No. 206 – Signs of Life

Performer: Pink Floyd

Songwriters: David Gilmour, Bob Ezrin

Original Release: A Momentary Lapse of Reason

Year: 1987

Definitive Version: Tongue, Tied & Twisted, 1988.

I suppose if someone were doing a similar list and paired this song with Learning to Fly, I wouldn’t argue with him or her. To me, they’re distinct songs, but that’s more because of what this song particularly represents.

The closest I’ve come to having an out-of-body experience happened at Torch Lake in 1988. It came at the end of what had been a surreal day.

My visit to Torch Lake that summer was auspicious for several reasons. First, it would be my first real break from Harbor Country News. Second, it would be another chance to be with Melanie, and I couldn’t get enough of that. Third, it would be a chance for Dad and Laura to meet Melanie and also for me to meet Jin’s new guy, whom she’d met in Columbus after leaving Albion the previous spring.

Because I was coming from the west side of the state, Jin, Scott and Jin’s new boyfriend, Todd, picked up Melanie at home and brought her up. I was overjoyed to see Melanie, and she responded in kind upon my arrival. The arrangements were the same as they had been at first with Beth—separate bedrooms for the guys and gals. Melanie and Jin were in one bedroom in the back, next to Dad and Laura; Scott, Todd and I were out on the sleep porch. At least we were under the same roof.

Saturday was the big day in question. That weekend, the yacht club was hosting an invitational regatta for E scows, so some 30 to 40 boats were there. It was a perfect day—good wind and lots of sun—or so it seemed. As the morning progressed and race time drew closer, rain clouds moved in.

On the surface, this was nothing unusual. Torch Lake can get some pretty nasty weather coming off Lake Michigan less than a mile to the West. However, this storm was unlike anything I’d ever seen—before or since. It moved in from the East, and storms at Torch Lake NEVER come from the East. Heck, it’s rare that the wind even is from the East.

But right when it appeared the storm would hit, it stopped. It was one of the strangest things I ever saw: Imagine a thunderstorm that acted like fog, and you have the idea. It was this huge bank of white clouds—white from the sun that shone in the crisp blue sky directly above the lake—that hung over the east side of the lake, the yacht club and the family compound. Actually, it hung about 300 yards from the shore, so the yacht club remained in sunlight. Every so often, the clouds snuck closer to the lake then receded.

E scows can sail if it rains but not if there’s lightning. Just before the start of the first race, while the boats jockeyed for position, lightning struck in the woods, which sent everyone on the lake scurrying. I’ve never seen more boats race to the shoreline as fast as those boats did that day, which, of course, delayed the race. But after that single lightning strike, the storm drifted away from the lake.

The whole time, Melanie, Jin, Todd, Scott and I were in our bathing suits on the dock at the yacht club waiting for it to either pour and end the day’s events or move off so we could swim. I regaled my audience with songs out of the Steve Dahl catalog, including the Tropical Drinks Song and The Best Seat in the House. Like I said, surreal.

Eventually, the racing started, we swam for a while, and Melanie and I snuck off for some alone time. We figured we couldn’t just go home, so I took her to see the long-abandoned pigsty up the woods not far from Aunt Josie’s orchard across the street from the compound.

Back there, protected by sumac and birch trees, we were out of sight, out of mind … but not out of the rain. Just as Melanie and I once more consummated our relationship on a bed of leaves (cue the hippy love music) close to a grove of pine trees, the storm drifted back, and it began to rain. That didn’t stop us. Then it began to pour. OK, we better get out from under these tall trees.

We grabbed our clothes and raced to the pigsty where we hurriedly dressed among the leaves of years gone by that collected beneath the ramshackle structure. I was just about to put on my baseball cap when Melanie said, “don’t move.”

I had my glasses off, but I could see that something was on my cap—a repulsively titanic brown spider. Melanie knew well of my distaste of spiders, and she took care of the problem: She grabbed a nearby log and whacked the spider over the head a couple of times before it sauntered off from whence it came.

Our communal and conjugal time had been cut short by Mother Nature, so there was only one thing left to do: Go home and see what was going on there. When we arrived—smiling more stupidly than youngsters walking through the rain should—we saw the races were going apace. Dad came by and asked if we wanted to go out on the follow boat to watch up close. We did.

We were out in the middle of the lake when I started to feel a storm inside me creep up from the East. Unlike the actual storm, which seemed to recede further out of harm’s way as the day ambled on, this one raged. I’d had bad headaches before—the one in Hawaii, for example—but this one seemed unlike anything I had experienced. And because we were out on the lake, in the middle of the race, I had to sit there and take it.

When the race ended and we mercifully got home, I downed two Advil and then almost immediately took two more. I was in agony, and all I could do was lie down. Melanie tried to help by rubbing my shoulders, but what really was needed was if she had whacked me over the head with a log a few times. Finally, she gave up and left me alone.

I don’t know how long I was alone, but all of a sudden, I wasn’t lying in bed on the sleep porch. I was out on the lake, face down on a plastic floaty with my arms hanging down into the water as all sorts of pre-dinner activity ensued on shore. Younger cousins swam closer to shore. The sun was setting, and the lake was flat calm, so I could look to the bottom and see logs buried in the sand. Clear as a bell, I could hear the icy synth of this song playing, which makes sense when you consider that the video of Signs of Life in concert features a guy rowing on, then swimming in, a river. I felt relaxed and happy.

Then … I was back in bed, back out on the sleep porch. How long was I out? I didn’t raise my head—I didn’t hurt and I didn’t want to chance moving it—but I listened intently as the family prepared to sit down for dinner outside on the front lawn. I then realized that I was lying face down on the bed, with my arms hanging off either side of the single bed. I never lie in bed like that.

Melanie came in and asked whether I were awake. I grunted yes. She said it was time for dinner. I said go ahead without me. She asked if she could bring me some food, and without hearing a reply, she grabbed bread from the spinach dip plate. I felt like lead, like I was too weak to move, so she lifted my head just enough to put the bread in my mouth and then laid it back on the pillow and left me alone again as I began to chew.

Slowly, I felt myself come back into my body, so I could move this part or that. I rolled over. Outside, everyone was at dinner. Finally, I got up to join them, but I didn’t put on my glasses. I was afraid that somehow by focusing my vision, I’d reignite the conflagration in my head.

By the time I made it outside to the picnic tables, everyone else was finished with dinner, but there was plenty left for me. Melanie saved me a spot next to her and asked how I was doing. OK, I think. I was back in my body, next to my fondest love. It felt surreal, but I detected signs of life. I ate, and I felt better.