Diamond Cuts

Since grad school, one hard problem has been in the back of my mind: the Dedekind Cut. Back then I thought this could be the problem for me and if I solve it or try to understand it more then I might have a chance to "shine like a crazy diamond" ….

From a young age (maybe when I was 20), my life has been motivated by this one song from Pink Floyd: "Shine On You Crazy Diamond". This morning of Dec 11, 2025, I woke up and listened to this song again. A ritual that I repeat every once in a while. Then I realized that instead of thinking about hard problems that I could not solve or even wrap my ahead around it, I need to reevaluate my goals w.r.t the meaning of this very song. And each time I listen to it, I understand more and unpack all these layers of meanings from it.

So today I decided that I am letting go of the problems that I cannot solve - and the emotional baggage that comes from failures - and look for the things that I really love and can contribute to. Again, the impetus for this change was listening to "shine on you crazy diamond" this morning. Here is a more recent performance of this song and I would say a perfected performance - as if David Gilmour himself has been polishing this gem his whole life.

"Shine On You Crazy Diamond (I-V)"

Remember when you were young, you shone like the sun
Shine on you crazy diamond
Now there's a look in your eyes, like black holes in the sky
Shine on you crazy diamond
You were caught in the crossfire of childhood and stardom, blown on the steel breeze
Come on you target for faraway laughter, come on you stranger, you legend, you martyr, and shine!

You reached for the secret too soon, you cried for the moon
Shine on you crazy diamond
Threatened by shadows at night, and exposed in the light
Shine on you crazy diamond
Well you wore out your welcome with random precision, rode on the steel breeze
Come on you raver, you seer of visions, come on you painter, you piper, you prisoner, and shine!

For years I asked myself what is my most favorite song… and I always come back to “Shine on you crazy diamond” - aside from the music which is heavenly, the lyrics packs so many layers of meaning: for the band members and everyone listening to it. All of us understand and enjoy this song from different angles.

Even from astrophysics point of view, the lyrics on its surface semantics make so much sense … a diamond is the result of extreme pressure and heat on carbon. A diamond is also the result of a star going supernova and the diamonds that are spread in the universe were once part of a star. Once the star is gone, what is left? a black hole in the sky…. Yet we find these diamonds, cut them, and make them shine like a crazy diamond.

And then there are all these second , third and …. infinite layers of meaning for all of us: for the target for far away laughter, for the painter, for the piper… then from our own angle - an anglewhich is determined by all the words we have heard in our lifetime and what we have been through - we will shine a light through the diamond and we find a meaning there.

The connection between the Dark Side of the Moon (and when you cry for the moon or when you realize that the lunatics are on the grass) is also there. Once, I was listening to an Abbas Kiarostami interview - one of the best and greatest film directors of all times - and in it he said (and I am paraphrasing) that an artist has only one piece of art that he is in the process of making it his whole life ( in his case all of his movies are one movie).

To me, all Pink Floyd albums are one album where the Pink Floyd rock stars have been making it in their entire artistic careers. Even though they are separated just like diamonds resulting from a star who underwent a supernova event, all of them are making the same album but they shone light through the diamond from different angels.

So I think when you look at a diamond since its inception to the time it gets cut and placed on a ring and becomes a symbol of love, you are searching for a meaning; it is then that you have found the essence of universe: Love.

For a long time I wanted to write an article with the title "Angle is the Meaning" and get very technical and philosophical where I wanted to discuss different kinds of semantics (e.g. compositional and distributional semantics)… and how meaning is determined by the angles of the vector embeddings (and their cosine similarities), and how each of us internally have constructed our own angle and therefore form our own meaning ….

But today, I was like let me write it the way I see it. Like the angle of light, shone through a Diamond Cut and what comes out of it: the essence of universe which is Love and that is how I see it.