my dad wants me to listen to more pink floyd
by Audrey Hollenbaugh
Pink Floyd’s The Great Gig in the Sky starts with a simple chord progression on the piano. It’s quiet at first, slowly growing in volume as the song settles into itself. Then comes the steel guitar; a melancholy, looming sound that sets the tone for the piece, leaning into the band's familiar genre of rock without betraying the song’s tender and emotional tone. The sliding guitar slips over the piano, reminiscent of a plane zipping through a blue sky, as an Irish man’s spoken voice proclaims that he is not afraid of death. Major chords open into his words, making the song, for a moment, feel hopeful, like the street just after rain, when the grass seems greener and the air feels cool and damp; turning towards something happy. The man’s words and tone are those of someone who is at peace. He truly is not afraid. Why should he be, he asks? “You’ve gotta go sometime.”
The guitar slides down in pitch. Then the drums come in, isolated taps on the cymbal and snare, slow, quiet, singular, building, like the piano at the beginning. The guitar slides up, waiting - it feels like sitting at the top of the first hill of a roller coaster, knowing you’re about to fall, and you hear the coaster car click out of the chain lift - but instead it’s two taps on the drum, and then the drop.
*****
I still remember the nights in Alabama. Sticky, humid air, moonlight shining down on southern yellow-green grass, crickets and cicadas screaming out into the clear black sky. It always felt a little weird, as someone who grew up in Michigan, walking outside to all of that warmth and moisture in the middle of the night. I didn’t ever really feel like it belonged to me. I never asked for it. I never wanted my dad to move so far away, never wanted to have to visit him instead of live with him. But it was out of my control.
My dad would prop the old screen door open, not caring about letting out the expensive air-conditioned air because he was six or seven beers deep. He had these huge speakers connected to his record player and he’d turn them all the way up, booming music out into the dark stillness that blanketed his neighborhood. I don’t know how he never got a noise complaint. I’d beg him to turn it down, knowing he’d tell me I wasn’t any fun, knowing he wouldn’t let me do anything about it because he insisted on sharing his music with me and was drunk off his ass. Often I would just cover my ears and pray.
Eventually he would fall asleep, and I’d turn the speakers off, and for the few moments that I stood on the front steps before shutting the door, the crickets and cicadas would slowly come back to me. I could stand there in that quiet forever, the stars unmoving above my head, breathing in the sweet smell of summer - the smell of knowing that my dad would wake up sober in the morning.
He was a much more subdued man during the day. But still, he was a man who wanted to share the things he loved with his daughter. He would show me his favorite old music videos, like Girls Just Want to Have Fun by Cyndi Lauper and Whip It by Devo, singing along horribly and smiling at me, his eyes so bright and alive. I remember the way he’d dance around, flailing everywhere, and how I’d watch him with the twinkle he passed down to me shining from behind my own eyes. He would play the videos on the TV through his laptop, pulling down the blinds to shut out the beaming afternoon sun, telling me all about what his life was like way back when.
He played Pink Floyd sometimes. I think it was The Wall, but it could’ve been any of their albums. I don’t know. At a certain point, I became more interested in shutting the songs out, not taking them in. It was all noise to me, just the backdrop of hiding behind the washing machine so he’d stop talking to me with his words all slurred together or sitting across from him at the dining room table in the middle of the night because he wouldn’t stop shouting about wanting to play chess. But I remember him telling me to listen to Pink Floyd. He called them one of his favorites of all time, told me I had to watch the movie and listen to all their songs in order.
I didn’t. Not then.
I’ve written a lot of essays about my dad. Actually, a lot of essays, journal entries, poems, articles, letters, texts, whatever - I’m not interested in laying out all of his crimes against me again. This essay is supposed to be about me, not what he’s done to me. So, he moved away, he’s a drunk, and I miss him, and for the sake of this story that’s all you really need to know.
