Four minutes and fourty-seven seconds...

this is day 6 of my progress backward into my youth, started on day 1 with Pink Floyd's 'A Momentary Lapse of Reason' and traversing their catalog from the top down.

Today brings me to 1973's Dark Side of the Moon, an aural road map of the path to madness. An amazing collection of songs by any standards, certified Platinum 15 times over, remaining on the Billboard album chart an astounding 741 weeks (that's a little over 14 years to you and me).

'The Great Gig in the Sky', the last track on side one (for those of you who remember 'albums' ) remains the most poignant 4:47 of my musical experience...a wordless requiem for mortality.

this 4:47 taught me all that music could possibly be...this 4:47 taught me the depth of human expression that could be contained in a single voice without utterance of a single word...this 4:47 still causes every hair on the back of my arms to stand up tingling...this 4:47 of the most profound wordless vocal performance ensured that all screeching-self-proclaimed-diva's that come after will fall hopelessly short of the mark.

beneath it all, beneath the swell and surge of instrumentation, between the rise and fall of session singer Clare Torry's august exaltation, somewhere around the three minute and thirty second mark lies the most terrifying words a stoned-out paranoid teen could almost here: 'if you can hear this whisper, you're dying'*...first time heard sent you scurrying for the turntable to back it up, crank the volume and play it again and again, making sure you heard what you thought you heard, making sure at all costs, that everyone had heard it.

as the stunned euphoria finally fades enough for you to realize that side one is over, the constant clack-clack-clack-clack of the needle stuck in the last groove, you flip the platter and a brilliant concept album works itself to sublime conclusion.

until tomorrow....

*it wasn't until i listened to Dark Side of the Moon on CD that i realized what that slight whisper was actually saying, "I never said I was frightened of dying."

a momentary lapse of reason

After another weekend of late nights spent at work instead of being spent on living, I was feeling my age, gray, tired, jaded...merged onto the parkway and put the iPod on shuffle.

and there it was...pink floyd's 'learning to fly'. the years melt away and i'm right back there, filled with youthful exuberance for the music that reached me, the words that i felt in my deepest recesses.

i can still remember distinctly the first time i heard this song...it was early september, 1987 and the beginning of my senior year at high school. the album had come out earlier in the week, but i hadn't picked it up yet.

i was always socially awkward...maybe it was related to the constant moving of my younger years, maybe that's just the way i was put together, in any case, making friends was not something i was gifted at...and as my wife is fond of pointing out, i've always been clueless when its come to girls.

it was a normal afternoon in mr nemith's physics class...labs were complete and we were filling the time while waiting for class to end. i had known justine bebko for several years, and we were sitting in the back of the room talking about the weekend...something about the way her foot brushed up against mine under the desk sent my head swimming with bloodrush...when the moment struck, i somehow managed in my ungainly way to ask her if she wanted to go to a movie on saturday, and she said yes, and gave me her phone number...thankfully the bell rang moments later, preventing me from exposing myself as tongue-tied, gawky, hopeless.

friday night brought with it a party, seemingly innocent in its presentation. i'm not sure how i got there...it doesn't matter...i'm not sure if i was invited...also doesn't matter. what matters is that i was there, as were many of the usual irregulars; bestfriend john maxwell, jay bream, mike benscoter, susan rollo, justine bebko, the inseperable carrie pearson and laura wilton, steve semantic with squadron of muddog tagalongs, gung ho jo and dean armageddon, others i couldn't place or can't remember. the party was at dave yolen's house somwhere in the backend of little ferry just off the greasy hackensack river.

things began well...as is my ill at ease nature, i was quiet at the start, clearly avoiding the eyes of justine, but the bottle of tennessee whiskey i brought opened up my mouth and senses. by this point the revel was in swing, and i was adrift in the rapture. and there was justine...talking with steve semantic, entangled on twister matt with dave, dancing with dean...mind you, there was nothing at all reprehensible in her behavior...but the fragile structure of my newly constructed social accomplishment was nudged, and teetered wickedly...i developed a raging sense of jealousy. took another swig of brown amber to wash it down but it was stuck in my throat.

at that moment mike benscoter grabbed me and dragged me to the television, blaring, as most were in the 1980's, mtv. and there it was...the new pink floyd, 'learning to fly'...kneeling reverently before the glowing shrine absorbed in the sonic saturnalia, wholly spiritual, mezmerized fully and completely for 4 minutes and 53 seconds...a lifetime it seemed.

sadly, the rest of the evening suffered by comparison...the more i drank in effort to right the collapsing structure, the worse it listed in the storm of envy...by the time justine cornered me and confronted me it was too late, and i was incapable of even speaking. in my utter self-loathing i put my head through the wall in the hallway, and justine left with many shouted words that i was too far gone to hear clearly or piece together.

i made to walk home, down the highway, across the hackensack river bridge and into ridgefield park, but susan rollo and john maxwell interceded, near dragging me into susan's car, and strapping me in, locking the door.

all the way home i swore incoherently, banging my head in emphasis against the back passenger-side window.

needless to say i did not call justine on saturday, and it was a long while before we righted the wrong and were back on good terms.

what is the point of this rant? just this...live, feel, breathe, love...and play that song that loosens the chains of adult years. play it loud.

yes...the names were changed to protect the innocent...but if you were there, you know who you are...and thank you for the best times of my life.