syd barrett

You know, I'm kind of sick of people talking as though the real Pink Floyd was the one with Syd Barrett in it. That Pink Floyd would very quickly have fallen out of fashion, even if Syd could have held it together to press on. He was profoundly mentally ill, and much of his work is not poetry in the sense of intention, in the sense of art: it is clanging. David Gilmour is literally what brought that band into the rest of our lives, kept it musical enough for us to keep identifying it with our personal feelings. Roger Waters pisses me off with his disrespect for that, preferring to live in the snobbery of the inaccessibly weird. This stubborn reification of the inside of Syd's mind, and allegiance to his genius is akin to Waters' snobbery, except the people who indulge in it don't realize how badly they malign him while using him this way. It's all self-illustration, self-portraits made with attitude instead of paint. Some will fall under the sway of the attitude, but some of us see attitude as clearly as paint, and it's not pretty. It's not even interesting.



And Gilmour was the one who kept being Syd's friend, encouraging him, helping him, loving him.