Memoirs of the Brightside of the Moon

by Ginger Gilmour

  Further, into my analysis, I mentioned to Mrs. Adler that there seemed to be something controlling my behavior, beyond my conscious awareness. I felt that I was a puppet to some unseen program. She recommended that I should make an appointment with a visiting psychologist called Dr. Rossi from the Erickson Institute. He specialized in a form of Hypnotherapy, which enabled one to go deeper into the subconscious but consciously. He was arriving soon to share his insights with 40 of the Jungians in London as well as giving individual sessions. His appointment book was full, but Mrs. Adler suggested that I be his guinea pig during his talk with all the psychologists on the Saturday. I agreed and waited for the day.

  Saturday arrived and I set off from our house in Sunbury-on- Thames across London to the hall where they were meeting in North London. I was familiar with the area, but on the day, I couldn't find it. It was long before GPS and despite the A-Z I found myself just going around and around in circles. I was getting a bit worried since it was a bit close to the time I needed to be there. I did not want to be late. I have often found that when some deep awakening is about to happen to me, my mind freezes. So I pulled over and spoke to my mind and heart, "What I am about to face is good for our future happiness. Could you two work together with me? Please." It worked. The energy cleared and I found my way. The inner doorway to my GPS opened and I was not late. In fact, I was only a block away. I walked up the stairs to where they all were gathered. Mrs. Adler and Dr. Rossi were waiting and motioned forme to sit in a chair at the front of the room. I was nervous as I looked at the 40 individuals sitting before me. I understood that this form of hypnotherapy did not reprogram me like hypnosis did. It just opened folders of memory only with my approval.

  Dr. Rossi's voice was soothing as he took me into the journey. There was a mist that appeared. He asked if I was ok with how I felt. He asked this with each phase, each image that appeared. The first image that emerged from within the mist was me, toddling along a very busy city road. All I saw were shoes, legs and wheels of the cars in the street as I wobbled along. I was probably three years old. Dr. Rossi asked me to go back into the mist, inquiring if I was ok with the images and if I wanted to share what I had seen. I said, "Yes" so I shared this with all who were in the room. He asked, "Shall we continue?" I said, "Yes." I was in the mist again - an image emerged of a man picking me up off the street. He carried me up stairs into an apartment building. He opened the door of a flat. He started to kiss me and stroke my head. I was crying and crying and wouldn't stop. Dr. Rossi could feel my tension rising and asked me to return to the mist. The image faded. The process was repeated again... "Ginger are you ok?" "Yes" Do you want to continue?" "Yes." From the mist, I was back in the flat crying. The man was still holding me, stroking me. His face got worried and tense when he dropped me onto the floor. He ran towards the door and as he did, he kicked me in the stomach.

  I got to my feet and went towards the open door. A woman had heard my cries from the flat below and was climbing the stairs towards me. She picked me up and took me to the police station. The hypnotherapy session was finished and I shared the last images of the story. What was interesting is that all through my childhood, my family often told the story, laughingly, about how once when I was little, they had to come and fetch me from a police station in Philadelphia. They had no idea how I got there.

  Back in analysis, Mrs. Adler and I discussed my experience on the weekend. I saw within that story why I always froze when confronted with an argument. That experience happened before I could speak, making it impossible for me to defend or express myself any other way but to cry. I froze into hopelessness not able to escape. This was my inner private way all my life. I was a shy and silent person. Observant and always fearful of being hurt, needing to be protected. So many insights were revealed to me that one afternoon. I could understand further, why my stomach ached each time life proved difficult. I was back there. A new future laid before me.

  CHAPTER 74

  TOGETHER WE SAVE THE WORLD

  CHICAGO

  1968

  Last night I had been re-reading the chapter of when we had returned to Kauai, seeking to add the one about my analysis with Mrs. Adler. I found myself listening again to the "House of Broken Dreams" on YouTube. A lump and a tear filled my heart as I listened to the lyrics again after so many years. Graham so captured the feeling of our circumstances that summer between David and I. We were "painfully trying,"our eyes missing each other.

