Sometimes I wonder if I’m going crazy or if I just see things that aren’t there.
Here’s one example. I woke up the other day with a song glued into my brain — you know what I mean, right? Anyway, the song was Pink Floyd at their most wonderfully obscure, i.e. See Emily Play.
So of course I went onto Ewwwtchoob and watched the thing. All the way through, though, I couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that the video was reminiscent of another piece of surreal moviemaking — and then I remembered the final scene from Antonioni’s Blow Up.
The two scenes are in no way alike, cinematically speaking — one is in black & white and is essentially a music video, while the other is deathly silence played in color. But both are mimes, and wonderfully executed. Was it the mimes, or the similar locations in a park which triggered the association?
Or maybe it was just Syd Barrett and Michelangelo Antonionini who were crazy.
Afterthought: I think Blow-Up was created (1965-66) before See Emily Play was filmed (1967).
And just to drive everybody else crazy (why should I be the only one), Blow Up featured the Yardbirds in the famous (and disturbing) night club scene. Which is why I sometimes associate Jimmy Page with Antonionini.
I thought Syd was inspired by Emily Young who has been called “Britain’s greatest living stone sculptor” (not by me), apparently one time girlfriend
Man, “Blow Up”……now that was one disturbed flic.
Was everyone a customer of Timothy Leary back then?
In the music and movie industries, it certainly seemed so. .