One of my favorite posts.
This is another old writing. One of my friends asked me about dark side of the moon. I gave me answer, and it turned out to be something far beyond what I would have concieved. I wrote this in 2004, when my blog was a email. I kind of miss the idea of knowing the people who read my writing, but at the same time, I was always going for further notoriety. So now to the Indiana of a little bit ago:
I have been in a conversation via email with a friend about Dark Side of the moon. Below is the extent of the text.
I have been meaning to do a peice about Pink Floyd and what their place is in the scheme of rock and roll history. But for me, it's like the white album. I love Floyd so much and for so many reasons, and perhaps not for the reason so many are attracted to the band (drugs), I have a hard time talking about it with most people because I fear they don't get it and they only tarnish my love of that band, because it hurts me that people aren't getting the whole picture. For those who understand it's something special and far better than a drug trip.
Anyway, this one gets lenghty and very philosophical. It may seem a little disjointed at times due to the fact I haven't re edited yet. But to be fair, I rarely do these with edits, because I have already thought of this things way in advance and I don't like to let reason and changes of heart to corrupt the original passion. I'd rather live with a mistake than re-edit the past.
Enjoy,
All of I know about Dark Side comes from listening to it when I used to sit in my bedroom and read. I got the album, along with Zeppelin Remasters, when I turned 14. It was like giving a kid a hand grenade. But I sat and listened to it, over and over again. And it was mostly for the sonic resources. When I was that age, I was so self obsessed with literature and devouring everything I could about anything intellectual. It was the same soundtrack for mind expansion that so many druggies turn to in college.
Which is why there are so many copies of that album sold. Every day for drugs or intellectual loneliness, the dark side of the moon is able to appeal.
As for the actual meaning, it is about madness in life. Or this is at least the meaning I have heard from commentary from Waters and Gilmore and co. More specifically, it's about getting into the rat race and the methodical routines of everyday life, and how that slowly takes away any semblance of eternal self. Because most of the album was fit together after the fact, the sequence (outside of the closer track) is somewhat irrelevant thematically. But we can see the mass of themes from which they were grabbing from. A drive for money, the endless drive of time (the sun is the same in the relative way but your older) against your individualism and the ultimate showdown between conforming and self.
Much of what I have heard from the band about the themes is about how these things can drive you mad and put you in such a place as so you cannot understand the external world. Combined with the real life dealings of watching Syd Barret go insane from drug induced haze certainly figures into this. Which perhaps can be extended to a bigger sense, almost in a matrix like sense of two worlds, where there are those who are locked in one state of mind from the trappings of everyday life, and those who go mad trying to find something bigger. At the time, it could be argued that it was drugs, but in truth, I never believed that drugs changed the world of those people in Pink Floyd, drugs never changed their views or were opened to other things. They were far too smart and I think the other world was one of near enlightenment, where the truth would be revealed.
Which brings us to the two central icons in the album, the sun and the moon. In perhaps the most basic sense, the sun equals life and the moon equals death. The sun gives us everything and in the rotation of the earth, we are able to see all of the sun. It is always there and it is what drives life on the planet. We know what it is and we can take it as it. But with the Moon, we only see one side of it. It's the dark side of the moon because it is never shown to earth. There are two objects in the sky that we can clearly see, but we only know of the half of one of them. That intangibility of the moon is so alluring and so mystifying. As I think it works for death. We know what it is, but we don't know the other side of it. We know the face of death so to speak, but what is in the darkness, it remains a mystery. And so I think in the end, everything is overcome by the dark side of the moon.
As for the inevitability of people to dismiss negativity. I already have accepted I am going to hell. I mean, I have committed some sins in my life, between pride, gluttony, wrath, lies, deceits. Even on the smaller scales, I think that I don't deserve to go to heaven for not being bad, because simply, I don't think I did anything that great to deserve entry. But even in a deeper sense, I say hell because its a kind of knowledge that I will die, and even if hell is not torture, it is sadness. And I probably don't believe in a greater scheme beyond life, I think we have to make the most of life as it. Because really how great could heaven be if we have to lose everyone around us to get there. Eternal bliss and knowledge can ever truly fill the gap of heartbreak and loss. Even if you were reunited with people in heaven, would you want to see them again? They have lived their life for so long without you or since your departure, it not going to be the same. As good as it may feel to be reunited, you can never go home again. It breaks my heart to think about it, because death is so hard as it is. What would life be if we didn't learn everything we wanted to or had the love of our life we all deserved. Simply, it would be misery.
