A Musical Mood

"Pigs on the Wing" by Pink Floyd just so happened to come across my iTunes playlist.  It's a two-part song...

Part I:
"If you didn't care what happened to me.
And I didn't care for you.
We would zigzag our way through the boredom and pain.
Occasionally glancing up through the rain.
Wondering which of the buggers to blame.
And watching for pigs on the wing."

And, after 35 minutes of jamming and screaming about Dogs, Pigs, and Sheep, we get Part II:

"You know that I care what happens to you.
And I know that you care for me too.
So I don't feel alone.
Or the weight of the stone.
Now that I found somewhere safe to bury my bone.
Any fool knows a dog needs a home.
A shelter from pigs on the wing."

I think it's the confused wailing between the bookends that really sets the tone.  The protagonist is left wondering what would happen if he wasn't cared for.  It seems a bit like unrequited love, an unrequited love that eventually dissipates into nothingness.  The protagonist is curious as to what would happen if he finally were able to move on.  His hypothesis is less than sterling.  There would be pain, of course, and boredom, since he's leaving behind the only thing that he thoroughly enjoys, and, we can imagine, he would feel helpless and abandoned.  It would be a tough pill to swallow if it were to happen.  But all of this is, I believe, just the musings of a man.

After his yelling about the danger of the dogs and the soldier-like solidarity of the sheep, we see that it was all a dream.  He does care.  And his love cares for him as well.  Or at least he believes that he is cared for.  As promising as the song may appear - the love is still there and it has survived the complexities of life - there is still a jaded and cynical view that can be taken.  Pushing aside all of the schlock and veneer, there may be something less than admirable going on...

The third line of Part II talks about the protagonist's fear of being alone.  He also discusses how all dogs need a home, lest they run wild and don't live up to their full potential.  If a dog has a home, that means he has shelter, food, people to pick up after him, and people to care for him.  It is a desirable situation - all domesticated dogs presumably want a life like this.  In the same way, all people want to feel that comfort as well.  But perhaps this protagonist is embracing comfort for comfort's sake.  I mean, he's no longer alone, right?  He's imagined all the horrors that will occur if he's not with her.  Wouldn't it make more sense, he reasons, to just stay with the one who has provided that safe place to bury the bone?  That place that will be protected and can be returned to whenever it's time to chew on the bone again?  I don't know...perhaps the intentions are not as pure as originally thought.

But we need to remember that this is a Pink Floyd song we're looking at here.  They're much better at singing about a man's descent into madness than professing any sort of love.  Should we just accept the shortcomings evident in the song and embrace it as a valiant attempt at showing genuine human emotions?  I don't know.  I'm probably looking into the song too much.  I mean, it could also be a realization that nobody else is worth a damn to the protagonist.  He's seen everything that the world could become with her in it.  This is a sign of major props to her - she alone makes his world pure and right and full.  If this is the case, the protagonist should be applauded for loving so strongly and passionately.

This leaves us some place in the middle.  On the one hand, we have the thinking man's solution, that the protagonist is just looking out for himself and trying to be as happy as he can be, even if it's at the expense of other people.  On the other hand, we've got the hopeless romantic, who feels that love is strong enough to overcome the bonds that try to hold it down.  The protagonist can't imagine a world without her!  Isn't that enough?  That's poetry at it's finest! 

So where does that leave us?  It's up to our own interpretation of course!  On any given day we may feel one way about it, and then do a complete about-face the next day.  Our circumstances influence our thoughts.  The most important thing is that we remain true to those thoughts that define us, those thoughts that cannot be influenced.  Perhaps then will we be able to fully understand this love.

One more thing: what exactly are we talking about when we discuss the pigs on the wing?  What does that mean?  After much consternation and examination, I'm starting to think that it's a metaphor for anything that is difficult to imagine or understand.  There are going to be those situations in which we don't know what to do or how to handle it.  That's why we have that crutch, as the protagonist so aptly reminds us.  The love is the shelter.  The pigs serve to make things more difficult, more troublesome.  But the love overpowers.  One man's interpretation.