August 20, 2025

It took a lot of fighting with myself and incessant internal struggles to post the picture you see above, but I got out of my own way and made it happen. Yep, that’s me, 12 years old and fresh from summer vacation, a time of year where I tend to look more distinctively Indian, at least in those days, what with my long hair and nose. But I was starting middle school at the same time as my prog journey, right on the cusp of entering the dreaded teenage years. As you can see, I had the works: braces, glasses, and acne (hard to see, but it’s there). It would be another year until I lost those braces and two until I got contact lenses. Much longer for the acne. Nonetheless, that summer was the summer of Pink Floyd. The weeks were spent listening, reading, watching, and absorbing all I could so that I could learn as much as possible about this band. I was asking questions that had never provoked my mind, questions about concepts, artwork, literacy, all things I had never thought to look for in music. I think up until that summer, music was mainly a source of entertainment. You danced and sang karaoke, you played games centered around music. Music made you laugh more than cry, and it never made you stop in our tracks and question everything you thought you knew. I’m not trying to imply that that sort of music is inferior, it was just a different time and place. But today, I can’t help but smile at the fact that prog was always there, like it was just waiting to be discovered by me. It did make its rounds in my early childhood, though I wasn’t aware at the time. Small memories like seeing the artwork of King Crimson’s In the Court of the Crimson King as part of the default iTunes Artwork screensaver on my Dad’s desktop Mac, or finding the CD of Rush’s Test for Echo in our family room cabinet of CDs still exist as flashing images in my head. I didn’t know a note of music on said albums, but those are my earliest memories of being intrigued just by the artwork of a record.