And thats the reason why regrets stay with you for so long, they are reminders of how hard life can really be. The downfall of great memories is that their effect lessens with time in your own mind. It begins to take other people or other events to trigger the feeling once again of those memories. But once they fade, it leaves an intense sting of melancholy because you know that time is long gone. I try not to think of my friends from back home too much, because it only makes me sad in the end. I feel like one of the best things in my life has passed me, and I have only the memories which will slowly let fade away and lessen with time on their own.
Simply put, I think most of the world will always be optimists because they want to believe that everything will work out. It's much more comforting to be climbing to the top instead of working from the bottom up. Most people have a psychological need/fix to believe in heaven because they need to believe that their is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. They need something to keep them going to avoid indulging the thought that it might all be for naught. As much as I don't agree with people of this ilk, I do not look down upon them, for surely I am looking for my own truths in the world as well, I simply would rather be enlightened through life than from death.
Studies show that people who are able to believe in one form or another that they are doing what they ultimately want to move to be far happier than those who feel like they are failing. Of course, this comes as no surprise, but the other part of this is that those people who do believe are far more likely to be successful in life while those who don't are infinitely more prone to panic attacks and mental breakdowns. It is in the very same vein of reasoning why so many people who rediscover religion are suddenly that much more successful than they were at their moment of rock bottom. They suddenly have something to move towards. It's the light at the end of the tunnel, its the light we move to when we die. It's something to hold on to and it can be a mighty buoyant preserver.
But I am not a religious man in this sense. I still don't believe we are really working to an other worldly goal. I think that Buddha was on to something when he wrote that all life is suffering, and all suffering comes from desire. It is only when you accept these two and give up desire that you can reach enlightenment. Conversely, he also wrote that if the string is too loose, it will not make a sound, but if it is too tight, it will break. If you think of the two in a combined greater scheme, as to believe that realizing that not all of life is rosy and that much of our mental anguish comes from desire of things we don't truly need (which means everything but food, sleep and water), but not too take anything to far as to be dominant and not too be too lax as to be ineffective.
As for an afterlife, I don't really want to believe the common thoughts of heaven, from any sense of the world. First off, too much of a good thing can be a bad thing. I am sure sex, meeting your idols, and talking with the angels and learning the truth of all of history and the universe would get old. I also don't believe that Satan could be so evil. If this was a man cast out of heaven, why would he torture the souls of those cast out of heaven like he was, essentially still fulfilling God's will. Moreso, if rock and roll, miniskirts, and booze are all instruments of the devil, Heaven would be awfully vanilla. You would become numb in Hell. You would also become bored in Heaven, and you probably would go mad too, for what could is knowledge you cannot use. Earth would become a spectacle you would forever long to rejoin, knowledge and pleasure be damned.
In Fight Club, there is the scene where the narrator is given a chemical burn from Tyler Durden. It's classic transfigured Buddhism, as you have to let go and hit rock bottom (in essence a sense that perhaps nothing may ever go your way in life). Only then, when you know the extreme of pure pain and sadness may you reach the pure pleasure of enlightenment By saying I believe I am going to hell is not truly a belief that I am destined to a life of torture, but it is transposed Buddhism. I am not afraid of death; I know that there may be no tomorrow. That is my rock bottom. But it was from there, from a deep realization that life may be the only time we ever have, that I really began to appreciate everything all the more.
Enlightenment is that moment when you are able to see everything in perspective, when life makes sense. I came out of this realizing that much of what we have thought about life is reversed. Most of our lives we are taught that life is a great mystery, that nothing is set knowledge.
