Pink Floyd's The Wall explained
This site is pretty cool and answered some unasked questions I’ve had for quite a while about the lyrics of Pink Floyd’s songs…
Complete analysis of Pink Floyd’s album “THE WALL”
As for me, along with Murali and Koustu, have listened to Pink Floyd since college days (around 1993)… Murali used to play the Division Bell while playing our long chess games that usually ended in a fight 😉 Later on we even tried to sit and write down the lyrics – it was pretty hard for us to grasp some of the words and we had to keep rewinding and playing again and again (of course then there was no google 😉 )
I think one of my favorites is High Hopes… I find that missing here… Bret, the author of the site replied to an email I’d sent saying he’d never really gotten into the post-Roger Waters Pink Floyd (“Momentary Lapse” and “Division Bell.”), though he did think they’re great albums.
Here’s an excerpt from the title song Another Brick In The Wall, Part 1
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).
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Rumi’s said something similar…
“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”
About escapism through distractions, Einstein hasn’t even left out art and science…!
“…one of the strongest motives that lead men to art and science is escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness, from the fetters of one’s own ever-shifting desires. A finely tempered nature longs to escape from the personal life into the world of objective perception and thought.” – Einstein
The below is IMO Einstein’s all time greatest quote… 🙂
“A human being is a part of a whole, called by us ‘universe’, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest… a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”
Its a scientific truth – but only Einstein’s truth. As he says “Our task must be…” – so its up to every individual person to discover it for himself/herself and make it his/her own truth.
Btw if you look at the analysis of the lyrics of Pink Floyd – when Einstein says “This delusion is a kind of prison for us” – dosen’t it sound like nothing but “The Wall” that Pink Floyd refers to… and again that’s Pink Floyd’s own truth…
Bowie Joined pink Floyd on stage I saw! Go see video at http://www.outsidethewall.net
A human being has so many skins inside, covering the depths of the heart. We know so many things, but we don’t know ourselves! Why, thirty or forty skins or hides, as thick and hard as an ox’s or a bear’s, cover the soul. Go into your own ground and learn to know yourself there.
~ Meister Eckhart
Below the relatively superficial levels of the mind beneath the emotions we are ordinarily aware of lie layer on layer of the unconscious mind. This is the “cloud of unknowing,” where primordial instincts, fears, and urges cover our understanding. The deepest flaw in the mind is what Einstein called the “kind of optical delusion of consciousness” that makes us see ourselves as separate from the rest of life. Like a crack in glasses that we must wear every moment of our lives, this division is built into the mind. “I” versus “not-I” runs through everything we see.
To see life as it is, the mind must be made pure: everything that distorts must be quieted or removed. When the mind is completely still, unstirred even in its depths, we see straight through to the ground of our being, which is divine.
~ Eknath Easwaran’s Thought For The Day