The Ghost of Syd Barrett

Of all the things endangered by modern society, silence must be the most at risk. I have noticed it more lately, silence is the space between things like the white paper that surrounds the black lettering, defining it. I love to sit quietly somewhere and just listen. Sound surrounds me - call it what you will, noise, music, speech it is all there like a shell surrounding my silence. Yet as I sit I gradually hear the silent spaces between the sounds, the shell is not as impenetrable as it seems. Silence is not nothing though, it has a sound all of it’s own, a kind of hum that is probably just my ears but I like to think of as the sound of the world, the sound of life underlying everything else. Sometimes it almost has a texture about it, soft like water and if I could learn to immerse myself there I could move through the world unnoticed.

Of course I am one of the worst offenders against silence. In the presence of others I talk incessantly. It is just nervousness of course, my way of coping in the presence of other people. “ I know you are all better than me” I am saying, “proper grown-up people, but please like me” I find it annoying that I do it, so it must be intensly irritating to those around me I know but I am trying to stop, to listen . . .

( ps the best way to hear silence as I do is to listen to the beginning of Shine on you crazy diamond by Pink Floyd, the very beginning note is the sound I hear when there is nothing else there)

Ripples on the Sea of Life

Happiness comes and goes. I have been watching myself recently and my mood changes more quickly than Nicola changes her clothes in the morning (yes that often!). I can wake up at six and be happy. By eight for no apparent reason I can be unhappy. If I leave for work early I am happy. When I see the roadworks ahead I start worrying . . . and as they magically clear before me I cheer up again. Once I arrive at work for the day and look at my appointment list for the day I can relax and be happy, until somebody else gets booked in and changes my mood. Or conversely I can see a certain person booked in and my heart sinks until that is they cancel, and life is good again. So it goes, minute by minute, hour by hour throughout the day.

But there is more, there is something deeper. My moods are like the waves on the ocean ever changing, ever rising and falling. Living by the Pacific Ocean as I do I see the waves daily and yet underneath there are deeper much more powerful currents that you can only experience if you immerse your self in the water. And so it is with my moods, underneath lie deeper powerful emotions that in my case seem to be my own particular fusion of melancholy and happiness.

How do you immerse yourself to find these deeper currents you ask? . . . Meditate.

Vampire Reflections

Am I the burning in my fingertips as I cradle my early morning cup of tea? Just too hot, sitting on the edge pleasure, while the warmth penetrates my body. Or am I the pale grey light of dawn that creeps into the bedroom, mesmerisingly slowly whilst I sit enveloped in silence, the only one awake?

Sometimes I am no more than a list of things to be done one by one, becoming each one in turn. At work I am the dentist, conforming to a vision I have of what a dentist is and hopefully a pleasant surprise to those with a different view. Once home again I am a father, imaginative and slightly silly but hopefully inspiring and fun to be with. The same with Nicola, the man she fell in love with (and I with her), the man who said things outloud that she only thought silently to herself. Yet at the same time irritatingly unconcerned the the day to day practicalities of life.

At different times and places I am one and all of these things. But when I sit alone, what am I then? If there is anything there beyond a response to what happens around me, I cannot find it. I have looked. If I look at my hand I become my hand, if I step I become my foot pressing against the pavement but beyond thatI have yet to find anything, and the more I look the less there is.

Yet there must be something because I am here . . . but If you held a mirror up in front of me would I see any reflection?

Strange really . . .