I think it's the opposite. Life is not the mystery but the question, and it is each life and each soul that is the enigma and from where we may reach a higher plain, whether you call it heaven, enlightenment or rapture.
Life is out to reveal us.
I have been in a conversation via email with a friend about Dark Side of the moon. Below is the extent of the text.
I have been meaning to do a peice about Pink Floyd and what their place is in the scheme of rock and roll history. But for me, it's like the white album. I love Floyd so much and for so many reasons, and perhaps not for the reason so many are attracted to the band (drugs), I have a hard time talking about it with most people because I fear they don't get it and they only tarnish my love of that band, because it hurts me that people aren't getting the whole picture. For those who understand it's something special and far better than a drug trip.
Anyway, this one gets lenghty and very philosophical. It may seem a little disjointed at times due to the fact I haven't re edited yet. But to be fair, I rarely do these with edits, because I have already thought of this things way in advance and I don't like to let reason and changes of heart to corrupt the original passion. I'd rather live with a mistake than re-edit the past.
Enjoy,
All of I know about Dark Side comes from listening to it when I used to sit in my bedroom and read. I got the album, along with Zeppelin Remasters, when I turned 14. It was like giving a kid a hand grenade. But I sat and listened to it, over and over again. And it was mostly for the sonic resources. When I was that age, I was so self obsessed with literature and devouring everything I could about anything intellectual. It was the same soundtrack for mind expansion that so many druggies turn to in college.
Which is why there are so many copies of that album sold. Every day for drugs or intellectual loneliness, the dark side of the moon is able to appeal.
As for the actual meaning, it is about madness in life. Or this is at least the meaning I have heard from commentary from Waters and Gilmore and co. More specifically, it's about getting into the rat race and the methodical routines of everyday life, and how that slowly takes away any semblance of eternal self. Because most of the album was fit together after the fact, the sequence (outside of the closer track) is somewhat irrelevant thematically. But we can see the mass of themes from which they were grabbing from. A drive for money, the endless drive of time (the sun is the same in the relative way but your older) against your individualism and the ultimate showdown between conforming and self.
Much of what I have heard from the band about the themes is about how these things can drive you mad and put you in such a place as so you cannot understand the external world. Combined with the real life dealings of watching Syd Barret go insane from drug induced haze certainly figures into this. Which perhaps can be extended to a bigger sense, almost in a matrix like sense of two worlds, where there are those who are locked in one state of mind from the trappings of everyday life, and those who go mad trying to find something bigger. At the time, it could be argued that it was drugs, but in truth, I never believed that drugs changed the world of those people in Pink Floyd, drugs never changed their views or were opened to other things. They were far too smart and I think the other world was one of near enlightenment, where the truth would be revealed.
Which brings us to the two central icons in the album, the sun and the moon. In perhaps the most basic sense, the sun equals life and the moon equals death. The sun gives us everything and in the rotation of the earth, we are able to see all of the sun. It is always there and it is what drives life on the planet. We know what it is and we can take it as it. But with the Moon, we only see one side of it. It's the dark side of the moon because it is never shown to earth. There are two objects in the sky that we can clearly see, but we only know of the half of one of them. That intangibility of the moon is so alluring and so mystifying. As I think it works for death. We know what it is, but we don't know the other side of it. We know the face of death so to speak, but what is in the darkness, it remains a mystery. And so I think in the end, everything is overcome by the dark side of the moon.
As for the inevitability of people to dismiss negativity. I already have accepted I am going to hell. I mean, I have committed some sins in my life, between pride, gluttony, wrath, lies, deceits. Even on the smaller scales, I think that I don't deserve to go to heaven for not being bad, because simply, I don't think I did anything that great to deserve entry. But even in a deeper sense, I say hell because its a kind of knowledge that I will die, and even if hell is not torture, it is sadness. And I probably don't believe in a greater scheme beyond life, I think we have to make the most of life as it. Because really how great could heaven be if we have to lose everyone around us to get there. Eternal bliss and knowledge can ever truly fill the gap of heartbreak and loss. Even if you were reunited with people in heaven, would you want to see them again? They have lived their life for so long without you or since your departure, it not going to be the same. As good as it may feel to be reunited, you can never go home again. It breaks my heart to think about it, because death is so hard as it is. What would life be if we didn't learn everything we wanted to or had the love of our life we all deserved. Simply, it would be misery.
