Comfortably Numb..

Pink Floyd's the Wall is arguably one of the most intriguing and imaginative albums in the history of rock music. Since its release in 1979, and the subsequent movie of 1982, the Wall has become synonymous with, if not the very definition of, the term "concept album." Aureally explosive on record and visually explosive on the screen, the Wall traces the life of the fictional protagoinst, Pink Floyd, from his boyhood days in war-torn England to his self-imposed isolation as a world-renownedrock star, leading to a climax that is as questionably cathartic as it is destructive.
From the outset, Pink's life revolves around an abyss of loss and isolation. Born to a war-ravaged nation that takes his father's life in the name of "duty," and an overprotective mother who lavishes equal measures of her love and phobias onto her son, Pink chooses to build a mental wall between himself and the rest of the world so that he can live in a constant, alienated equilibrium free from life's physical and emotional troubles. Every incident that causes Pink pain is yet another brick in his ever-growing wall: a fatherless childhood, a domineering mother, a country whose king signs his father's death certificate with a rubber stamp, the superficiality of stardom, an estranged marriage, even the very drugs he turns to in order to find release. As his wall nears completion, each brick further closing him off from the rest of the world, Pink spirals into a void of insanity, cementing in place the final brick in the wall. Yet the minute it is complete, Pink begins to realize the adverse effects of total mental isolation, helplessly watching as his fragmented psyche coalesces into the very dictatorial persona that antagonized the world during World War II, scarred his nation, killed his father, and thereby defiled his own life from birth. Culminating in a mental trial as theatrically rich as the greatest stage shows, the story ends with a message that is as enigmatic and circular as the rest of Pink's life. Whether it is ultimately viewed as a cynical story about the futility of life, or a hopeful journey of metaphorical death and rebirth, the Wall is certainly a musical milestone worthy of the title "art."

the Wall is about the golden mean and realizing that what you do affects others just as much as the things that are done to you; it's about being an individual but not to the point of personal and social alienation; it's about how a person can be so consumed with hatred that he becomes the very thing he hates; it's about the danger of making gods of men; it's about the importance of communication, the void of excess, the fullness of the little moments; and above all, it's about personal, communal and social responsibility.The metaphor of "the wall" is not entirely difficult to parse, especially after having been lead up to it by the previous songs on the album. The album is so grand and intricate that many people are intimidated by the thought of interpreting the main symbol of the piece, thinking that there is more to the simple image than meets the eye. While some might argue that the metaphor is incredibly tricky, I believe that it's the very opposite. If anything, the main idea of the "wall" is quite simple. In the physical world, a wall is simply a collection of material that is used as a partition to separate two or more things. The metaphor of the wall in the album and in life holds to this definition. Because life is so daunting at times, we all have a tendency to distance ourselves from it. Television takes our minds off it, alcohol dulls it, drugs alter the reality of it; in each example, we use everything at our disposal to prevent us from truly connecting with our feelings, from fully experiencing life as both good and bad. As a society, and equally as humans, we have been conditioned to distance ourselves from pain, even if that pain helps us in the long run. As a result, we create metaphorical bricks in our minds for every disturbing situation in an attempt to distance ourselves from being hurt again, from feeling raw and vulnerable. Over time, our personal walls in our minds grow higher and we become more cynical, more jaded towards life and our connections with it. In a sense, every brick is another defense mechanism, something that dulls the pain of a bad situation and disconnects us from ever having to feel that way again. Simply put, the metaphorical wall is nothing more than its real counterpart: a collection of bricks that separate us from something else. Just as the walls of your house protect you from the environment (both rain and sunshine, the good and bad), the mental walls we erect protect us from being completely vulnerable to Life (once again, both the good and bad).

There are a lot of recurrent images and themes throughout the album and movie: bricks / the wall; hammers;white / red color scheme; faceless masks; worms;etc.

As with most art, Pink Floyd's concept album is a combination of imagination and the author's personal life. The album's germinated during the band's 1977 "Animals" tour when frontman Roger Waters, growing disillusioned with stardom and the godlike status that fans grant to simple rock stars, became disenchanted with the seemingly mindless audience and spit in the face of a concert-goer. Drawing on these feelings of adult alienation as well as the those springing from the loss of his own father during World War II, Waters began to flesh out the fictional character of Pink. The band's first frontman, Syd Barret, and the wild stories surrounding his drugged-out escapades and subsequent withdrawal from the world provided Waters with further inspiration for the moody rock-star Pink. The contributions of bandmates David Gilmour, Nick Mason, and Richard Wright, provided the final brush strokes for Pink, a contemporary anti-hero, a modern everyman struggling to find, or arguably lose, self and meaning in a century fragmented by war.