At almost 40, I am yet again taking a run at blogging. There was one really bad attempt in 2004-05, and I will buy dinner for the first person who can find said bad attempt- sadly, it lives on in a popular blogging site. I first made “weekly blogging” part of my annual Goals for the Year project about two years ago. Growing business, growing family, etc. always seem to take precedence.
I won’t go on to list all the reasons why you should follow these musing. Hopefully, you will see something worth reading, and returning to read more of. I also won’t go into lots of details about the author. Plenty of those details are available on other sites, which is probably how you got here in the first place.
So where is “here”?
The title of the blog: A soul in tension, that’s learning to fly… comes from the Pink Floyd song “Learning to Fly”. I’ve been a Floyd fan since sometime in the 80’s, and never even had to do drugs to appreciate the decades-ahead-of-their-time music and staging, and some of the most intelligent and deep lyrics that are written. What’s especially amazing is that they’ve done it for decades. I don’t want to entertain discussions of Syd Barett vs. David Gilmour vs. Roger Waters, and who was “the best” front man for the band- the reality is that each contributed in amazing ways.
But the song “Learning to Fly” has been interpreted to mean everything from a tribute to Gilmour’s love of flying, to Gilmour’s emotions on taking the lead of the band, to a description of a drug-induced experience. Regardless of the author’s intent, I think that the lyric I’ve lifted as the blog title is something that many people experience and can relate to. There is who/what/where we are and who/what/where we want to be. I’m not talking about “what might have been”, as that sort of speculation is usually a waste of time. Rather, I mean the sense of who we want to be, or who we believe we are MEANT to be.
So that tension is a recurring theme. But not a frustrated tension at feeling “stuck” in a current circumstance. Quite the opposite, really. It’s the tension of seeing, even if only vaguely, a place to be, and striving to be there.
I invite feedback. In fact, I relish it. I live for good conversation. Plenty more to follow…
Pink Floyd: Learning to Fly (from A Momentary Lapse of Reason, 1987)
Into the distance, a ribbon of black
Stretched to the point of no turning back
A flight of fancy on a windswept field
Standing alone my senses reel
A fatal attraction is holding me fast
How can I escape this irresistible grasp?
Can’t keep my eyes from the circling sky
Tongue-tied and twisted just an earthbound misfit, I
Ice is forming on the tips of my wings
Unheeded warnings, I thought I thought of everything
No navigator to find my way home
Unladen, empty and turned to stone
A soul in tension, that’s learning to fly
Condition grounded but determined to try
Can’t keep my eyes from the circling skies
Tongue-tied and twisted just an earthbound misfit, I
Above the planet on a wing and a prayer,
My grubby halo, a vapour trail in the empty air
Across the clouds I see my shadow fly
Out of the corner of my watering eye
A dream unthreatened by the morning light
Could blow this soul right through the roof of the night
There’s no sensation to compare with this
Suspended animation, a state of bliss
Can’t keep my mind from the circling skies
Tongue-tied and twisted just an earthbound misfit, I
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