Pink Floyd’s the Wall… ahhh… Roger Water’s magnum opus of a rock opera. It’s undeniably a seminal work of art and a musical masterpiece. Just search “Comfortably Numb guitar solo tutorial” to see the thousands of people who have destroyed their fingers on steel guitar strings just to stand next to the fire of one genius song on a genius double album. The lyrics captured the spirit of teenage America with a scree against education, give you a double dose of Oedipal friction with the song Mother, and yeah, of course make you long for some comfortable numbness.
When I was a teenager, in the late ‘80s, I was often told you couldn’t really “get it” unless you’d “watch it high, man.” When I finally did watch the movie, rented from the video store, after school on the couch at my house, while my parents were at work, definitely not stoned, I definitely “got it.” The narrative smacks you in the face pretty hard, even while following a non-linear timeline. The dancing hammer cartoons at the end help a lot with exposition.
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I decided, though, that I’d never want to see the movie again, whether I would be high while watching it or not. After five or so years of hearing the songs on WEBN classic rock in Cincinnati, I was happy to finally understand what another “brick in the wall” meant. If you haven’t seen the movie, sorry for the 40 year old spoilers. The wall was several things: the emotional wall he’d built to manage the shame and humiliation heaped on him by parents and schoolmasters, the wall he’d built to block out the general horror of growing up in post-war Britain, the wall he’d built to manage a life of fame and fortune, and finally the wall he’d built to keep out the pain of being used like so much meat by the record label.
Even though he’d built a psychic wall to keep out all the pain of being different like so many artists were, by the end of the movie it’s too much, and it all comes crumbling down.
Other than the song Mother, which I occasionally rough out on acoustic guitar just so I can say “Mother do you think they’ll try to break my balls,” I had gotten pretty tired of The Wall by the time I was twenty, a full two decades after the movie was released. Another Brick in the Wall, Pt 2 has been on heavy rotation on Classic Rock stations for 40 years as well– accessible if you just listen for an hour or so, to this day. Still a genius album, but well, nothing lasts forever.
It surprised me then to start humming the musical accompaniment to the dramatic beginning of the character’s total mental break, as portrayed in the reprise track of “In the Flesh.” The overdriven guitars punctuated by bright thunderflashes of organ build very quickly to sneering vocals by Roger Waters, whose character personifies all Pink’s deepest fears of society. He shouts out that they’re the surrogate band, and in some sense the true band, the real voice of the generation that needs to be heard, not the liberal, anti-establishment seventies rockstarts who had pushed against the conservative, uptight, and rigid world of post war Britain.
The surrogate band leader proceeds to do a struggle session with the concert attendees, asking for the queers, the coons, the pot-smoking riff raff, and of course, the Jews (not much has changed), to be put up against the Wall. The shouted demand is the antithesis of multiculturalism and liberalism: all are accepted, no lifestyles should be questioned, and no one should be left out. Society was wrong and resisting that society had destroyed Pink. His mental breakdown was the result of bad, old prejudicial ideas that were tied to shame and humility and of course, sex.
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Roger Waters wanted us to know back in 1982 that a liberal society was a big-tent society. If we gave up and let the conservative world win, the deplorables of society would be up against the wall for a firing squad. I’m sure he felt that by now we’d have equity and peace among mankind, but I think the turns have tabled.
Who is now trying to hide in the crowd at the rock show, afraid of the spotlight? The worst thing one an be is a conservative, a word sneered with utmost sneering on every cable news channel. Cube farmers live in fear of losing their jobs if they don’t slavishly attend DEI seminars. Netizens rush to change their online avatars from black squares to the equal symbol to the Ukraine flag to the rainbow in a mad grievance roulette game. People who have never been asked if they are a man or a woman in their entire existence drop their pronouns into their email signatures. Publicly-traded companies rush to comply with all things ESG so they don’t lose a penny over social pressure.
Don’t wear your mask? You’re killing my grandmother. Don’t trans the kids? You’re killing them. Don’t embrace Hamas? You’re killing palestinian children.
The woke tell us it’s all about power, right? All racial inequity is about fear of white people losing power. The hardship of women is because men want to keep power. All resistance to the Pride movement is explained as heterosexuals losing their place in society. Fat phobia is fear of beautiful people losing their influence in society if beauty standards were to change. Even the environment is now a battlefield of strugglenomics, with terms like “Department Of Climate Justice,” being enshrined at City Halls.
Sadly, it seems the leftists have really proved their whole point. They’ve been telling us that anyone who attains power will hold it by demonizing those who aren’t like them. Those who hold different viewpoints and ideas will be marginalized and made to get in line, and the leftists now, who control the media, so much of the government, the schools, and universities, are doing just what they warned us they would do.
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So, who is up against the wall, now, Roger Waters? The Jews, still, it seems, or anyone that might dare to question Israel’s right to exist as a sovereign nation. Christians, for sure, especially white Christians, get them up against the wall too, so they can’t keep preserving Western culture. Married normies, for the societal sin of possibly increasing our population, get them up against the wall. It’s getting crowded, hey, at the wall? Especially since J-6ers, extreme MAGAs, and deplorables have been up against the wall for a few years now.
I will still sit down with my acoustic and croak out “mother do you think they’ll drop the bomb” around the campfire. I can’t help myself.. I’ll probably get around to shredding my own fingers while learning at least one of David Gilmour’s brilliant, soaring guitar solos in Comfortably Numb. As I’m playing though, I’ll keep one eye looking over my shoulder, for the people who want me up against the wall.