*****
Two taps on the drum, and then the drop. The coaster car is falling, the wind whipping your hair against your skin, the ground hurtling towards you. Everything has all of a sudden come to life. The drums and piano are dancing with each other, more quickly and loudly than before, and a woman is singing her heart out. She has no words, just wailing over the music, belting in a way that sounds like pain. It’s desperation. It’s dying.
After thirty seconds or so, she breaks into a quality of voice that’s more nasal and heady, like screaming. Her anguish amplifies. Then she rips back into a belt, crying out over the relentless piano and drum, before somewhere in her voice you can hear that she is tired; a sequence of “oh’s” that sound like someone frantically turning in circles cascades out from the track, like sweeping fingers over the floor of a pitch black room, desperate for something, searching (won’t somebody pick me up from the damn floor?), before flipping back to that screaming tone. Have you ever seen a field mouse caught in a bucket of water, swimming as hard as it can, moving its legs too much for the amount of progress it makes because field mice aren’t meant to swim like this, scratching at slippery plastic edges that will never give hold to the mouse’s too-tiny claws? Did you save him, or did you watch until his panic turned to grief?
*****
When I came to college, one of my biggest goals was to get a boyfriend. Not a great priority, I know, but I was sick of being alone. I’m from a small town where everyone you know has known you since you were twelve or younger, and that impression makes or breaks you. I was pretty annoying at twelve, and thirteen, and for a few years after that - probably because my dad left me - so, boys didn’t like me. College was a chance for me to be someone new, to start over, and I was much too ready for it.
On a weekend in late January, after a good amount of forced-and-failed crushes and dates had plagued my first semester, I finally found a cute, nice, normal boy, who actually liked me. We met through some mutual friends on a night out and exchanged socials. He always snapped me back within minutes, smiled and waved when he saw me in the dining hall, and even walked me back to my dorm after a late-night study session. It didn’t matter to me that all of our friends kept telling me he wasn’t capable of commitment, or that he quite literally typed his Snapchat username into my phone while he was pressed up against another girl. This was it; the beginnings of my dream college romance.
One night when I was texting him, he told me he was walking back to his dorm alone, listening to Pink Floyd. I told him I liked Pink Floyd too. Truthfully, I only knew Great Gig and Breathe (In the Air) at the time, but I think that counts for something. He started telling me how much he loves them, and how you have to listen to their albums in order, and watch the movie, and that their music was an experience. “You have to let it wash over you,” he typed. I replied, “My dad wants me to listen to The Wall.”
When I listened to all of The Dark Side of the Moon the next day, and all of The Wall, then Dark Side of the Moon again, I thought about the cute boy some, and tried not to let the waves of mild nausea jumping up in my throat bother me too much. My body had a much stronger memory of the songs than my mind, which made me feel just a little bit sick every time some guitar riff that I hadn’t heard since those balmy southern nights started to play. Something in me wanted to run, throw open a rickety screen door, burst back into the comforting suffocation of the Alabama night sky. But something in me wanted to be loved, too, so I ignored the other something in favor of this one.
*****
This entire frantic vocal sequence takes about a minute; the singer screaming, the fingers on the floor, the mouse thrashing in the water. Do you remember?
Suddenly, the piano and drums slow. Her pitch lowers. The singer finally relaxes, takes a breath longer than half a second, but she still doesn’t sound at peace. Rather, she sounds defeated. The drums stop entirely. There’s something haunting and final about it; the piano sounds so sure, and even as the singer climbs back up to that screaming pitch for a moment, her voice is slightly distorted, fuzzy, and nothing is as intense as before. It feels caged, and worn. At this point, you’re only halfway between beginning and end by measure of time, but the song feels over. Like it’s closing. The instrumentals are wrapping, the production is quieting, even though the vocalist isn’t done. But what does it matter? It’s strikedown time. Get off of the stage.
A woman’s voice, barely audible, murmurs that she never said she was frightened of dying. If you aren’t listening for it, you might not even hear it.