  The brilliance of its simplicity and the depth of the lyrics moved me. As it played inside my head, the memory transported me back in time. Each line, each picture, reminded me of what had torn us apart, the heartache, the pain behind the laughter, hoping that it would go away. I reached out to the place where love was once shared deeply. Now separate hearts. I try to sleep. My mind awakened resistant to slumber.

  Ahh, a cup of Chamomile tea, that will help. Sitting on the settee, turning on the telly, seeking another thought, a distraction, there he was. Graham Nash. Synchronicity had followed me. The interviewer asked about his life and his philosophy of how to write songs. I was captivated. I discovered another side of him. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, filled my life in the sixties. It was the voice of the times. Their sound was our culture. Their melodies were me. Watching Graham speak last night, I appreciated more of their contribution they had given to the World. Thoughts I had gone to sleep with, re-awakened in the night.

  I never realized how much of a storyteller he was. He said to be honest when you write. Be real. Don't make it up. Tell the truth of what you feel. He shared many stories that I had never heard sitting on the veranda after dinner in Kauai. He spoke of the making of "Chicago,"which took me back to 1968 as he sang the song. There I was sitting in front of the telly in Ann Arbor, glued to the images of many policemen dragging protesters down the street. Gas bombs filling the air with smoke as the world watched. Then the broadcast stopped. Blackout. The cameraman was assaulted. A voice, a forewarning, "The World is watching!" The last image was the policeman hitting the camera with a club. The moment was gone.

  I was stunned. In the morning when I looked for what had happened, scrolling from station to station, it was all denied, trivialized. "But we saw it!" I screamed at the telly. I was nineteen. I knew then that America had changed, but was not the one of Abe Lincoln. I was no longer part of what it was becoming. Destiny was calling. The Spirit of Liberty for All - Imprisoned in a lie. Hope was leaving our hearts covered in a mist of deception. And we were falling for it as we held our dreams pinned to the walls. It was so subtle, a slow indoctrination of our minds despite we had seen it happen. Aldous Huxley was right. A Brave New World was becoming a reality.

  It was the 1968 Democratic National Convention. JFK, Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were dead. It was a year of violence, political turbulence, and civil unrest. Riots broke out across the nation. The National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam and the Youth International Party (Yippies) had already been planning a youth festival in Chicago to coincide with the convention. They had asked Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young to play. They couldn't. However, they spoke as the voice of the sixties. They encouraged us to change the World in the song "Chicago." And We tried. And still do.

  Mayor Daley had other ideas as the 10,000 demonstrators gathered in Grant Park, Chicago. At 3:30 p.m. on the 28 August, a boy was taking down the American flag at a legal demonstration when the police barged in. They beat him and started fighting with the protesters. All hell broke out. Rocks and food were thrown as their only means of defence as they fought for their rights to speak. The crowd shouted as they were being beaten, "WE WON'T GO! COPS ARE PIGS!" That didn't help. They fought and fought, helmets, clubs and fists each determined to win.

  The head of the SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) shouted, "Scatter throughout the city. If there is going to be teargas everyone should know!" As a result, 23,000 police and National Guardsmen took further action under the orders of Mayor Daley. So m
uch tear gas filled the air that it reached the Hilton, where the convention was in process. Fighting was everywhere.

