A circle of grey 3

From Opel: Immersion Set for Distant Shores
Jump to navigationJump to search

White2.jpg
Go to cover page
Go to i. Introducion
Go to ii. The title
Go to iii. The totem
Go to iv. The far distant shore
Go to v. Driftwood
Go to vi. Dry tears
Go to vii. A circle of grey
Go to viii. To be found…
Go to ix. Information pack

Go to previous page

page 73

Go to next page

Hand-right2.jpg

Ferrari gave the full lyrics published since 1985 in the Italian book Pink Floyd, but the slightly different lyrics we know today were released in 1993 by Pink Floyd Music Publishers Ltd. and Rock Music Co. Ltd., two companies directed by Peter Barnes, who had followed Syd since the early '70s when he was press agent at Bryan Morrison's Lupus Music Co. Ltd., but we don't know if Syd approved these lyrics.

Particular emphasis can be given to what the "circle of grey" could be or could mean. Other than something "made" by drifting cloths or by flocks of birds, approaching between tall reeds, such a circle could mean many things, even looking at other expressions from Bigney ("Circled with gems which must forever shine", "Thus it is through all the fibres of that silver chord which circles round existence") or Hearn ("Around all the gray circling of a shark-haunted sea"), but it's the word "grey" that strengthens the meaning. Previously seen as the mist of grey about the dreamed distant shore, the sadness of the grey returns. This time the grey is more likely to refer to dull entities, just as the flies refer to entities that wear one out.

It was a gray world, full of gray people living gray lives.

The Bob Newhart Show

About the "summer way" we can say that the Pacific waters around Last Island were warm waters just like the Spanish waters around Formentera, and this brings to mind Syd's experience on his "Homeric holiday", but regarding the "man stood on ground" we can interpret philosophical meanings: a man still standing, not drowning in shallow waters despite that grey around him. Using Syd's songs we could say that, like his "Scarecrow", "He didn't care, he stood... pressing his feet to the ground", to the seabed, while "she loves to see him get down to ground" (a line from "She Took A Long Cold Look"). Maybe the grey is simply "soot on ground" (as it seems listening to the song), or it is "in some way around 'man / sodden ground" (as the lyrics should be according to the blogger Antonio Jesús), but if the grey is due to grey people, the philosophical issues turn out to be one of those rather social issues about Syd, for example discussing why he was sometimes so "reclusive" since the times when his friend Rick Wright said about him "… he couldn't respond, he couldn't communicate. He couldn't do anything in Formentera. He had nightmares …". Why should social issues be missing among the many meanings Syd gave to Opel? This grey can be seen as a juxtaposition to Syd's multicoloured nature. The opaline presence among the mist of grey may be himself.

sources →
Robyn. "Café Discovery: colors." Web. http://docudharma.com/2008/09/cafe-discovery-colors