Driftwood 9

From Opel: Immersion Set for Distant Shores
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Go to i. Introducion
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Go to iii. The totem
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Go to vi. Dry tears
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As for the cockles, it's almost redundant to specify why these bivalves are in shallow waters with shells, but we can suppose that this is an original poetic description, which sounds even better if we consider the other meaning of the word "cockle": if what makes shine them is something "warm", the idea of the common English phrase "it warms the cockles of my heart" fits with the sound of the lines in Opel. However, a famous verse with cockles in it comes from Shakespeare:

Thus time we waste, and longest leagues make short;
Sail seas in cockles, have an wish but for’t;
Making, to take your imagination,
From bourn to bourn, region to region.
By you being pardon’d, we commit no crime
To use one language in each several clime …

— William Shakespeare, Pericles, Prince of Tyre

The last of these lines by Shakespeare is reminiscent of some lines in "She Took A Long Cold Look" which Syd wrote in Formentera, recording the song some time before his second summer holiday on the island, in 1969.

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The end of truth that lay out the time
Spent lazing here on a painting dream
A mile or more in a foreign clime
To see farther inside of me

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Guessing that "Opel" inspired "She Took A Long Cold Look" via Shakespeare's play is a speculation on a speculation. From this point of view, other links with this song would be more direct, through other lines like "I breathe as the water streams over me" or "A broken pier on the wavy sea". Then again, one could even speculate that Opel inspired a well-known photo of Syd at Migjorn in 1969, in totemic pose with his arms in the air: in that photo Syd is smiling and in the company of a girl, not posing for a promo shot (e.g. for the LP released in 1970), but actually, if the totem is personified as Naranath, Sisyphus, or someone else, we will see that in the final analysis it represents Syd himself.

sources →
Shakespeare, William. Pericles, Prince of Tyre. 1608. Play. http://shakespeare.mit.edu/pericles/full.html