Duck Night of the Soul

While Pink Floyd bandmates, Roger Waters and David Gilmour, may not be considered funny per se, millions of fans appreciate their duck, I mean, dark humor.

Duck Side of the Moon

My generation has a broad Pink Floyd lexicon, offering up lyrics quotations for a wide variety of situations (like the universal language of Monty Python but that’s another post).  Traveling around Europe, I’ve seen this too – people who hardly speak English, respond to my tourista requests by singing, “We don’t need no education,” or, “the lunatic is on the grass” when I ask if they’ve seen my travel companion. 

Recently, glass artist, Hans Schepker – http://glassgeometry.com/  – emailed me to ask if he could use my Duck Side of the Moon images for wallpaper.  He had seen the designs at my Cafe Press shop, Duck Side of the Moon –     www.cafepress.com/ducksidemoon    – and explained, “Rubber ducks and Pink Floyd are two great joys in my life.” 

Pink Floyd speaks “truthiness to power” as Stephen Colbert would say. Like the songwriters and authors we embrace, Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart, and now Rachel Maddow

Duck Cheney

and Keith Olbermann have mastered the tool of skewering the powerful, the greedy and the dishonest with HUMOR. All four shows hold up mirrors to the people in charge, humorously confronting them with their own lies and the ridiculous face they present to the world.

 

HUMOR is a powerful force, especially in the face of darkness. I believe it was a big part of Sarah Palin’s undoing. We need to laugh at absurdity. We watched her campaign like a train wreck from which we couldn’t look away. That same absurdness made Burn After Reading brilliantly funny as we asked over and over, “What were they thinking!?”

Laughter makes us healthy. When we laugh, our arteries dilate and our blood pressure goes down. Laughter reduces stress and creates bonds with others. Being able to laugh at the curveballs that life inevitably throws us is hailed by life coaches as an essential tool for success. Anyone who lives life faces painful situations; it’s how we walk through them that determines our success.  

As more of us smash our notions of what “life is supposed to be,” we free ourselves to live lives full of spontaneity, creativity, courage and the ability to do the right thing. We’re shifting into new ways of living and earning money. Spirits are lifted by the idea of shifting our economy toward providing service, healing the planet and managing our natural resources. 

So maybe, with all the world has been through in the last 8 years, and with our sharpened sense of irony & humor, our dark night of the soul, looks a little more like this: 

Duck Night of the Soul

 www.cafepress.com/ducksidemoon