  Then it happened - right in front of the convention center. For seventeen minutes on national television images were ingrained into our minds forever, if you were a witness. Images that would remember the day the police rioted uncontrollably in Chicago. Do you REMEMBER? But it was not only outside. It was inside. Security guards hauled out a delegate from Georgia. Was he a delegate or not? CBS correspondent, Dan Rather, who was reporting, wearing his headset, went after them. The man was stopped, roughed up, punched in the stomach and the nation heard his demands to the guards, "Don't push me! Take your hands off me unless you plan to arrest me!" They backed off as CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite turned his attention to the matter. Rather and Cronkite were amazed.(1) What was happening outside was now happening inside. And it wasn't the anti-war demonstrators only. Someone was playing a game of Power. Connecticut Senator Abraham Ribicoff spoke out about the violence outside the convention hall by saying, "With George McGovern, we wouldn't have Gestapo tactics on the streets of Chicago!"(1) Daley was not happy and there are conflicting reports about his derogatory comments referring to Ribicoff, as being a Jew and to go home! There was an investigation committee after, which seems to take the blame away from the Mayor. It was a release of pent up emotions, they said, that got out of hand. After 48 hours of rioting, Chicago was a path of destruction and chaos of fires, looting and damaged buildings. With the streets closed to traffic, they placed the city under curfew. Bulldozers had to come in and move away the rubble, with embers still smouldering. Where once stood homes, vacant lots now appeared. Hunger set in as a food shortage settled in the aftermath.(2) Daley issued an order giving the police authority, "Shoot to kill any arsonist or anyone with a Molotov cocktail in his hand... and... to shoot to maim or cripple anyone looting any stores in our city." Martial Law became the name of the game and 135,000 Americans agreed that Daley's actions were correct and appropriate under the circumstances.(2) And the chorus of "Chicago,"by Crosby, Stills and Nash(3) still plays in my head over and over to change the World. Can we? Yes, WE CAN! It was 3:00 a.m. I went back to bed and drifted back to sleep. As I lay there, comforted by my duvet, the songs faded from my mind, leaving me to dream another dream. I was back in 2014 remembering.

  CHAPTER 75

  ISLE OF DOGS CONCERT

  July 1989

  The Momentary Lapse of Reason tour had returned from Paris to play for six nights at the London Arena in the Isle of Dogs, London. The children were going and suggested that I should as well. I tried to resist their pleas for the pain was too close. Alice, bless her heart said that I MUST and went about organizing my tickets. She had difficulty and was embarrassed to tell me that the only tickets I could have were in the bleachers, not with them. Emo and Pip's Mom had tickets somewhere else and a different limo. I decided to brave the storm to honor Alice's efforts.

  And a storm it turned out to be, but more for the audience. For some bizarre reason, the London authorities requested the fans to enter the arena in single file. The Floyd were known to be punctual, but this night it was broken. It couldn't be. What should have been a 7:30 p.m. start became an 8:10 p.m. start. To make matters worse, the beginning of the show was further broken as many entered late. The laser beams cutting across their vision and smoke from above made it more difficult as they clambered for their seats. It was such a commotion. Balancing their drinks and food, many already seated had to stand while others settled. It created quite an unexpected disturbance as we tried to be held by the music.

  The problem that helped create this clamor lay in the fact that once inside the first doors, there was a special offer:

  'SPECIAL OFFER,

  5oz hamburger, relish and lager £3.'

  The Brits love their lager at a concert. I always found this to be in sharp contrast to other countries, the allowing of alcohol at a show. Consequently, there were long queues of fans, already late, buying hamburgers, lagers and T-shirts. And I was amongst them, not buying, but just getting in along with the other ticket holders. I had rented a limousine and Hank was our driver. Jill and Andy Robson and friend came with me. It was a bizarre beginning as our limo left us out in front of the arena. Hank would wait until it was all over in the main parking lot. He said, "Call me when you want to leave."

  Our seats were on the side bleachers as Alice said they would be. My breathing was a bit short as my anxiety built waiting for some fear to go away, some embarrassment to fade. There were sounds of an airplane going overhead that got the audience shouting and excited, but it was not part of the show. It was a plane going to land at Heathrow Airport. Good timing it fit right in. Memories of the American Animals tour returned. The show began. David enters on the stage and gave a run-down of what to expect.

  My heart stopped as I sat far away in the shadow. Song after song played. The fear changed to an inner smile because I was listening to part of my life story. I heard the Joy and the Love that had been there. Each song another memory returned. Where I thought hearing the music would stir the wound, it didn't. I was filled with gratitude for my life instead. I no longer had to run away when I heard the songs playing in the shops or restaurants. I was happy to be me. That evening helped to wash and temper the pain.

