Echoes ... of the blogs

This is one of my favourite blogs I wrote that I wish to re-post first.  It combines my love of Star Wars and music, particularly Pink Floyd.  Thanks, nobby, for giving us the space to bring our works back to life.

Originally posted January 10, 2009

Echoes.  Such an interesting word.  When I think of echoes I think of a few different things.  I think about the purely fantastic song by Pink Floyd from their album Meddle, which I will make reference to in this entry.  I think about an actual echo, which is a repetition of a sound caused by a reflection of the sound waves (like calling out hello across a lake or a mountain range) or the reflection of radar signal by an object.  And I also think of memories and how they are an echo of a time gone by which can repeat in one’s mind for years after.

 I’ve always found it fascinating to call out my name in a geographic area that would say my name back to me, or to say hello loudly enough that it sounded as if others on top of the mountain range were saying hello back.  Admit it, how many of you have tried that?  Such a neat and fun thing to do.

And as a Floyd fan, I’ve always been enamored with the song Echoes.  I love all twenty-two plus minutes of it, as it digs deep into the band’s existential writing and dream-like sequence.  Deej, you may have more insight into the deeper meaning of the song, but to me it talks to the beginning of life on Earth being a constant echo in our world … of life climbing towards the light.  I’ll provide an excerpt here of the first few lines:

Overhead the albatross hangs motionless upon the air

And deep beneath the rolling waves

In labyrinths of coral caves

The echo of a distant time

Comes willowing across the sand

And everything is green and submarine

And so interesting that they would use the albatross bird in the song.  In common phrases, an albatross could refer to something around someone’s neck which is a burden that one would have to carry.  Is Floyd saying that the world has an albatross around its “neck”?  That there are great burdens within the beauty of our world that have lasted throughout time?  An albatross, albeit a large seabird, is also something in lore that causes anxiety or hinders any accomplishment.  Perhaps the albatross is linked to the echo of that distant time that can plague so many.  Like Anakin.

Anakin is a fellow who most definitely went through life with an albatross around his neck.  He felt burdened, he felt anxiety and he felt weighed down by the echoes that persisted in his mind … both as himself and as Darth Vader.  The echoes that reflected in his mind were very specific and vivid: the joy at winning the Boonta Eve Classic and the fleeting joy when he realized what it really meant that his mother wasn’t coming with him, the words that he said to her that he would come back to free her and the despair and anger over holding her as she died when he did come back, and the sounds of the slaughter of the Tusken Raiders.  I believe it’s in The Clone Wars movie that he hears the echo of the Tusken’s cry when questioned about that time by Ahsoka.  Such a powerful event in his life that the echoes still sounded real to him.  And it’s those echoes, those memories that drove him to become who he did.  Yes his dreams gave him vision to see what he didn’t want to happen in his life, but it was the echo of those dreams that persisted within him, that drove him to become a Sith Lord and continue down that path as a Sith Lord inflicting pain and suffering on others.  The same pain and suffering that the constant echoes gave him.

And as I think about Anakin and the echoes in his mind, I think of a dangerous, snowy mountain range.  A simple sound that echoes throughout can cause an avalanche with devastating results.  It can bring down a fury of weight that no one can stop … which is what happened to Anakin.  Once his fall started, once he let the echoes in his mind be the trigger, there was no stopping him.  Even as Vader, those echoes remained in his mind as a driving force of his actions.  Which begs the question: can we ever be free of those echoes?  Or better yet, can we allow other echoes to emerge and take voice?

I can imagine that Yoda’s and Obi-Wan’s voices are an echo in Anakin’s mind as well.  But it only took until the end for him to hear their voices from across the lake, as an echo that finally reached him … to hear his past self and realize who he really was.  And to hear a new voice that would echo within his mind … that of his son Luke and the truths he spoke.  Which allowed Anakin to become an echo himself … the echo of a distant time.

Memories are like an echo of the past.  They reside within our mind, continuing to shout back at us, giving us the feeling of what used to be.  And there are good memories and bad memories, there always will be.  But they can also be used for hope as much as remembering good things.  Luke used the echoes of the old, good Anakin in the hope that he would succeed and bring his father back and restore peace to the galaxy as much as Anakin used the echoes of his past to fuel his turn to the darkside.  In a way, Luke was the echo of the past that Anakin needed to be redeemed and toss that old albatross down the reactor shaft.  He could finally free himself of the echoes of so many years.

I like to think that the memories, the echoes in my mind will always give me peace and learning.  The learning can come from the ones that I know mistakes were made, and the peace from the ones that feel good and warm and familiar.

And I’ll still enjoy hearing my name echo back to me.