*****
That night, the cute boy asked me if I had finished The Wall. I told him that I did, and that I liked it, which was true, but I didn’t tell him that I had heard it before, or how I remembered it. Later, he invited me to watch The Godfather Part II with some of our friends that weekend. I spent Saturday morning giddily watching all two hours and fifty-five minutes of The Godfather part one alone in my dorm to prepare, reeking of desperation, driven by the excitement of being looked at by someone. I put on a cute, mildly uncomfortable outfit that I would never in my life lay on a couch and watch a movie in unless I wanted to impress a boy, and left my dorm with DSOTM playing in my headphones.
When I got there, before we all settled in and started the movie, the boy noticed that I was drinking the same brand of lemonade I had drank each of the two days before. It was Dole by the way, my new favorite, more sugar than lemon, dispensed from the vending machine on the third floor of his building. He said something like “How many of those do you go through?” and listened to my response with a smile on his face. I took this as a very good sign. Halfway through the movie, when we stopped for a break (he told everyone that he hates when people talk during movies, so I made sure to stay silent until this point), he asked me what I thought of it so far. He was about to go up to his dorm to heat up some leftovers before we continued, so he stood in front of me, halfway between his seat and the door, waiting for my answer. I told him I thought it was good, but I was confused about the plot.
The cute boy sat down in front of me, asked someone else to go and microwave his burrito bowl for him, and started to explain the movie. You have to understand that this was monumental in my chronicles of delusion. I was completely enchanted. A cute boy was looking at me, and talking to me. He stayed to explain it to me. A true sacrifice as I saw it, sending your buddy to reheat your day-old Mexican food instead of doing it yourself so you can blab about one of your favorite movies of all time to a pretty girl. I settled in for the second act with a smile on my face.
*****
“I never said I was frightened of dying,” so quiet it doesn’t really even feel there - maybe it’s not completely true. There’s a turn in the singer’s tone, something more accepting, even as she continues to sing up and down her pained scales. Her voice is breathier. She still is wordless, and fades out as if receding down a hallway, smaller and smaller. So does the piano. Her last utterance is quieter only for distance, and comes with the piano’s last chord.
All that’s left is static; thirteen or so seconds of it. The end that’s been looming for over half of the song feels somehow wrong. It’s uncomfortable. Like she wasn’t finished yet. Like you’ve just listened to something being taken from her.
I am scooping the mouse from the bucket.
*****
My dad liked to show me his old yearbooks and photos a lot, sitting on the floor between his record collection and his ring-stained coffee table, pointing out his old buddies and favorite teachers on the crinkly pages. Thus, I’m very familiar with what he looked like when he was twenty-or-so years old. While watching The Godfather Part II, I learned that young Al Pacino bears a striking resemblance.
Every time Michael Corleone popped onto the screen, my heart dropped further and further into my stomach. My father was invading my mind - first the music, and now this. Every two seconds, my dad’s face on the screen, my twelve-year-old self back in his living room with the big speakers, flipping through a dusty photo album with him sitting next to me. I texted my dad “I miss you” as Al Pacino uttered the words, “I swear I’ll make it up to you. I’m gonna change.” I couldn’t look at the screen anymore.
For the rest of the movie, I turned away every time he showed up. I held back tears and texted my dad for the first time in weeks about what I was up to. He called me “college girl.” I wanted to throw up. He doesn’t know who “college girl” is. He has no idea of the person I’ve become here, without him, but still here he was, ruining me. He had nothing and everything to do with who I was in that moment, stuck halfway through the process of breaking free from the ghost of him, navigating the impossible condition that arises from my father occupying both the very core of my being and the space behind the trigger of a smoking gun pointed right at my chest.
When the movie finally ended, everyone started milling around the room and talking to each other. I stood up from my seat, wordlessly collecting my things. My heart felt full of rocks. The cute boy walked over and asked me if I liked it, and I smiled and told him I did, and he went back to another conversation. I hurried from the room without saying anything more, flusteredly waving in response to someone’s shouted “Bye?” that slipped through the already-closing door behind me. I brushed past my two best friends who had been waiting to meet me after, muttering something about needing to go to the bathroom. Pushing my way into a stall, I snapped the lock shut and put a hand on either wall, my head hanging down, breathing hard, dizzied by grief, and somewhere in the back of my head remembering to try not to cry for the mascara I knew the cute boy would see again later.
