Roger Waters, Pepsi Center, Denver 5/7/12
As a pre-pubescent teenager, the classic double album by Pink Floyd called The Wall was the third cassette I ever bought (the first two were The Repo Man Soundtrack and Led Zeppelin’s ZOSO). I vividly recall listening to it for the first time walking to track practice, and listening to its frank passionate emotion made me suddenly break down crying. The sincere tears of empathy and sadness streamed from my eyes as the tunes wafted from my Walkman, and I knew, for the first time, the intense emotional power that music contained. From that day, I set down that path to embrace all music and art for just for a taste of that zealous embrace of expressive ecstasy. As I got older, I began to realize the bigger metaphor behind the album. Apart from the raw deep emotion contained within, it is an illustration of how the mind protects itself after years of damaging experiences and can build a largely subconscious wall to shield itself from further harm. After to many cruel characters and unhappy incidents, you can become isolated behind a wall of these protective barriers. There are also greater analogies to this wall, like the intolerant blockades that lead to war and violence and even the fortification that forms with fame that separates you with the audience that you try to connect with. It leads you to conclusion that to live and connect in the wider civilized world, you must tear down that fortification and risk further harm. This amazingly deep observation of the human condition was told musically through the eyes and the life of one man by the name of Roger Waters.
