A Walk Through Oz
Like all couples, Luna Loud and Sam Sharp were prone to the occasional argument.
Rarely, however, did they ever get quite this heated.
"Okay, that's it," Sam huffed as she made a beeline to the Loud house's front door. "We're finished. I can't know you anymore."
Luna, as was usually the case whenever her girlfriend threatened to walk out on her, was laughing uncontrollably. "No, wait, come back Sam!" she cried out from her seat on the living room couch in between her fits of giggling. "We can work it out!"
As Sam's hand gripped the door's brass handle, she spared a quick glance back to Luna, her angry glare undercut slightly by the fact that she was clearly fighting back a wide smile. "Don't think you can just quote The Beatles at me and expect me to forgive you!" Her voice had adopted an overly-dramatic flourish, as if she were a stage actor playing to the cheap seats, though her only audience was her snickering girlfriend. "Face it, Luna; it's over. It's time you and I went our separate ways…" Without further adieu, she flung open the door, walked through its frame, and closed it shut behind her.
Just like that, Luna and Sam were broken up.
At least for the next five seconds.
"Okay, admittedly, I may have been slightly overreacting," Sam announced as she reentered the house. Casually, she strolled back into the living room and sat herself back by Luna's side, acting as though her little performance had never even happened. "To be fair, though, you really took me by surprise."
"Eh, I don't see what the big deal is," Luna said with a nonchalant shrug of her shoulders. "So I've never listened to Dark Side of the Moon, so what? Everybody's got their musical blindspots. I mean, you never listened to The Pink Album 'till I played it for you."
"This isn't some obscure, out-of-print Mick Swagger record made out of hard candy, Luna. This is Dark Side of the Moon I'm talking about here, one of the greatest and best-selling albums of all time! For you to never have listened to it would be like a film-buff having never seen The Wizard of Oz."
Though Sam was impassioned, Luna remained calm and laid-back. "I'm just not that big on Pink Floyd, I guess," she casually stated. "I mean, I love 'Another Brick in the Wall' as much as the next guy, but prog just isn't really my style. It's a bit too atmospheric and slow for my liking."
"Yeah, I know how much you like everything dialed up to eleven all the time," Sam muttered with an exaggerated tone of defeat creeping into her voice. "See, this is why you and I will never truly work as a couple. We are just too dang different."
A single laughing snort escaped through Luna's nose. "Yeah, you're so right," she said with as much sarcasm as she could muster. The pair of them had been in a perfectly happy and healthy relationship for the better part of a year, but still on occasion Sam loved to jokingly call back to their first date and its many disasters. Luna, for her part, enjoyed playing along. "I mean, I'm a bit more Beatles, you're a bit more Beach Boys…"
"I'm more Joan Baez, you're more Fairport Convention…"
"Honestly, it's a miracle we made it this far."
"Really, it'd be best if we just broke up now and tried to at least salvage our friendship. Agreed?"
"Agreed."
Their eyes met, and for a beat they simply stared at each other, their faces baring expressions that were parodies of regret and sorrow. The facade quickly became too much to keep up, however, and within seconds they were laughing again. Luna so loved that giggly, lighthearted, tickling-butterflies-in-the-stomach sensation that she only ever seemed to feel whenever she was in Sam's presence. "Nah, but seriously," Sam said once her giggling was under control. "I get where you're coming from. Prog's definitely an acquired taste."
"Right, exactly!" Luna said. "And it's not like I haven't given Pink Floyd a chance before. I bought one of their records secondhand once and couldn't make it past the first three songs. It was just so dull."
"Woah, that's pretty harsh," Sam said, sounding offended on the band's behalf. "Which album was it?"
"I don't remember the name, just that it had a bunch of beds on the cover. I think that-"
"Wait, hang on a minute," Sam interrupted. "You mean to tell me that you're basing your whole opinion of them off of A Momentary Lapse of Reason?"
Judging from the incredulous tone with which her girlfriend spoke, Luna could tell that what she had said must have been some kind of faux-pas. "Uh, I guess so; why?"
Folding her arms across her chest, Sam closed her eyes and started shaking her head, clicking her tongue against the roof of her mouth as though she were a schoolteacher admonishing an underachieving student. "Luna, Pink Floyd's back-catalogue is full of masterpiece after masterpiece; Piper at the Gates of Dawn, The Wall, Animals, Wish You Were Here, even The Final Cut if you're in the mood to listen to something unspeakably depressing…" she explained cooly, "but A Momentary Lapse of Reason is not one of them. I mean, sure, I admit it's got a few half-decent tracks, but I'd go so far as to call it one of the most aptly-named albums in history. It's not fair to judge the band as a whole based off of one of their weakest efforts."
"Well, I suppose you've got a point there…" Luna said, making a big show of how much it pained her to admit it.
Sam smiled warmly, then reached out and took her girlfriend by the hand, weaving their fingers together as she looked into Luna's face with her delicate green eyes. The only thing softer than her touch and her stare was her voice, stripped of all irony and sarcasm. "You know, I've got the album loaded onto my phone," she said enticingly. "If you want, I could hook it up to some speakers and we could listen to it together. I think you'd really like it if you gave it a chance."
