High Hopes

Sitting here, suddenly thinking about 2004. I’d just started my first job. I’d catch a bus at 7 am sharp, and the ride to office would take 90 minutes or more some days. I’d walk in around 8:30 am, onto a floor that was a maze of cubicles ringed by tinted glass, letting in blue and white light, big enough to seat at least 200 people. I’d be completely alone up there. The tube lights would still be off, the whole floor sitting in a kind of half-dark, light bleeding in only along the edges through the glass. Walking to my workstation, I could hear my own footsteps echo back at me.

I’d open Winamp, plug in my personal USB, and spend a few minutes deciding what to play. Most mornings I landed on High Hopes by Pink Floyd. A song that pulled me down, every single morning, into something melancholic and strangely comfortable, a familiar place to sit in. It stirred up a kind of sadness in me. Sometimes it felt like the only outlet I had for a sadness I couldn’t express anywhere else, while I spent the rest of the day smiling, laughing, joking with everyone. In that lonely pocket of melancholy, it felt like I could finally say how I actually felt. A bit broken, a bit lonely, and plenty sad. A whole basket of feelings otherwise locked away somewhere inside me, one this song reliably unlocked.

These days, I avoid the song most of the time. It still surfaces on my morning drive, tucked into the golden classics rotation, and the moment it comes on, I skip it fast. Not because I hate it. If anything, it still speaks to me more than almost anything else. But because it scares me a little. I know those feelings are still sitting in there somewhere, unexpressed sadness that multiplies fast the moment it’s uncaged. This song is still the key to that room.

Today was hectic, and it came with an unexpected confrontation on top of it. Part of my job involves evaluating private equity investments into technology companies, reviewing the tech and the teams behind it. Sometimes the people I’m meant to grill push back in interesting ways. Today it was a founder and CTO pair, who went straight for the age-old tactic: throwing their hands up, acting animated and exasperated the moment they felt cornered. I’m no stranger to that move. Professionally, I know exactly how to navigate it. I don’t lose my cool, I acknowledge the discomfort, and I keep asking my questions regardless of how uncomfortable it makes them, or me. I have a job, and I do it. How they feel about it, or how it looks, isn’t my problem. But today’s confrontation ran on far longer than it should have. My coworker was apologetic and visibly rattled, his third time dealing with something like this. I took the wheel in that conversation and drove it all the way to the end. It got done, but it left me completely drained.

That, combined with this pull I’ve felt toward solitude the last few days, some streak of wanting to disappear a little, brought me home and sat me down to write this entry. Before that, I had to decide what to listen to. And today, I chose High Hopes. It pulled me straight back to that floor. The small monitor, the grey crossbody bag, the black keyboard, the corner cubicle. Listening with earphones in, watching my screen run its trippy visualizations.

Here are the lyrics, for anyone who wants to sit with them too:

Beyond the horizon of the place we lived when we were young
In a world of magnets and miracles
Our thoughts strayed constantly and without boundary
The ringing of the division bell had begun
Along the Long Road and on down the Causeway
Do they still meet there by the Cut
There was a ragged band that followed in our footsteps
Running before time took our dreams away
Leaving the myriad small creatures trying to tie us to the ground
To a life consumed by slow decay

The grass was greener
The light was brighter
With friends surrounded
The nights of wonder

Looking beyond the embers of bridges glowing behind us
To a glimpse of how green it was on the other side
Steps taken forwards but sleepwalking back again
Dragged by the force of some inner tide
At a higher altitude the flag unfurled
We reached the dizzy heights of that dreamed of world

Encumbered forever by desire and ambition
There’s a hunger still unsatisfied
Our weary eyes still stray to the horizon
Though down this road we’ve been so many times

The grass was greener
The light was brighter
The taste was sweeter
The nights of wonder
With friends surrounded
The dawn mist glowing
The water flowing
The endless river
For ever and ever