Echoes of Flavio's Ghost Dreaming

I have been listening to Roger Waters' re-recording of 'Dark Side of the Moon' and... probably uniquely amongst my friends and people I know, liking it. It is not a rock album and, perhaps as suggested by the title ('Dark Side of the Moon / Redux') is a revisit of something he did half a century ago. He talks rather a lot, probably too much, through it. It is much sparser than the original recording (certainly not a Pink Floyd record) and with a feel much, much darker than the original. But then it is that: an 80 year old man revisiting something he did in his prime and commenting on it, the lyrics about ageing and fading and death so much more relevant now. And I, now 71 and finding it difficult to believe it or accept it, can see something of myself in that dark mirror. I'm liking it a lot although I shouldn't play it too much -it is not exactly happy cheerful music, something that one might miss in the whole rock vibe of the original.

In between bits of teaching a French guy to play that Floyd ditty from 'Dark Side of the Moon'. Isn't it perhaps a bit odd, that connection between people from different generations and five thousand miles in between with music which was, to begin with, foreign to them and so distant?

I do have to say I didn't care that much for Pink Floyd, particularly in the beginning and even things like 'Dark Side' I only started to like retrospectively; I only paid attention to them from 'Wish you were here' and most of all 'The Wall', that story of alienation and politics and .. well, alienation.

Makes me think of me jamming with friends -certainly not to Pink Floyd, I didn't care for them then; rather to Hendrix, to Neil Young, to English bands time may have forgotten- on the steep steps in my barrio in Caracas. Another life, far away in time and distance, before I really found the guitar, in a way, when I knew nothing and all the roads seemed to be open.