When I wore a Pink Floyd shirt in high school, I thought nothing of it. I stole it from my boyfriend’s closet and wore it to physics class because it was comfy and cool.
“Hey, nice shirt, Maeve! Have you listened to Pink Floyd?” My teacher, Mr. Fracchia, had asked me.
“No,” I said, shrugging my shoulders. I knew they were an old band, but my parents didn’t really listen to music around the house. True classic rock from the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s was foreign to me.
So I took “History of Rock” in college. If my parents weren’t going to show me what was cool to listen to in the 1970’s, then I would find out myself. The professor was an older gentleman named Steven, with white hair and tiny glasses that he constantly pushed up the bridge of his nose. At first, I was skeptical whether or not I would enjoy the class or not. He spent a lot of time strumming his guitar and lecturing about chord progressions and the foundation of rock. But his lessons became more and more interesting as I learned about the familiar names I had only known from vintage t-shirts.
I learned about the musicians who broke through genres, pioneered movements and style. I learned about Jerry Garcia accidentally taking 8 tabs of acid before going onstage with the rest of the Grateful Dead, and how he played his guitar as if he was playing for his life. I learned about Peter Townsend of The Who, smashing his guitar and trashing the Ed Sullivan Show stage. I learned about Freddy Mercury and David Bowie breaking gender stereotypes and sexuality standards. I learned about John Bonham drinking bottles of vodka on the way to band practice. I learned about Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix: the “27 Club” who all died with musical gifts and irrefutable sadness.
And the music: I fucking loved the music. I traveled through time while walking across campus with just my ear buds and a playlist.
But the world is much faster now than it was in the 70’s, and it’s easy to forget about songs you once played. Concept albums don’t play well on shuffle and you can’t please a crowd with songs they don’t recognize. The guys down the hall listened to trap music, and my roommates listened to hip-hop or indie. My favorites were replaced with The Next New Thing.
It wasn’t until my friends and I decided to trip on acid that I remembered my fondness for old tunes. My best friend Fallon made a playlist in preparation for the trip. It was my roommate Kimmie and I’s first time experimenting with acid, and we marveled at the moving TV screen that apparently was still. “Fearless” by Pink Floyd began to play. My eyes couldn’t look away from the 1971 album, covered in rippling water. I played that song all summer. It brought me back to my dirty living room, surrounded by friends and drug-induced euphoria.
4 acid trips later, Pink Floyd was playing again. This time, it was “Breathe” from The Dark Side of The Moon. Fallon and I rented a cabin in the woods, a winding drive away over the Mohonk Mountain. We came prepared with gatorade, fruit and candy before putting the acid tabs on our tongues. From there, it felt like a dream. I tried to stay grounded with a canvas and paint, but simple motor skills like holding a paintbrush was difficult. My mouth felt drunk, my mind was running wild. Fallon has a playlist full of music videos for us to watch, so we sat on the couch and dimmed the lights.
The videos were all less than 5 minutes, but each felt like an hour. I was
convinced I was seeing God as Lana Del Rey frolicked through Los Angeles in “Doin Time.” I felt the power of female energy with a glitter-clad Ravyn Lenae and felt like I could communicate with my younger self as Willow Smith sung “Marceline.” But then, a black screen appeared on Fallon’s laptop. And in the center, a single triangle, with a bent beam of light that fractioned into a rainbow…..
We were still, Fallon and I. We were chatting maniacally as the acid was peaking in our brains, but when The Dark Side of The Moon started to play, we sat in silence. The guitar crooned, settling us into a relaxed state. If the acid induced panic, “Breathe” induced peace. The keyboard crescendoed: “Run, Rabbit, Run.” I felt like a teen in 1973 discovering rock music for the first time.
The track turned to “Us and Them.” I had never heard this song before. Whenever I tried to listen to Dark Side of the Moon previously (probably only to educate myself about my favorite t-shirt), the bird squawks, long pauses and “ca-ching” sounds deferred me. I was used to skipping quickly through songs I recognized, not the long musical stories told track by track. But in this moment of stillness, with my best friend
by my side and mind-widening drugs in my head, I understood the dark side of the moon.
A saxophone belted a little solo. I thought of my dad who played the saxophone when he was a kid. I imagined him listening to Pink Floyd on vinyl, thinking “If they play the saxophone, I want to, too.”
“Us…..and them…and after all, we’re only ordinary men,” Sydnis Barrett sang. My eyes widened. It was as if they knew I was blown away by their musical talent, and had to remind me they were human beings like me. “Me…..and you……” I pictured two teens in a carpeted bedroom, infatuated with each other’s features. They had rushed to the record store to buy the new Floyd vinyl, and the music was made just for them. Suddenly the music swelled, the chorus erupted, and the gospel truth sang. “This is like church,” I said.
Fallon laughed, “God isn’t real.”
“Oh yeah, that’s right,” I agreed.
But as the chorus of “Us and Them” rang throughout our cabin in the woods, I felt the way I was supposed to feel all those years being dragged to Sunday morning mass. That life is sad and meaningless, but the beauty in this song reflected hope and the power to change.
Or maybe I was just tripping.