The irresistible tragicness of Syd Barrett's post-Pink Floyd life captured perfectly in essay

While eagerly awaiting more word on when we're going to actually get to see the upcoming movie Have You Got It Yet?: The Story of Syd Barrett and Pink Floyd, I stumbled on a fascinating two-page essay that told me a lot about the founder and leader of Pink Floyd's estrangement from rock music and the world at large.

I've had The Mammoth Book of Sex, Drugs, and Rock 'n' Roll on my bookshelf for 20 years and had never read "An Afternoon with Syd Barrett," by Jenny Fabian. (The full, very short essay is also fully online.) Here's my summary of the highlights:

Jenny Fabian's book Groupie

Although I'm not sure of the exact date of publication, Barrett had moved on from the Floyd and had released his solo album, The Madcap Laughs, and the artist was surprisingly not too hard for Fabian to find. She had published a popular book at the time, Groupie, and wanted to interview him for a column she was writing for her current gig at Harpers & Queen (which was later renamed Harper's Bazaar).

I wasn't sure how he'd react, for it was three years since I'd last seen him and the word was that he'd flipped beyond repair. He answered the phone himself, and I was surprised at how friendly he seemed. He told me to come to his flat in Earls Court the following afternoon. ... He opened the door. He was barefoot and his dark hair hung wild and matted round his waxy white face. 

Barrett proceeded to prepare things for himself and his guest with the only things he had in the kitchen - one egg spread over one piece of stale bread for him and a dirty glass of water for her.

There was nothing much in the flat other than floorboards he had painted himself and albums strewn about. They sat on his lumpy bed and smoked a joint. 

We must have sat there for several hours, most of the time in silence, and he didn't seem inclined to put any sounds on. I felt no need to get through to him because I knew he was out the other side and miles away. His thoughts were like currents in the air, as though they had exploded uncontrollably from a brain that had been boiled in acid and split like a tomato skin.

He was completely self-indulgent with his imagination, never trying to control or direct it within any bounds of reason. Reasoning was inconclusive and unnecessary to him, because one reason led endlessly to another. I asked him if any reason ever led to an answer. He looked startled at the sound of my voice. Then he told me that as there is no reason, there is no answer. It seemed there was nowhere left to go, and he knew it.

Fabian's main takeaway was that Syd was "irresistibly tragic" and eventually the two of them started kissing, she forgot about her notebook, and their clothes got lost in the piles of other clothes on the bed and floor.

Afterwards, she wrote:

He put on a Beach Boys LP and it played over and over again until I couldn't stand it any longer and had to leave.

5 out of 5 stars