Dark Globe

i don't think many people know too much about lsd or mental illness here except what they have learned. i do. happens to be two subjects that people like to link together how ever in most cases they shouldn't be at lease as cause and effect. lsd does not cause schizophrenia. no matter how much you take. if syds a schizophrenic than he was born that way and from what we've been told his schizophrenia became unmanageable well in front of the world. lsd, rock stardom the band troubles cheating girlfriend over bearing mother etc...snap... it could have ended like kurt cobain.

anyways the song lyrics... i see eskimo chain as a type of pattern manifested in his minds eye. if you've taken lsd or are schizophrenic than you know about patterns. some patters noticed can be very distressing. a chain = a pattern. a tattoo = a picture that is permanent. so its something he sees on his brain. i had this toy. it was monkey chain. a bunch of monkeys that came in a barrel and they linked together by their arms (maybe their tails and leg too i can't remember) they were all identical except in their facial expressions. they where more fun then a barrel full of monkeys. they had them in the 40s 50s and 60s made of metal mine were plastic from the late 70s. maybe he envisions a great tribe of eskimos linked together like my monkeys tattooed to his brain. the cool part of the lyric is that he did it to him self. so he had to see himself tattooing his brain. its a great lyric to express his distressful thoughts. what do i know i'm just a schizophrenic, musician, ex-acid head, who took lsd thousands of times while listening to syd barret most likely. make up your own mind thats what music is for. if it speaks to you than good you can relate. if someone tells you different they are trying to cheat you.

Mental illness has very little to do with Syd's lyrics. When you look at most of them they are coherent in meaning (EX here I go, Opel, Late Night, I Never Lied To You, Vegetable Man, Jugband Blues, ect.). Then there are others where they are incoherent in meaning but are not word salads because they have meter and rhyme (Bike and Octopus are prime examples). This song falls into a third category I believe. When I was in my teens and wrote poetry I would write random thoughts that I would call Blender Thought Sessions. The idea was that by writing randomly I would capture the raw emotion of that moment in time. I believe that Dark Globe was Syd doing what I used to do, another example of this would be Baby Lemonade. So its either random thoughts or the verses are a description of a painting in his head. Lastly Syd was not mentally ill. While you can bring up story after story from this time period that leads to the contrary remember this is what Syd was doing; his flat was basically a party pad, he was doing manorix, smoking pot, using LSD, and there is suspected speed and heroin use. So not mentally ill just slowly fried his brains with drugs. I also think Syd was agoraphobic. When Floyd got signed he went from UFO club where no one is really paying attention and are probably too high to care what you play, to possibly larger audiences that did care and had expectations. So a lot of his antics on stage were probably really weird panic attacks. In 74 when he was playing in the band stars he was fine until he got on stage.

Syd's not schizo, it's an accepted, published fact that his diagnosis as schizophrenic was a misdiagnosis and withdrawn at least 15 years ago. If you want to take a stab in the dark and present it as fact try ADHD with Abstract Oppositional Defiance, at least that's beleivable. On that basis, Syd is totally sane and it's everyone else that's mutated into brain-altered self-sedating mentals (fact - herd).

Esikmos live in the cold, Eskimo chain is a reference to him trying to slow himself down with drugs so he can be with someone living in this monotonous world of grey. When you're the only sane person in every thousand mutants, it's easy to feel isolated.

Alright! Syd isn’t mad or schizophrenic but he is a genius. This song is so clear and logical I don’t see why you all find it so hard to understand. Syd starts off by asking where have the people he had at one time in his life depended and called friends all go. Then he goes into asking if he was to get hurt or killed would those people he once knew (most likely Pink Floyd) still even care enough about him to help or show him some form of caring emotion. The song is that simple he just wants to know if he was to go would he even be missed. I love this song even though it is so depressing.

I have found it difficult to interpret Syd's lyrics at times. Lately I've started to think of his songs as a kind of tapestry. If you look at this song you seem to get a snapshot every few lines, like a tapestry tells a story with separate but related pictures. Each verse of this song seems to be showing the same emotion through a different picture, or a different panel if you take the tapestry analogy. Anyway I find it helps me with interpreting Syd's songs.

For people to say that "Dark Globe" was his only good solo song is absurd. Syd's songs were much better than Pink Floyd's first and maybe second album!! This is coming from a huge Floyd fan. Octopus ride, Here I go, Gigolo Aunt,Baby Lemonade....I could go on and on. Syd's problem was lsd and too much of it...plain and simple. In a way that's why his mind was expanded and able to create such amazing music!!

Aww :'( this song makes me feel so fkin sad, more so than jugband blues. I read that his friend Jenny Spires introduced Syd to Iggy the Eskimo cos she was off to US & didn't want to leave Syd alone. Iggy was homeless at the time so it suited them both. But just knowing this makes me understand the song in a totally different way. However much I love PF & their music I still can't quite believe how they dealt with the mental deterioration of their childhood friend. An illness largely characterized by fear & paranoia hardly needs it expressed in a song by your closest friends for the whole world to hear. I can't begin to imagine what this did to him. So, so sad !!

Wasn't Syd's girlfriend of eskimo descent?

yeah his girlfriend was of eskimo descent, its the chick who appears naked on the cover of madcap. this is a brilliant song, probably his best

This song is especially sad now, since he's, you know......left us. Well, if he was here he would know that we do miss him, a lot.