...and what exactly is a dream & what exactly is a joke?

Syd Barrett has died.

As an impressionable fourteen year-old in late 1970s London I left yellow cards printed 'The Madcap Laughs But Shall Return' in odd places - and, ironically, it's just possible Barrett would have been in and around Earls Court at this time before his long walk back to Cambridge. Who knows?

I adored (and still do) both of the 'original' albums - 'The Madcap Laughs' and 'Barrett' - for their music and lyrics. I sense affinities with the early poetry of people such as Tom Raworth, Lee Harwood and John James. Maybe it's a very English take on surrealism, late afternoon sunshine, boredom, an 'insoucience' that (as Viv Stanshall lamented) seems to have vanished.

What might Pink Floyd have been had Barrett remained creatively active? A lot more interesting, surely.

If I had the CD to hand I'd be playing it now. Here's a few lines from 'It Is Obvious' which will have to do:

"So equally over a valley a hill
wood on quarry stood, each of us crying
a velvet curtain of gray
mark the blanket where the sparrows play
and the trees by the waving corn stranded
my legs move the last empty inches to you
the softness, the warmth from the weather in suspense
mote to a grog - the star a white chalk
minds shot together, our minds shot together... "

Oh well.