This is a diary that documents an enlightenment that is a part of my life. I hope that one day Roger Waters will google his name and find this sincere testament. I thought that some here at DKos may have similar wishes or experiences to pass on.
If you don't want to trudge through the whole thing, just go down to the last couple of paragraphs.
To Roger Waters, with love
Tonight at your concert here in Phoenix, my life came around a bend and met itself in a younger time -- a lost time of drugged out days and hazy nights. June 20, 1973, The Civic Arena in Pittsburgh. I was a messed up 19-year-old from a messed up Catholic family and enough insanity to fight my way through the next 33 years.
Up until that day, music was just something to add to a party , increase a high, or guide a trip through a the visuals of a psychedelic poster. The fractured light beam of the Dark Side prism was a popular print on the walls of my fellow travelers. Going to the concert with my friend would be a "cool" thing to do, something fun, something wistful.
I remember waiting for the music to begin -- and waiting. The irritation of the crowd tired me and I wanted to go home. Then there it was, fade to dark, brilliant light, and the most thrilling sound rotating in quadraphonic glory and magnificent depth. It was not a concert, it was a religious experience -- and never had I felt closer to god. Maybe it was the smoky thickness that saturated the air. Maybe it was my own insanity. But I believe it was Pink Floyd's music and performance that showed me that being alive could be better than being dead.
My friend and I could not contain our excitement and began to wander around just to cope with the exhilaration. We talked a guard into letting us sit in the VIP section -- stage right. (Two young, long-haired blondes could easily sway a young man's judgment back then.) We couldn't see the band very well, but we watched the background singers in their long, blue dresses sway and glow while their voices lifted us into the ether.
After a long hypnotic period, we decided that we had to move again. We walked to the last row, high above the crowd. It was further mesmerizing to see the stage so small after seeing it so large. And then a rumble began in our feet and we realized that the dome was beginning to move -- just as you were beginning "Breathe in the Air", the smoke began to pour from the slit above us as the opening grew larger and larger and the sky came down and touched us. We screamed and the spotlights moved furiously through the frantic crowd. For a moment, we were illuminated. And I hoped that you could see me.
I wanted the band to know what had happened to me. I wanted you to know that I was not only alive, but that I wanted to be alive -- that I was ready for the life that lay ahead. The future was hopeful not just for me, but for the whole world.
When I got home that night, I called a friend, David, to tell him about the concert. He was a disc jockey and had to work that night, so he didn't get to hear the concert. He was so upset at what he had missed out on, but vowed to go to your next concert. Sadly, he was never able to do so. He died in a car accident not long after that.
And then I lived my life which at times was choreographed to your music. It played in my head when I worked as a C5 mechanic in the Air Force. I swayed to it while I comforted my babies and sang them lullabies of eclipses and moons. Long night drives had your music accompanying the windshield wipers or giving background to whatever the headlights illuminated. My children hung the Dark Side posters in their bedrooms when they reached teenage years -- and my mind would drift back to an arena where a different kind of "knowing" had forced me forward. Now, as I wind through the internet chatter, I see Pink Floyd's lyrics quoted by my peers -- and I remember that something larger than me, larger than us, drives us still.
But, after all of the trudging, the pulling and pushing, the worries, the sobriety, the deaths and births, the years of being a single mom, I am still not sure of the world that will be left to the children.
When my youngest son said he was taking me to the Roger Waters concert, I said, "Who is that?" He was stunned. I was embarrassed when he told me. While the message of the music remains, the game of names and dates seemed to fade far into the shadows of distant trivia. The stamina fades as well, and I was not sure if I could make it through a night on the "lawn". But there I was today, driving my grown son and daughter to the pavilion; I felt a sense of completeness to my life.
But most especially so when the music began. My kids were so excited and seemed to be so thrilled to be sharing this with me -- like taking a mother back to the cottage where she was born. We danced together and could not help but sometimes sing together with you.
My imagination had a conversation with my d. j. friend (the one who I had called that night in Pittsburgh). I had a mental image of his spirit sitting in the front row tonight and coming back to tell me how wonderful it was -- and rubbing it in that he had a back-stage pass.
During the first half of the concert, sometimes I would hide the tears with my hands. When my daughter saw this, she put her hand on my shoulder for comfort. I told her that this was absolute happiness and to not be concerned. The layers of my life were translucent and transposed upon each other. By the time you were playing Dark Side of the Moon songs, the tears were streaming down my face -- and I had no shame. Let the water loose, I'm too busy dancing to care. And then the lights swung back onto the crowd and I cried and screamed even harder -- I wanted you to see, to know, that this music was part of who I am -- just like at the Civic Arena; and now it is part of who my children are. It will always be a part of the world that goes on beyond us.
I wasn't going to write this. It seems silly because you don't need to be told about the impact that you have had on the world -- of course you already know. It also seems silly because who else would ever care to read this -- it is just a personal narrative of something that is important to me.
But when I got home, the local news was talking about Air Force One touching down in Phoenix tonight at 9 PM. I laughed and jumped to my feet and could not contain myself -- I began to dance around the house! That was around the time that the pig floating at your concert had been freed "at last" and drifted high into the atmosphere. I wondered if the president had looked out his window (as he had done surveying the Katrina damage) and saw the pig with "Impeach Bush" written across the ass. What a great joke! And the "Kafka rules" comment on the side of the pig makes it even more ABSURD because after Bush read Camus this summer, some people said that he should instead read Kafka. Would the pig give him that message?
Even if AF1 landed before the pig took to the atmosphere, it is still quite significant that the pig could not tolerate to be in the city once Bush had landed.
Bravo! Now this crazy destiny that muddles around me, that mixes me up, that confounds me, this life is clearly where I need to be. And I had to tell you "Thank you, Roger Waters!"