Anyone who has even a very fair knowledge of what my interests are will immediately associate me with buildings, music and food. And sleep. This post is (indirectly) related to one of the contributors to my musical interest: the British band Pink Floyd. Of course, I will not even attempt to discuss PF today; the subject matter is too vast to even fit within the limitations of even an entire blog, let alone a single post. However, this particular post was somehow inspired by a Floydian song, which inspiration has led me to drop these few lines.
In 1971, Floyd released the album "Meddle", probably the album in which the shift from producing purely psychedelic material to more progressive rock made its initial appearance (I apologise for the unnecessary details, but I could not help it) and amongst the songs in this album was the epic Echoes. At almost half an hour long, it is definitely close to the top in the list of the longest rock songs ever written in history; I reckon Floyd tend to feature prominently in this list! Around the time when "Meddle" was composed, the band lived mostly in London and, although certain things undoubtedly changed since the early 1970s, I believe certain aspects of the city's life have not. I can safely draw this conclusion from the content of this song (or, at least, my interpretation thereof) and comparing this to my current experience of living in London...
Unless you happen to be a PF maniac to at least one unit of magnitude less than I am, you will not know the lyrics of Echoes and, to save you the hassle of Google-ing it, I will reproduce the relevant part:
Strangers passing on the street, by chance two separate glances meet, and I am you and what I see is me.
Now please do not tell me that this is some crap band! Surely somewhat more serious that the persistent bull**** we were presented by short-lived pop icons in the likes of Mickey Mouse star Britney Spheres...I mean, Britney Spears. Anyhow, I promised I will not delve into musical debates and stick to my point. Whenever I hear Echoes and, especially this verse of lyric, I reassure myself that Floyd songs in the like of Echoes were not composed in a state of mind simply driven by uninterrupted, many days' consumption of LSD or other illicit substances, well at least not in their entirety. A considerable amount of thought was spilled out from the mind of Roger Waters when he penned the lyrics.
Back in the 1970s, I would imagine Waters, in his daily commuting up and about on the Tube, walking around in north-west London on the way from Abbey Road studios to the nearest tobacconist and from his apartment to the nearest food store, might have noticed the patterns of fellow Londoners, particularly during rush hours I would say. People moving frantically on London's wide pavements, with no time to show any sense of humanistic communication, where any sort of encounter would be purely random and coincidental. People sitting on the Tube, deeply lost in their newspaper, scribbling notes on paper diaries or crossword puzzles. People almost on the verge of a nervous breakdown, engulfed in nothing else but getting to the workplace on time, completing scheduled tasks and returning home in the same delirious manner only to resume the following day. Day after day, until their retirement and eventual death in a few years' time (perhaps this truly disturbing concept was explored by Floyd in their next album, The dark side of the moon; again sorry for the detail).
Fast forward by almost four decades and, instead of Roger Waters (presumably he is happily living somewhere quieter than Central London), you find me moving around in London. Funnily enough, Roger and I both studied architecture but, other than that, I am not comparing myself to Waters; I simply believe that I find myself in similar situations which led to his observations in Echoes. On my daily routine walks to Imperial along Cromwell Road, past Earls' Court and Gloucester Road stations, I observe scores of people struggling in their race against time, completely distracted from the rest of the world, like a swarm of ants heading to the small-sized opening leading to their hideaway of underground blackness. People lost in their own Blackberry realm, feeling the constant need to "be online", check e-mails, update their Facebook status and chat with a friend or two. People completely shut off from the aural world around them, except for the sounds provided by their iPods which, although providing a potential playlist of several GB worth of music, will somehow only be limited to the same few songs they deliberately select. People sitting on the bus, smiling stupidly at their mobile phones as if the 1234567890 buttons provide the best entertainment possible. Luckily, I do not commute by Tube everyday but, when I do, I see people squeezing themselves onto a seat on the Tube, scanning their PDAs for the next appointment or striving to finish up their Sudoko game on their copy of Lite and struggling to get a copy of The Evening Standard to pursue another game.
And what about human communication? Reduced to the absolute minimum: self check-out points in supermarkets, Oyster cards instead of papers tickets to eliminate commuter-driver interaction, colleagues preferring e-mail correspondence more than anything else. No one dares to talk to anyone else, lest s/he is accused of infringing in the other's privacy or be interpreted as flirting and soon be engaged in a law suit for sexual harassment. And so on and so forth. Everyone is happy to live in his/her own little world, entirely submerged in individualism with no apparent concern for interaction with fellow members of the same human species and completely shut off from the rest of society, which could be fast approaching the sterile, totalitarian world predicted in Huxley's shocking Brave new world or as illustrated in Orwell's provocative 1984. Perhaps this is a far-fetched image of contemporary society, but which was first noticed by PF in the 1970s and which could be more of a reality now in the first decade of the new millennium.
Waters wrote Echoes so many years ago and, yet, today I feel similar emotions escaping from the spirit of the same London. So have things changed at all? Yes, they did - they have only become much worse. What if Floyd had to write Echoes today? Would they still talk of strangers passing on the street? Will they write about these strangers' glances meeting at all, even if by chance? And what do the strangers see? Will they see themselves mirrored in each other, both running the same insane race? I am sure I am going to sleep in a few minutes' time but am even more sure that all of the above questions will have "Yes" for an answer.
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