999,865: Syd Barrett — Dark Globe

Dark Globe - Syd Barrett

I can’t imagine that we would give the non-schizophrenics the kind of leeway we give the mentally ill when it comes to music. Skip Spence, Daniel Johnston and Syd Barrett, left to their own devices, often play (or played) like kindergartners, given instruments for the first time.

You get the feeling that the chords are random, there’s a lack of tempo and wild-swinging dynamics, as though there were no rhyme or reason to them; as though they’re making their songs up as they go along.

There’s a very thin membrane, in every human mind, between sanity and insanity. Who among us hasn’t pushed up against that slight organic barrier at some point, gasping at the rollercoaster accidents piled up on the other side, all twisted metal and rodeo clowns?

Haven’t we all been so in love that we thought we were going to catch fire? Haven’t we all been so angry that some radically awful options have floated through our minds? Haven’t we all been so alone that we felt invisible, permanent disconnected from the world, like Barrett is in “Dark Globe.”

We recognize that that pattern, that template, that prism, as applied to the pop song as we know it, in their music, consciously or subconsciously. Maybe we find it frightening like the ghetto we’d never navigate; maybe we find it enthralling, like a carnival freak show; maybe we hope that no one sees the same things in ourselves that we hear in the music that these men make.

We give them the leeway to make music this way because it's part of who we are. And we're glad that we're not the ones who need to do it.