  Sue Turner had secretly arranged backstage passes for me and my guests for the party. I was not sure whether to go or not. I would see on the night. I wish that I had chosen not to go because the Joy was about to change despite feeling safe with my guardians. I had to go to the ladies room and left Jill, Andy and friend at the bar. I was still in the cubicle when two women came into the room. They were washing their hands, chatting, sniffing a line of something. One said in a drunken stupor, "Wow, I wouldn't mind getting into Gilmour's pants!" the other woman, whose voice I recognized, said, "No problem. I will introduce you. Get it on!"

  I was so taken back, first, that a close friend, whom I choose not to name, would be so vile. But, Hey, we were separated. He was free bait for the sharks. I waited until they were gone holding back my sorrow. I kept my head low while walking into the flurry of the packed roar of the dancing crowd. Eventually, I found my companions and asked if they minded if we left. "Of Course,"Jill said, as she put her arms around me, concealing my flood of tears. We left unseen. I shared my story in the limo and silently rode home held in the love of dear friends. Another chapter was beginning.

  CHAPTER 76

  CHRISTMAS CAROL FANTASY

  December 1989

  I was now working alongside of Lily in her little basement flat in Willesden and had become a Trustee for her charity. It was becoming evident that we were in need of larger premises for many were coming to us for help. Therefore, I came up with the idea to have a concert to raise funds. Miv Watts/Brewer was living with me at the time and she came on board as co-producer. Nigel Gordon volunteered to be my director and production manager for it was becoming a huge logistic affair. I designed, organized, inspired, and held it together, which was such a learning curve. At times I felt overwhelmed, Lily said, "Ask the Angels, dear, to send help." So I did, often. I can assure you.

  It all began because "I love Christmas!" I asked everyone, "Have you ever dreamt that Christmas could be a time full of Joy and Harmony? A time when all your friends and family can come together and share all the love in their hearts and not argue?" I did, and each year I sought to create an environment, in which Joy did happen within my own home. This year it was also to happen on the stage at Westminster Central Hall, London.

  Our basement telly room transformed from David's telly room, as we were separated, into our Home Command Center. The computers were big and held their stations like robot pods upon the desk and tables. Unfortunately, we did have a few problems for they would crash from time to time. I think the Angelic force was a bit strong for them or was it the opposition, the gremlins. Consequently, our IT person was invaluable.

  Lily had dedicated her life in helping ot
hers to find their way back to health with the use of Mental Color Therapy and Love. And PINK, her favorite color! She said, "There is no illness too great or too small. We never refuse anyone." She has treated everything from Aids to Cancer to Alcoholism, Drug Abuse and Hurt Hearts.

  Lily formulated the school's guiding color principles, which include training the therapists to be the instruments. The color literally comes through our hands, our throats, our foreheads, our hearts. Where the medical profession changes the chemistry of a body through drugs, we change it through visualizing color, for color is a vibration. We teach our students to go into the parks and gardens and memorize the colors of the flowers: roses, buttercups, daffodils, the trees in the spring.

  This project to raise funds was neither too great nor too small for me as I was dedicated to helping Lily and our patients. I decided to create a Christmas Carol Fantasy with angels, fairies and stories with children singing all the favorite songs we knew and loved. The choir would sing several hymns composed by John Tavener. The Prima Ballerina from the London Royal Ballet danced the Sugar Plum Fairy surrounded by 32 fairies from our children's school. Simon Ward, the actor, read the Orthodox Service for the Nativity as we began the evening, "Let Heaven and Earth today prophetically exalt, and let the angels and men spiritually rejoice: for God hath revealed himself in the flesh unto those who were in darkness and sat in the shadow, and hath been born of a Virgin." Throughout the six months it took to plan and execute, each day brought new volunteers to help it into manifestation. I felt I was being guided by something greater than me, the Divine power of our Creator and his team of Angels. Miracles happened each day. Lily repeatedly said for me to ask God and the Angels for what we needed. I took her advice and spoke to them. One day I asked for a PR person for we desperately needed one.