The black television screen flickers, time-stamped like a death warrant: 20 October 1994, Earls Court, London, UK. The television hums to life, spilling out the remastered wails of Pink Floyd’s “The Great Gig in the Sky.” A symphony of madness, women howling into the void, shattering whatever remained of my grip on reality. I’m welded to the bed, glued in place by the waves of sound. No escape.
The acid. Christ, the acid. Melting my spine like candle wax, dripping through my mattress, pooling into the floorboards beneath me. I can feel it sinking into the earth.
“Fuck you.”
Then louder —
“Fuck you! FUCK YOU!”
Screaming at those two tabs like they had grown eyes and ears, like they were conscious, like they could hear the chaos shredding through my skull. Torturers.
I wasn’t ready for this. God, no. Not tonight. Not now.
I lurch out of bed, stagger through the sliding door, out into the world — onto the golf course, where the moon’s pale light spills across the grass like some haunting spotlight. The cart path glows beneath my feet, guiding me like a road to nowhere. I’m clawing at my hair, yanking at my collar, gasping for air.
This isn’t what I wanted. Not like this.
What have I done?
I shouldn't be out here. My neighbors will see me. Their eyes are like cameras behind drawn curtains. They'll see this mess — this sweating, trembling mess of a man who doesn’t belong out here. Who doesn’t belong anywhere.
Tomorrow... tomorrow I have work. I have to face people. Face reality.
But tonight?
Tonight, I’m lost, somewhere between the notes of Pink Floyd and the rabbit hole I’ve just tumbled down. I see the red and blue lights from the window of my room off in the distance, calling me back for more of it. I enter expecting the torture to halt. One drip in my chest turns to two, then three. I hold my hand over my chest and bring one knee to the ground. I beg for it to be over. I look down and pray for the first time.
I hear Jimmy Page’s fingers crawling across the fretboard like a spider that knows the whole world is watching. It’s not just a riff — it’s a fucking confession. The first note hits like the crack of thunder on a desert highway, a sound so raw you can taste the cigarette smoke curling off the strings.
Page bends those notes, stretches them like they're screaming for salvation but finding only sin — pure, uncut blues pouring straight from the amplifier. Every slide, every pull-off carries the weight of a man who’s been to the edge and back, hungover on heartbreak, still playing like his life depends on it.
The sound isn’t clean. It’s dirty, snarling, bleeding through the speakers like a junkie in the rain, and it hits you right in the gut. And Christ, you can feel it. That riff grabs you by the spine and drags you through the mud, every twist and bend making you believe you’re drowning in someone else’s sorrow. I need it. I’m hooked.
It’s a seduction and a gut punch — the kind of thing that makes you want to sell your soul to the devil just to feel the sting of those six strings one more time.
No more dripping. No more running.
Just me and Page’s guitar, like it knows everything I’ve been through.
When the world finally clicks back into place, it’s not the same. Nothing’s the same. The trip’s over, but it’s left something behind, etched into my soul. I look at the mess of myself in the mirror — a man who thought he had control, who thought he could handle whatever the universe threw at him. But now, I’m not so sure.
The acid took something. Left something else behind. Maybe a little bit of delusion. Maybe a little love. Maybe a lot of fear.
I knew that the next day was coming, and with it, the weight of reality.
“Where’s Earls Court?”