In the early days of the mainstream internet, I’m talking 1996-1997, a World Wide Website announced a major discovery: Pink Floyd’s album Dark Side of the Moon was dubbed to the film The Wizard of Oz, served as the soundtrack, sort of…
Posted at 6:00 am
Right?
My friend Jean-Michel Gauthier and I had seen The Wizard of Oz many times and dubbed the film to Dark Side of the Moon and, yes, by Jove, the similarities between the plot in the film and the rhythm of the album were stunning…
But the Pink Floyd boys have always denied dubbing their best album with The Wizard of Oz to make a subliminal soundtrack out of it1. So urban legends. No big deal, we believed it.
All to say that I went to see the Their Mortal Remains exhibition about the life and work of Pink Floyd. During my visit to Arsenal I got chills, less from the sight of the many great artifacts associated with the band than from the nostalgic journey I took to my youth…
To be clear, Pink Floyd was an “old” band when I was 17-18, a band from my parents’ youth. Like my parents, Pink Floyd was long separated by the time I got out of my teens; Like my parents, Roger Waters and David Gilmour had a bitter divorce…
We listened to Pink Floyd albums in the basement of my friend Martin Thibault’s childhood home in Sainte-Rose. He told me – I was sure it was an urban legend – that Pink Floyd had giant pigs swimming in the Olympic Stadium when the band came to Montreal a while back…
Anyway, we said to ourselves, whether that’s true or not, the affair with the giant pigs, it’s certain that the Pink Floyd boys wrote a couple of songs while they were frozen and they must have seen them in their imaginations, dubbed , those giant pigs.
I was, of course, fascinated by the rising music of Pink Floyd, but it was the lyrics that drew me in the most. I was coming out of puberty, life scared and scared me, I was full of insecurities and I was looking for meaning in life, in my life.
The first Pink Floyd song that tripped me up was Learning to Fly, hyperrhythmic, on Momentary Lapse of Reason. But it was with Time, on Dark Side of the Moon, a song about the passage of time, that I fell in love with Pink Floyd’s lyrics.
And you run, and you run to catch up with the sun, but it goes down
Run around to get back behind you
The sun is relatively the same, but you are older
Short of breath and a day closer to death
Translated into French – you are short of breath and death is approaching – this sentence loses its musicality, its poetic density. To this day I don’t know if it’s an objectively perfect sentence or a sentence that was perfect for the melancholy young man that I was. I know she made me dizzy, I guessed: hurry up, life goes by quickly.
I remember when I first saw the photo that decorates the album “Wish You Were Here” I was worried: two men shake hands, one of them is on fire. It looked like the burning guy was coming back from the end of the world. At the exhibit, we learn that the photographer only had time to snap a handful of shots before a gust of wind set the stuntman’s face on fire…
PHOTO MARCO CAMPANOZZI, PRESS ARCHIVE
The exhibition Their Mortal Remains at Arsenal
Wish you were here, let’s talk about it. It’s a perfect song about life’s dilemmas, about the choices we make. Also on the compromises that we make. There is not a superfluous line in this great song.
Did they make you act?
Your heroes for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees?
Hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold consolation for change?
did you swap
An uninvolved role in the war
For a lead in a cage?
Last question: have you traded a role as an extra in a war… for a lead role in a cage? – is a picture perfect and perfectly written, by which I mean you can die after writing such a line: Your work on earth is done, it belongs to the category I am the ocean / Who wants to touch your foot, into you love me ?, by Richard Desjardins…
Die ? My friend Jean-Michel, whom I mentioned above, died before completing his task on earth, which was to become the best journalist in Quebec. He died in a car crash in 2002 and I quoted Wish you were here as I spoke at his funeral in Hull church: How I wish, How I wish you were here, my guy…
(If you’re reading this column, JM: Your niece wrote to me the other day. She barely knew you, but the echoes of your legend still live… Your urn is in a forest in that Outaouais you loved so dearly— If you this whispers, as we hear at the beginning of The Great Gig in the Sky, you keep dying [notre] The dark side of the moon…)
When the heir came home this week, I gave him a quick hug, like teenagers do. He’s about my age when I was still searching for the meaning of life in song lyrics. Him, it’s the rap that makes him trip. I suspect he also takes care of the lyrics. I suspect he’s looking for meaning in life, in his life. Don’t laugh, there is very good rap, every era has its own poetry.
But I digress. I wanted to tell you that when I arrived at the Pink Floyd Expo, after paying for my ticket – $50, not cheap, but for the fans, it’s not stealing – what was the first thing that struck me about this exhibition Their Mortal Remains in the Arsenal?
Cristie, yes, the famous giant pig! It was hovering near the ceiling.
I took a picture of the pink pig and sent it to Martin Thibault without comment. Looking at the photo I thought: we talked about this mythical pig, Martin and I, there is what…
Shit, 32 years ago.
Short of breath and a day closer to death.
1. “Dark Side of the Rainbow, Dark Side of Oz or The Wizard of Floyd are synonymous terms denoting the association between Pink Floyd’s album The Dark Side of the Moon and the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz. The album appears to be in sync with the film, suggesting it may have been composed for that purpose. The members of Pink Floyd deny any synchronicity…”