How could Luna resist those eyes that were as gentle and wide as a newborn doe's? One glance into them and she was like clay in the other girl's hands. "Yeah," Luna said, blushing furiously. "That sounds nice."
Another smile, one so wide that it practically gave off sunbeams, crossed Sam's lips. "Yes!" she happy squealed, her voice cracking in that bubble-gum popping manner that it always did whenever she became excited. So excited, in fact, that she threw her arms around Luna in a tight hug that nearly suffocated the auburn-haired girl. Not that Luna minded being caught in her embrace, of course. "I promise this album is going to change your life…" For a moment they simply sat there on the couch in each others arms, with Luna enjoying the warmth of Sam's body heat and the subtle scent of her hair, when suddenly Sam let out a gasp like she had suddenly remembered something vital. "Wait, hang on, I just had a brilliant-beyond-brilliant idea!" Breaking away from the hug much too soon for Luna's liking, she flung herself from the couch over to the television, where she proceeded to rifle through the assorted DVDs stacked in the underside of the TV stand.
Luna, her curiosity overshadowing her disappointment to no longer be in Sam's grasp, regarded her girlfriend with a mixture of confusion and amusement. "'Mind filling me in on this brilliant idea of yours?"
In lieu of a straight answer, Sam simply turned around, and Luna could see that she was holding a copy of The Wizard of Oz in her hand. "You know, it's funny I should mention this movie earlier," Sam said, proudly holding the case out in front of her so that her girlfriend could better make out the cover art. "There's something I've always wanted to try. You ever hear of 'Dark Side of the Rainbow?'"
Twenty or so minutes later, all of the lights in the living room were turned low, and Sam lied across the couch with her head resting on Luna's lap. On the television screen, Mrs Gulch, riding her bicycle, entered the frame as 'Time' rang out from a pair of speakers on the coffee table, her entrance corresponding to the series of chimes and alarms from antique clocks at the song's beginning.
"See!" Sam exclaimed triumphantly, pointing at the television. "Gulch entered just as the clocks started ringing. Coincidence? I think not!"
Though Sam spoke with conviction, Luna could tell that her girlfriend's tongue was planted firmly in cheek, and so she smirked in reply. "Man, whoever came up with this 'Dark Side of the Rainbow' thing really must've had a lot of time on their hands, huh?"
"Leave the jokes to Luan, babe," Sam quipped. "But yeah, this isn't really blowing my mind like I thought it would. As far as, 'Cinematic Pink Floyd experiences' go, it's got nothing on The Wall. Here, lemme see your phone."
"Why?"
"I just wanna make sure I set this up right." Rolling her eyes slightly, Luna dug her smartphone from out of her pocket and handed it to Sam, who proceeded to open the web browser and tap at the screen in search of a particular website, one with instructions for how to properly synchronize Dark Side of the Moon with The Wizard of Oz. Once she found what she was looking for, she read from off of the screen. "Okay, so it says here that as long as we started to play the album right at the third roar of the MGM lion at the beginning of the movie, the two should match up perfectly."
"Okay, well, we did that, and it still doesn't seem to be working. I'm pretty sure this whole thing is just some urban legend, like when people used to say that metal albums contain satanic messages if you play 'em backwards."
"Wait, hang on," Sam said, growing a bit more exasperated as she continued to read. "Apparently, we should be using a pre-1989 VHS version of Wizard of Oz instead of the DVD. 'Says here that the VHS has about four-and-a-half seconds cut from the film. You wouldn't happen to have a copy and an old VCR laying around, would ya?"
"You're welcome to check the attic," Luna deadpanned, still smiling.
"Well, let's just forget it then," Sam sighed in defeat as she handed the phone back to Luna. "It was worth a shot. 'Doesn't change the fact that this is an amazing album. How d'ya like it so far?"
Before Luna could answer, David Gilmour's lush and otherworldly voice began to sing.
Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
You fritter and waste the hours in an off hand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way…
Sam was right; it truly was unfair to judge a band based on a few lackluster songs.
The music, multilayered and sweeping, washed over Luna, and she felt a certain strange mixture of serenity and exhilaration at the mournful lyrics and instrumentation. She had felt a similar combination of emotions only once before, when she and Sam and a few of their friends had gone night swimming during the previous Summer, and she dove beneath the surface of a calm lake in the pitch black.
Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun…
A blistering guitar solo followed, giving Luna a chance to voice her thoughts. "It's fantastic," she said in an awed half-whisper as Gilmour's guitar sawed through the air. "A bit different to what I'm usually into, but I can definitely see why it's so beloved." Inwardly, of course, she conceded that her opinion may have been slightly shaded by circumstances unrelated to the song itself. After all, Luna doubted that she would have been quite so enraptured had she not been sharing the experience with the girl whose head rested in her lap.
