The first thing I did when I heard you were gone: I drove to the store, bought a pack of smokes. No, the first thing I did when I heard you were gone: I bought a pack of Camels and drove down to the river. No, the first thing I did when I heard you were gone: I tried not to cry until I hung up the phone. No, the first thing I did when I heard you were gone was to go down to the river and look up at the sky, at the stars, and I remembered, at first, not the photo you once took of Sagittarius, but the picture that accompanied it, the picture of the beach at night, the camera set on a tripod and tilted back to see the sky, the empty chair beside it—that empty chair. No, the first thing I did when I heard you were gone was ask: how? No, the first thing I did when I heard you were gone was ask: why?

This is an essay about Pink Floyd’s first album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. Or maybe this is a short story about Pink Floyd’s first album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. This is not an essay or short story about the night that my parents called me on the phone to tell me you were gone. This is not an essay or short story about how the next morning I woke up to the news that you had killed yourself. This is also not an essay or short story about how later that week, I heard that you had died from an accidental drug overdose, nor will this be an essay or short story about how, later still, that same week, a mutual friend informed me he’d heard something else, something, something hotel, something, something, unknown. This will also not be an essay or short story about how sometimes I still Google your name, the name of the city in which you died, and “suicide,” or “murder,” or “death,” or “investigation,” not because I need to know what happened, but because I can’t stand not knowing. No, this is an essay or short story about Pink Floyd’s first album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. The album begins with a song about space. About planets and moons and stars. You were into Astrophotography. When I started writing this essay or short story about Pink Floyd’s first album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, how could I not think of you?

When visiting your mother in Costa Rica, you went to the beach at night. Maybe there are answers in that. You took a tripod, a camera, a chair. Probably some other things. You said you took three trips over two nights, spent ten-plus hours. All between sunset and sunrise. You took a picture of the stars and posted it on Facebook. You said that the photo was of the center of the Milky Way, the constellation Sagittarius. You explained that, deep inside, there is an astronomical radio source called Sagittarius A*, which is believed by many to be a supermassive black hole around which our solar system revolves. Lately, I’ve been thinking that we all know a thing or two about how it feels to revolve around supermassive black holes. Something tells me you knew, too.

When I listen to “Chapter 24,” on Pink Floyd’s Piper at the Gates of Dawn, I think about you. The song is about mysticism, is about the I Ching. Because you are gone, I think maybe there are answers here. There is something in the song about return, but that something is inscrutable. Syd Barrett sings, “A moment is accomplished in six stages / And the seventh brings return.” What does return mean? It doesn’t mean return from the grave. I know that. But in the song, the idea of return feels comforting, as if speaking of some kind of victory, or a return to normalcy perhaps. I begin reading about the I Ching, its twenty-fourth chapter, segment, section, whatever. That’s how little I know about mysticism and religion—I don’t even know what to call it. I learn that the twenty-fourth section of the I Ching is known as “Fu,” or, in English, “Return.” Its symbol, or hexagram, or whatever looks like this:

I don’t know what any of this means. I keep reading and find this line from the Richard Wilhelm translation of the I Ching, one of the versions that Barrett’s lyrics are said to most closely resemble. Parts of Wilhelm’s text look like poems. Other parts look like prose. Here is the part from Wilhelm’s translation of the twenty-fourth section of the I Ching that looks like a poem:

RETURN. Success.
Going out and coming in without error.
Friends come without blame.
To and fro goes the way.
On the seventh day comes return.
It furthers one to have somewhere to go.

Here is an excerpt from the part that looks like prose: “After a time of decay comes the turning point. The powerful light that has been banished returns. There is movement, but it is not brought about by force.” He also writes, “…the winter solstice, with which the decline of the year begins, comes in the seventh month after the summer solstice; so too sunrise comes in the seventh double hour after sunset . . . In this way the state of rest gives place to movement.” Something about the return of a banished light and the lengths of days, sunsets and sunrises. I still don’t know what any of this means.

I can’t help but think that Piper at the Gates of Dawn is an album obsessed with the unfathomable, with impossible mysteries, with the inscrutable. Barrett’s songs, here, lean wildly into the unknown, the uncertain, the beyond. To myths and folktales and fantasy. Listening to these songs, I’m not surprised at the trajectory of Barrett’s life, at his odd behavior in Pink Floyd that led to his mental breakdown and dismissal from the band, at his becoming a bald recluse who spent his days painting and gardening in Cambridge, at his quiet death in 2006. That is the life one expects from a man whose songs so desperately were trying to understand the world around him through mysticism, mystery, fantasy. I can’t help but think that the truth of your demise is unfathomable, an impossible mystery, inscrutable. Unlike Syd Barrett, I can’t look at the arc of your life and make sense of suicide, or a drug overdose, or something, something, hotel, something, something, unknown. I will never know why you’re gone. I will never know how you left.

The more I look at the name of the twenty-fourth section of the I Ching, the more it stops looking like “Fu,” and begins looking like “F-U.” Maybe this is because I find everything that I’m reading difficult, vague, frustrating. Or maybe I’m just lashing out.

Here are the things I know: There are no answers to be found in the I Ching; There are no answers to be found in The Piper at the Gates of Dawn; There are no answers to be found in writing an essay about The Piper at the Gates of Dawn; There are no answers to be found in writing a short story about The Piper at the Gates of Dawn; There are no answers to be found from your family; There are no answers to be found from your friends; Years after he left Pink Floyd, Syd Barrett had no hair; You started losing your hair when you were young, but you were nothing at all like Syd Barrett, I don’t think, but then, I never met Syd Barrett; The I Ching says, I think, that some sort of renewal or rebirth occurs just after the winter solstice; You were born three days after the winter solstice in 1978—I think that means something, but it probably doesn’t; You are the powerful light that has been banished but you will not return.

In the message you sent me after your trip to Costa Rica, you told me you were seeing a psychologist. You told me that you didn’t want to kill yourself because it would hurt too many people, but that you sometimes didn’t want to exist anymore. You said you were working on it, though, that things were looking up. I trusted you.

There’s one more thing I know: flipped upside down, Hexagram 24 looks like one of the Recognizer ships from Tron. This seems silly, I know, but it’s not. We used to talk about Tron. You once told me that Tron was one of the things that made you interested in computers, which became your life’s work. I remember visiting you in the computer lab when we were undergraduates. You showed me one of your animations in which a man fought with a parking meter. The parking meter won.

The night you took pictures on the beach in Costa Rica was in early June. You posted the pictures on June 24. Maybe you were on the beach the two nights before that? June 22 and 23. The 2015 summer solstice in Costa Rica was June 21. If Pink Floyd and the I Ching say that the winter solstice marks the end and beginning of one cycle, does the same hold true for the summer? I picture you under the stars, in awe of the infinite night sky, and maybe that was the beginning of something that couldn’t be stopped. I wonder, did you know, then, that you’d be gone before the next solstice?

But none of that matters. None of these things are connected. I know that. But where else am I going to find an answer? The first thing I did when I heard you were gone was ask: how? The first thing I did when I heard you were gone was ask: why?

I look at the upside down Recognizer ship from Tron, or the right side up Hexagram 24 from the I Ching—whichever, they’re the same. It speaks to me, says “F-U.” Sometimes, now, I scroll down your Facebook wall because it’s the closest I can come to seeing you. When I approach June, I hold my breath, wait for your picture of the Milky Way, of Sagittarius, of Sagittarius A* to slide up my screen. I wait for the tripod and the empty chair and remember what it feels like to be orbiting around a supermassive black hole.

—James Brubaker