Pink Floyd the Wall

Allow me to paint a picture for you. It’s the mid-90’s and I’m still extremely young. My dad plays a video cassette of various music videos he recorded off of VH1. The ones I’m waiting for particularly are those of The Police. Before that, I get a music video that could easily be defined as the most frightening I’ve ever seen. It’s a sequence from the movie Pink Floyd the Wall, particularly from Goodbye Blue Sky to Another Brick in the Wall, Pt. 2. It all begins with the Union Jack turning into a bloody cross, which is horrifying enough. But then they had to have a sequence where putty-faced children march through an abandoned cookie factory only to end up getting ground into sausage near the end. The very next day, I ordered a meatball marinara sandwich at Subway and I’m barely able to eat the fucking thing because the meatballs look like ground up children and the marinara sauce looks like blood from the Union Jack. Fast forward several years later, namely to my sophomore year of high school. I finally get to watch Pink Floyd the Wall from beginning to end. After the first time, I became an instant fan of the imagery that scared the shit out of me as a child. And then I would watch the movie over and over again as a means of escapism. That and I loved the music of Pink Floyd. Eventually, I began to call this movie my own personal bible, which might not have gone over so well in a town full of Christian conservatives such as Chehalis. The lesson I took away from this movie was not the obvious one of taking responsibility for your actions, but instead one of resisting everybody’s attempts to change who I am. During the sequence for The Happiest Days of Our Lives, Pink’s teacher reads one of his poems in a sarcastic and insulting manner before smacking Pink’s hand with his own pencil. That’s one way people try to change who you are: by insulting you and making you ashamed of your creativity. Folks, I’m here to tell you that no matter how many times someone insults your creative ways, never trade them for mundane conformity. Don’t put on a suit and tie when you can easily write poetry in your pajamas. Don’t put on a hardhat and overalls when you can write a movie script in your underwear. Ever since considering Pink Floyd the Wall my own personal bible, every insult I had ever taken in my life was construed as an attempt to make me a boring person. When a random kid started calling me a crackhead for instance, I took that as an insult of my character. So I did the one thing that every emotional, testosterone-pumped teenager did in those days: I ran up to him one day, kicked him in the ass, grabbed him around the neck, and wrestled him to the floor. I would have rained punches down on him, but I think he got the message. I never heard from him again. Thanks, Pink Floyd the Wall, for reminding me to continue writing offensive literature no matter what criticism it took in the past!

　

***SONG DIALOGUE OF THE DAY***

“Oh my god, what a fabulous room! Are all these your guitars?! God, this place is bigger than our apartment! Uh, can I get a drink of water? You want some? Huh? Oh wow, look at this tub! Want to take a bath?! What’re you watching? Hello? Are you feeling okay?”

-The groupie from “One of My Turns” by Pink Floyd-