Nevertheless, Sam still looked up at Luna with a smug smile. "Told ya so," she said, pleased as punch that her hyping up of the album had not been in vain. Despite it now being clear that her little experiment in synchronicity was a failure, she still returned her attention to the television and continued to watch the film as it played the scene in which Dorothy Gale encountered Professor Marvel whilst running away from home. "Man, this movie is so beautiful, even before Dorothy lands in Oz," Sam said wistfully to herself. "Just look at all those fields and farmlands…"
Though her voice was low enough to nearly be drowned out by the music, still Luna could hear the slight sense of nostalgia in her girlfriend's tone, and she was instantly reminded of something Sam had said to her on their first date. "You're, um, really into farms, huh?" Though Luna did not quite get the appeal of red barns and livestock herself, she still figured that she should make an effort to better understand her girlfriend's interests.
"Yeah," Sam answered, her eyes still focused on the screen. "I grew up on one, you know."
"Really?" Luna said, surprised yet delighted to learn more about Sam's childhood. "I didn't figure you for a country girl."
"Well, my family moved to the suburbs when I was little, but yeah; some of my earliest memories are of me playing hide and seek in the cornstalks in the Summer, having bonfires with my parents, waking up at dawn to help feed the chickens…" Her voice drifted off as she subtly smiled, appearing as if she were floating down a river of golden memories.
Luna loved to see her so contented, and when she looked down upon Sam's face, illuminated by the flicker of the TV set, she had the thought that her girlfriend had never looked more beautiful than in that moment…
"There something I can help you with?"
The teasing question broke Luna out of her daydream, and she realized that she had been staring at her girlfriend with a blankly lovestruck expression on her face. "I was just thinking about how pretty you'd look in a blue checkerboard dress and with your hair done up in pigtails."
A subtle smirk came to Sam's lips as her blush intensified. "I think you just gave me an idea for a Halloween costume this year."
Not since she was a young girl who still went trick-or-treating had Luna ever looked more forward to Halloween than in that moment. 'Till then, however, there was something far sweeter than candy within her reach. Intending to savor the moment, she slowly leaned down and pressed a gentle kiss onto her girlfriend's lips just as Dorothy left her sepia-toned world behind and stepped into the land of Oz. Had she still been watching the film, Luna, deeply entranced as she was in the kiss, would have related strongly to the Kansas farmgirl's expressions of awe and wonder at all of the beautiful colors that now surrounded her.
Whenever they kissed, she felt as though she had been carried by a whirlwind to that magical land somewhere over the rainbow.
Once they broke apart, Luna noticed the sounds of coins jangling and cash registers opening and closing as 'Money' began to play over the speakers, and she realized that she had spent the previous several minutes barely even paying attention to the music, missing out on most of the rest of 'Time' and the entirety of 'The Great Gig in the Sky.' Not that she was too broken up about it. She supposed that they would simply have to listen to the whole album all over again once the final song finished playing. Then again and again until she and Sam fell asleep in each others arms on the sofa. She could not imagine a more perfect end to such a perfect evening.
The song's distinctive bassline kicked in, and Sam began to bob her head to the rhythm, closing her eyes and biting her lower lip in contentment as she felt the music move through her body. "You know, this is probably my favorite song of theirs," she said dreamily as she started to rise from the couch. She stood up, walked to the center of the room, and began to dance, her movements as stiff and gangly as those of the Scarecrow, all loose-limbed and herky-jerky as he frolicked his way down the yellow brick road.
Luna did not mind Sam's awkwardness, and in fact found her amateurish performance rather endearing. As long as she could watch her girlfriend shake her hips, she was happy. "I thought you weren't much one for dancing," Luna teased.
"Eh, I figured that since you're moving out of your comfort zone by listening to Pink Floyd, it's only fair I try to move out of mine," Sam answered with a carefree shrug. "Now c'mere and dance with me."
Luna was more than happy to oblige. She joined Sam at the center of the room and wrapped her arms around the blonde-haired girl's slender frame, guiding her girlfriend into a simple waltz that did not quite match the song's time signature. Not that Luna cared. She ran her fingers down the length of Sam's back, counting all of the notches in her spine which were pronounced even through her denim jacket, and her first thought was that the girl in her embrace was much too thin, and that she really had to take her out to dinner sometime. For now though, she was content to simply sway with Sam in the dimly lit living room, and even though 'Money' was not exactly what she would have called 'slow-dance music,' she figured that she could make do anyway.
Money, get away
Get a good job with good pay and you're okay
Money, it's a gas
Grab that cash with both hands and make a stash
New car, caviar, four star daydream
Think I'll buy me a football team…
By now, neither of them were paying attention to the film anymore, too wrapped up were they in each others love. Luna did not feel as though she were missing out on much. After all, how could The Wizard of Oz compare to Sam's Emerald-City eyes, her yellow-brick hair, that subtle ruby-slipper blush upon her cheek, which was as soft and flawless as that of Judy Garland…
When Luna looked upon Sam's radiant face, she saw her love written as though in bright and vibrant technicolor.