Pink Floyd
Flaming

"Flaming" is the acid up, but don't expect any modern Sumerian gibberish like the contemporary Bob, because here we are (yes, inside) a cute illustrated booklet...

And I'll warn you straight away that it's mostly the silly things I like in this song, the beginning for example with that yippie (around here we say yuppii, but it's the same)....

You know, right? Yuppii is what you say as a child when something is fantastic...

And then I really like when he says "buttercups cup the light" and that is buttercups cup the light... and also when he says "dandelion" and that is dandelion (particularly noting that he is sitting on it as if it were an armchair)...

Not to mention that eiderdown (the blanket where he is lying for his little LSD trip) which is more like a dadadaun...get it?

dandelion dadadaun (exercise: repeat it ten times)...

They are nursery rhyme words with an almost magical sound... the marcondiro effect we've already talked about...

After all, in this song everything is childish and playful...starting with the psychedelic blind man's bluff of those "you can't see me, but I can" ""you can't hear me, but I can"...

And what about the little bells, the choirs, the box of noises, the zany keyboards?...

I don't know if you've realized, but we are in the territory of the apple seed, he likes childish things, which he calls flashes. Not to mention the fact that he lives in a cheap psychedelic trip...or little coins...which consists, as you already know, of closing your eyes and reopening them...that once opened, things have a different light...

And the best way to express this highest philosophical concept is precisely the dandelion dadadaun, says the little seed...

Or (he wouldn't say it, but I would) his little formula “wander wonderfully a bit”...this little phrase is in one of his little songs, as a good Barrett-epigone, he improvises little songs on the spot...

"Flaming" belongs to the fabulous era of the first Floyd album, when the eyes were still ferret-like...and everything was sparkling...including the voice, not yet drowsy and muddled with mandrax...

The animal of the song is therefore a unicorn, while little birds and little turtles will come later, in a not entirely painless transition... and they will stand out, always elusive and ungraspable, in a bare landscape, devoid of all the trinkets and sonic messiness flaunted here with the flair of the best youth...

After all, here Syd was fresh from the success of "See Emily play", the soundtrack of the summer of love in London...

He was in the studio with lots of nice toys at his disposal, with the Beatles in the next room dealing with Sgt. Pepper...

But it wasn’t easy to record the album...his instinct was reluctant to be trapped on vinyl...

"Flaming" can also be heard in a live recording at the BBC and, without the studio frills, it is free to be just a beautiful song, .at the beginning you can even hear the radio announcer saying “Flaming, very strange and ethereal sound”...who can blame him?..

Meanwhile, my little son, a little dark and golden, reads with great annoyance his little English lesson “six slippery snails slide slowly”...”six slippery snails slide slowly”...

So, I imagine Syd lighting up (only to tell himself later that it actually means nothing)...

Lighting up while walking the long road to Tipperary...

And I too imagine the little seed that we encounter this strange wanderer as if we were the mouse and the mole from The Wind in the Willows...