And thats the reason why regrets stay with you for so long, they are reminders of how hard life can really be. The downfall of great memories is that their effect lessens with time in your own mind. It begins to take other people or other events to trigger the feeling once again of those memories. But once they fade, it leaves an intense sting of melancholy because you know that time is long gone. I try not to think of my friends from back home too much, because it only makes me sad in the end. I feel like one of the best things in my life has passed me, and I have only the memories which will slowly let fade away and lessen with time on their own.
Simply put, I think most of the world will always be optimists because they want to believe that everything will work out. It's much more comforting to be climbing to the top instead of working from the bottom up. Most people have a psychological need/fix to believe in heaven because they need to believe that their is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. They need something to keep them going to avoid indulging the thought that it might all be for naught. As much as I don't agree with people of this ilk, I do not look down upon them, for surely I am looking for my own truths in the world as well, I simply would rather be enlightened through life than from death.
Studies show that people who are able to believe in one form or another that they are doing what they ultimately want to move to be far happier than those who feel like they are failing. Of course, this comes as no surprise, but the other part of this is that those people who do believe are far more likely to be successful in life while those who don't are infinitely more prone to panic attacks and mental breakdowns. It is in the very same vein of reasoning why so many people who rediscover religion are suddenly that much more successful than they were at their moment of rock bottom. They suddenly have something to move towards. It's the light at the end of the tunnel, its the light we move to when we die. It's something to hold on to and it can be a mighty buoyant preserver.
But I am not a religious man in this sense. I still don't believe we are really working to an other worldly goal. I think that Buddha was on to something when he wrote that all life is suffering, and all suffering comes from desire. It is only when you accept these two and give up desire that you can reach enlightenment. Conversely, he also wrote that if the string is too loose, it will not make a sound, but if it is too tight, it will break. If you think of the two in a combined greater scheme, as to believe that realizing that not all of life is rosy and that much of our mental anguish comes from desire of things we don't truly need (which means everything but food, sleep and water), but not too take anything to far as to be dominant and not too be too lax as to be ineffective.
As for an afterlife, I don't really want to believe the common thoughts of heaven, from any sense of the world. First off, too much of a good thing can be a bad thing. I am sure sex, meeting your idols, and talking with the angels and learning the truth of all of history and the universe would get old. I also don't believe that Satan could be so evil. If this was a man cast out of heaven, why would he torture the souls of those cast out of heaven like he was, essentially still fulfilling God's will. Moreso, if rock and roll, miniskirts, and booze are all instruments of the devil, Heaven would be awfully vanilla. You would become numb in Hell. You would also become bored in Heaven, and you probably would go mad too, for what could is knowledge you cannot use. Earth would become a spectacle you would forever long to rejoin, knowledge and pleasure be damned.
In Fight Club, there is the scene where the narrator is given a chemical burn from Tyler Durden. It's classic transfigured Buddhism, as you have to let go and hit rock bottom (in essence a sense that perhaps nothing may ever go your way in life). Only then, when you know the extreme of pure pain and sadness may you reach the pure pleasure of enlightenment By saying I believe I am going to hell is not truly a belief that I am destined to a life of torture, but it is transposed Buddhism. I am not afraid of death; I know that there may be no tomorrow. That is my rock bottom. But it was from there, from a deep realization that life may be the only time we ever have, that I really began to appreciate everything all the more.
Enlightenment is that moment when you are able to see everything in perspective, when life makes sense. I came out of this realizing that much of what we have thought about life is reversed. Most of our lives we are taught that life is a great mystery, that nothing is set knowledge.
I think it's the opposite. Life is not the mystery but the question, and it is each life and each soul that is the enigma and from where we may reach a higher plain, whether you call it heaven, enlightenment or rapture.
Life is out to reveal us.
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