Dry tears 2


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page 61  We will see now, on second reading, that the carcass is not so repugnant. By the way, the carcass does not have to be the main image for us: the word "carcass" remains strong but this chapter, in fact, is not entitled "The Carcass".

First of all, note the word "shimmers" before the flies. It's better to take up the whole strophe:  A bare winding carcass, stark Shimmers as flies scoop up meat, an empty way Dry tears  Like the two different meanings of the word "tears", the word "shimmers" can be both a noun and a verb. If it was the verb, it would refer to the carcass, which would shimmer due to the flies: one can already imagine, metaphorically, a worn-out man like Syd whose personality shimmers only because of curious people hanging around him like flies. But again it's a "first sight" interpretation, just to try to bring one's compassion to tears. Did Syd think of himself as becoming another carcass among the drowned men of Last Island? By the way, Syd cut the line "I'm drowning" from a previous version.

Very likely "shimmers" is not a noun in a separate line, as in "And the shimmers as flies scoop up meat", for a specific reason: the verb makes a more fluent and logical line. But we can refer to the shimmers from the carcass as a noun for practical reasons: it highlights one of the only two words related to an opal stone: "pebble" and "shimmers". The shimmers, whatever they represent, can be seen in an opal, and the carcass can be seen as their bare background, illustrated in the winding patterns of the opal. Syd likes gems, and could be staring at it long enough to be inspired to write a song: Syd was sitting there at the table, and the box of cereal was between us. And he was watching the box of cereal the way that I would watch 'Star Trek' on television. He was seeing something I wasn't seeing. I don't know what he was on, but he could have sat there all day, staring into that cereal, and he would have been just as happy as anybody else. &mdash; Alice Cooper  sources → The Rock Radio online. "Alice Cooper remembers Syd Barrett." Web. http://web.archive.org/web/20120506022008/http://www.rockradio.com/2006/07/alice-cooper-remembers-syd-barrett.html