Girls When They See The Most Stressed Out, Anxious, Pent Up Man Riddled With Grief: I Need Him

November 2021, there was news that Roger Waters was back in the studio working on some new projects. In a recent interview, Roger confirmed that he has been working on a new re-recording of Pink Floyd’s 1973 classic album The Dark Side Of The Moon, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year with a brand new Dolby Atmos mix and box set release. 🎧

There’s something very charming about the albums musicians make when they reach old age. There’s so much more quiet contemplation of life, a matured musical expression, a confidence in their musical identity, a knowledge that they need not put on the biggest brightest show, a soft dedication to the muse.

Albums like David Bowie’s Blackstar or The Next Day, Neil Young’s Prairie Wind, Roger Waters’ Is This The Life We Really Want, Pink Floyd’s Endless River, to name a few, exude a condensed energy of their life experiences and musical inclinations that have been sharpened and honed their entire lives. These kind of albums are so very special. I’m glad my favorite musicians continue to make music when they get old, because it has just as much meaning as it did when they were younger.

Pink Floyd live in the 70s

Ooh, fun stuff! Disclaimer that I don't think it serves a purpose to speculate on anyone's sexuality when they never made any public statements or we're having to really reeeeally reach for evidence to fit our hopes (Queen fandom is...bad for that). I think it's just as likely as not that he was Queer in some way, and it wouldn't change too much about his story. I think if marginalized folks see themselves in him, it at least speaks to his experience of life being in the margins for a whole host of reasons. Could be that was a lil 💅 could be other things.

As far as his personality/mental health goes, I really believe Syd was on the schizophrenia spectrum, not ASD. Reading interviews he gave around the time everything went to shit for him, and in conjunction with everything that his loved ones have (publicly) said about his mindset, his thought processes were more disorganized than most people. He had a tendency for loose associations and tangentiality in his speech, eccentric creativity, low tolerance for constraints of any kind. And some of those characteristics overlap with ASD, but it's specifically the disorganized thought processes and loose associations that lead me that direction. Drugs making it worse is kind of a tale as old as time in that regard. The timing is also right - age of onset for full presentation of symptoms in schizophrenic disorders is late teens to early 30s, if he was on the autism spectrum he'd have had signs in childhood. I admittedly don't know about his childhood and don't know if his family have discussed that.

I need to go watch the full documentary for context, but I wonder if he was writing Arnold Layne around the time he did the whole "pretending" thing. Wouldn't surprise me if part of his creative process was just doing "odd" things for the experience of it.

Here’s the Roger clip of him talking about when Syd said “I’m a homosexual” and was wearing a frock lol

Some factoids about the Semen and Gay Uncle saga that I see people kind of mess up on:

- There are technically three iterations of the saga: Semen and Gay Uncle, Gayvy Jones, and the Davy Jones T-Boy Swag Voter Fraud. - Semen and Gay Uncle had to do with a light-hearted joke about Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel being gay getting taken into debate by a blog that wrote toddler headcanons for Michael Nesmith of the band The Monkees. - Gayvy Jones had to do with a similar light-hearted joke about Davy Jones of The Monkees being taken into debate by a blog that not only was anti-abortion, but wrote rpf of straight Paul Simon mpreg with (out lesbian) actress Lily Tomlin. - While both scenarios have their similarities, both blogs are NOT the same person, and all evidence points to them being TWO DIFFERENT people. 

Will add more additions as need be.

Pink Floyd - Syd Barrett

Inspirational Roger quotes 🖤✨

Roger Waters  Paris 1972,  © Guy Ferrandis