Eclipse

Listen while you read:  Pink Floyd

All that you touch
And all that you see
All that you taste
All you feel
And all that you love
And all that you hate
All you distrust
All you save
And all that you give
And all that you deal
And all that you buy
Beg, borrow, or steal
And all you create
And all you destroy
And all that you do
And all that you say
And all that you eat
And everyone you meet
And all that you slight
And everyone you fight
And all that is now
And all that is gone
And all that's to come
And everything under the sun is in tune
But the sun is eclipsed by the moon

(There is no dark side of the moon, really. 
Matter of fact, it's all dark)

~  Roger Waters (Pink Floyd)

As you already know, this is the closing track on Pink Floyd's eminent Dark Side of the Moon from 44 years ago. Forty-four years! The working title for the album was Eclipse: A Piece for Assorted Lunatics. Well, I guess all of us assorted lunatics have kept this treasure in our heads and hearts for nearly five decades now, so that tells you something. Roger Waters said of his masterpiece, "I don't see it as a riddle. The album uses the sun and the moon as symbols: the light and the dark, the good and the bad, the life force as opposed to the death force." We have always known that this life is a constant struggle between good and evil. And, like a Harry Potter novel, there are times when evil seems to be winning the war. Fueled by a power akin to the sun's, evil threatens to obliterate humanity. But the sun is eclipsed by the moon. The tiny moon. The moon is us. Or are we the sun?

By the time you read this, it is likely that the total eclipse will have already happened. I will not be able to collect my thoughts about viewing this spectacular event in time for this post, so please tune in tomorrow for that. But there are things to say in regard to the thing that is about to happen, and I will turn to Annie Dillard's well-known work of literary art, "Total Eclipse," which can be found in her 1982 collection of essays, Teaching a Stone to Talk.

Experiencing the total eclipse in Yakima, Washington, in February 1979, Dillard refers to the "shadow cone of the moon" which comes rushing at the earth one second before the sun goes out. This wave travels 1,800 miles an hour and is 195 miles wide. It is not uncommon for those watching this sudden and terrifyingly dark shadow roll over them to scream, as if screaming would protect them from certain annihilation.

"This was the universe about which we have read so much and never before felt: the universe as a clockwork of loose spheres flung at stupefying, unauthorized speeds. How could anything moving so fast not crash, not veer from its orbit amok like a car out of control on a turn?" asks Dillard.

And then, minutes later, the sun re-emerges, the shadow cone of the moon speeds away, and the world, still full of good and evil, seems as secure and as fragile as it ever has. "We blinked in the light. It was as though an enormous, loping god in the sky had reached down and slapped the earth's face."

We needed that.

The voice at the end of the track is that of Gerry O'Driscoll, the doorman at Abbey Road, where the album was recorded. Asked what he thought the dark side of the moon was, he replied, "There is no dark side of the moon, really. Matter of fact, it's all dark." So symbolically, are we the moon? Or is it possible that we possess the power and light of the sun to emerge from this darkness and shine?