Tristan's Post!!

"How I wish, how I wish you were here. We're just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl, year after year, running over the same old ground. What have we found? The same old fears, wish you were here." -Pink Floyd, Wish You Were Here

These few lines from Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd are so packed with emotion, that when I hear them sung, I feel like the sheer weight of David Gilmour's words are pressing down on me like miles of dark, heavy water, and at the same time, lifting a burden off of my shoulders. The song Wish You Were Here was dedicated to Sid Beret, an ex-keyboardist for Pink Floyd. I think that Sid Beret's death acted as a catalyst to help Pink Floyd pour emotion into their music. This makes me think about "What It Feels Like to Be Colored Me", by Zora Neale Hurston. I think that Wish You Were Here is all about dwelling on the past, and pulling back all of those memories to preserve, and What It Feels Like to Be Colored Me is mostly about remembering those memories, but not thinking about them as if they determined your life. These two conflicting ideas bring up the important point: should we live according to the past. I think that in this instance, both Pink Floyd, and Zora Neale Hurston are right, because while Ms. Hurston does not want to drown in a pool of her ancestor's blood, Pink Floyd wants to weave Sid Beret's memories into a strong fabric of emotion, to be worn proudly. Both of these paths are separate, and in a way, both Pink Floyd, and Ms. Hurston are doing both, but just speaking about one.