“Dark Child by Stewart Stafford Moondust down the fire curtain Carried Syd to the darkest side, Trespass became a prison term, A non-compos mentis dark child. From gambolling nymph with a lute, To an imp falling over instruments, A thousand-yard stare sucked in, Vacant eyes drew like a black hole. Riderless horse, a living déjà vu, The spectral shell of our brother, Ambled towards us at his nadir, We wept for the shuffling stranger. © Stewart Stafford, 2023. All rights reserved.” ChangeFriendshipLossMusicDrug AddictionTrue StoryDrug AbusePink FloydSyd BarrettBad Trip Author:Stewart Stafford
“In the end it comes down to two rival versions of the English middle afternoon. Post-Barrett, Pink Floyd kept on in a middle-afternoonish vein, but they fell in love with the idea of portentous storm clouds in the offing somewhere over Grantchester....Barrett's afternoonishness was far more supple and engaging. It superimposed the hippie cult of eternal solstice on the pre-teatime daydreams of one's childhood, occasioned by a slick of sunlight on a chest of drawers....His afternoonishness is lit by an importunate adult intelligence that can't quite get back to the place it longs to be....Barrett created the same precocious longing in adolescents. "I remember 'See Emily Play' drifting across a school corridor in 1967...and I remember the powerful wish to stay suspended indefinitely in that music...I also remember the quasi-adult intimation that this wasn't possible. [from the London Review of Books for January 2, 2003]” ChildhoodPink FloydSyd Barrett Author:Jeremy Harding