Soon after My Beloved got his guitar last Christmas, he started teaching himself Wish You Were Here, a Pink Floyd song I'd never heard before.
He played it over and over and over, listening to a recording of it when he wasn't practicing it himself to get all the nuances and timing just right.
Finally I asked, "Why, why, WHY are you playing that so much? I don't like that song!" (Because of course by then I felt I knew it very well).
"I don't know," he said, "but doesn't it kind of remind you of us; two lost souls swimming around and around in endless circles?"
Oh. Oh yeah.
Nice way to finally find "our song".
So, so you think you can tell
Heaven from Hell,
Blue skys from pain.
Can you tell a green field
From a cold steel rail?
A smile from a veil?
Do you think you can tell?
And did they get you to trade
Your heros for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees?
Hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for change?
And did you exchange
A walk on part in the war
For a lead role in a cage?
How I wish, how I wish you were here.
We're just two lost souls
Swimming in a fish bowl,
Year after year,
Running over the same old ground.
What have we found?
The same old fears.
Wish you were here.
6 comments:
OK, this is weird. My dh loves Pink Floyd, also took up guitar awhile back & has learned to play "Wish You Were Here." I've always privately thought of it in connection to our baby girl, although I've never said so to him.
I believe Pink Floyd wrote it for Syd Barrett, the founder of the group, who developed mental health problems & became something of a recluse. He just passed away within the last year.
y'know, i've loved that song for nearly twenty years, and it was one of the first i ever learned to play on guitar.
in a weird way, i think of it as a love song...it speaks to me of powerlessness and being trapped, and yet the "other" in the song isn't the one trapping the singer; he or she is still an object of longing and of comfort and connection.
anyhoo. now i will go whistle it for the rest of the day.
I play it because the finger picking and chord changes aren't too hard for one such as myself with sausage fingers, and there is just enough difficulty (hammer-ons, pulloffs, slides) to motivate me to learn.
I'd play something else for you, but invariably there's some chord change or barre chords in the song that I just can't do right now. And the only way to get it right is to play it over and over and over, which would drive you insane whether you liked the song or not.
But I really do know pretty much the whole song, and as you noticed there is more than one guitar part so I can't play both parts at once. All I can really do is practice what I know and make it sound good.
Stop making waves in our fishbowl.
I love that song. Great lyrics if somewhat sad.
The other PF lyrics that ring true to me are, 'Remember when you were young, you shone like the sun'
Again a little sad, What happened to that person?
That song has always been emotional for me and moreso after our son died - 'did they get you trade your heroes for ghosts' always gets me now.
I wish Thomas was here too.
And Maya
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