My friends followed me into the bathroom and asked if I was alright. I said I just needed a minute, and they said “OK, love you!” and picked up a conversation with each other about our plans for the night, their voices and laughter bouncing off of the tiled walls over and over. The panic started to rise inside of me. I needed it to be quiet. I needed that safety. Or maybe a cicada and some stars. It was all too much; Pink Floyd, Al Pacino, “college girl.” I couldn’t get away from him, no matter how many hundreds of miles I was from Alabama.
Eventually, I left the stall, and I didn’t say anything to anyone about my dad; instead, I went to the club with my friends, sick to my stomach. I laughed, and I danced for hours, and eventually I didn’t feel so sick anymore. Eventually, I stood in line at a late-night pizza place with the cute boy standing up against me, almost as happy as I had planned to be.
A few days later, when I finally told one of my friends what happened and why the movie had made me so upset, she asked, “Why didn’t you just leave?”
When I left the restroom and went out with my friends that night, I was still completely shaken. My dad followed me around the entire time, always in the back of my mind, threatening to creep back into my decision making, pushing me to go home. But I didn’t go home, and I didn’t walk away from that movie because I was so, so angry. While I stared down at that bathroom tile, trying to keep my throat from closing, I thought about how stupid it was. How unfair, how cruel that I can’t shallowly watch a movie or listen to some music to impress a boy just like everyone else. And for the first time, I wondered what would happen if I tried to push past that feeling instead of running away from it.
The cute boy and I didn’t work out. He sat me down in the common area of his dorm building a few weeks later and told me he didn’t want a relationship, and I was completely crushed. Despite that, I still love The Dark Side of the Moon. For a long time it kept giving me that uneasy feeling, that fear left over from the booming speakers, but I didn’t care. I like the music. DSOTM is mine, something I’ve chosen to keep for myself. It’s not something I listen to because I want to impress a boy, or because my dad told me to, and it’s not something I avoid listening to because I’m afraid of it hurting me. I took it back. I’m taking it all back.
*****
In all that static, you just know - you should know - the singer has more she could say. Her pain lingers in those thirteen solemn seconds, echoing silently somewhere in your consciousness, creeping underneath the skin on the tops of your forearms, bouncing around your ribcage. It’s almost uncomfortable; something makes you think she could've kept on screaming forever, trapped in her fear, never moving out of it.
It doesn’t matter. She’s still walking away. The song is still over.
*****
I used to have this idea in my head that healing from my past would mean I could suddenly do all the things I want to do and feel perfectly fine. I thought I had to get to that point to be happy; that I just couldn’t listen to certain music or watch certain movies until I magically moved on - no gradual exposure, just a flipped switch - and they wouldn’t hurt me at all. I thought being able to finally live would look like having no anxiety anymore. I’ve realized that it isn’t quite like that.
I would miss out on so much if I waited around for it to not hurt. I finally said fuck it and learned that I have to listen to the music despite the pain, go out even though I want to cry in a bathroom stall and miss my dad. It might feel scary, or even sacrilegious, but it was what finally set me free.
With On The Run blasting in my headphones as I walk through the familiar cold of Michigan, completely alone, and a little bit scared, I feel like I finally got out. The screen door is far behind me.
*****
The Great Gig in the Sky was never about death for me.
Photo of Audrey Hollenbaugh
BIO: Audrey Hollenbaugh is a Junior studying English, writing, and art at the University of Michigan. She was raised on a farm in East China, Michigan, and spent her youth intertwined in some complicated relationships of family and love. Now she aspires to lead a life that revolves around creation and people, including writing and music. Work of hers has appeared in The Michigan Daily.