind.

One might have thought that nothing could follow DSOM. Wrong. Now it is “Shine on you crazy diamond”. Which still sends shivers down my spine. Strange to think that this piece was penned to honour early Pink Floyd song writer and inspiration, Sid Barrett, who went away too far on one trip and never returned. He died recently, as , this year, did Rich Wright, another Pink Floyd musical inspiration. Now I read that Mitch Miller drummer with the Jimi Hendrix Experience has died. Even those who survived the age are now being called. That sends shivers down my spine also.

I think tonight is becoming too surreal for words. Even jumbled words such as these, so I call a close. Good night

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