This was beautiful thank you for this. I had a similar phase with both The Wall and the Who’s Quadrophenia. The ending of the Wall really hits me, when the ones who really love you walk up and down outside doing anything they can to break in. Realizing those people are there was key for me.
I was always a bit obsessed with The Wall in my HS years. I didn't have the same path as you did, the end of your essay here is more in line with how I've always related to it, but those three songs during the turn... They've always made me uneasy on a spiritual level. Took a long time to learn why.
I wasn’t in a competitive place like Harvard but I definitely had that lonely, broken outsider feeling that could’ve sent me down that road if I hadn’t found healthier ways to look at the world.
Ditto. I would have ended up in Cambridge except I had my first (what I now recognise as) burnout young enough it wasn't an option. There but for the grace of God...
Read this before sleeping last night and ooof, it’s haunting still this morning. Your description of connecting to art and letting it be a lifeline is one of my main goals when making comics. Hoping some people who are at the cliff of loneliness catch this beautiful essay.
Interesting essay; fingers crossed that it causes you no trouble.
I understand a bit better why my dad did *not* encourage me to go to an elite school as an undergrad (as several in my HS peer group did); he said ~ "Save that for grad school."
This has added thoughts to my mess of thoughts of "The Wall" and what's going on right now. The increased levels of mess is good, gives my brain healthy exercise.
I have been incubating a piece about a community music fest my wife and I curated last weekend and how said community and our art and music re-energized me to resist the fascism brewing right now and I have a feeling I will be citing the end of this peace, because damn. Yes. YES.
This is great, Josie. So many of us flirt with authoritarianism in response to pain and repression. Thanks for verbalizing that and I am glad you made it away from Harvard.
yes i feel like i had a moment in college where i thought democracy must be a flawed system bc i only saw how often it was used to excuse stepping on people like us. you really put words to it, Anna, ty
This was an amazing read, and very inspiring as well! It's so easy to fall into the rightwing trap due to loneliness, and I feel so lucky every day that I never got sucked in despite being a lonely depressed young guy. There is hope!
I felt the same way about Pink Floyd growing up. At school everyone raved about Dark Side and The Wall, but when I listened to my dad's albums I couldn't hear it, it all seemed so... Banal. These days, helped by learning guitar I've grown more appreciative of Floyd, despite Roger's best efforts. ☺️
This is an extraordinary piece of writing, thanks so much! When you write "I got my urges out but remained in control" I wonder how you accomplished that while so many others seem to become depending on this transformative experience that they have to repeat it over and over again.
This resonates as someone who was a Pink Floyd fan growing up. It has been disappointing seeing Waters become an apologist for Syria and Russia. Though I've always heard he wrote the nazi part based on the racist rant that Clapton did that one time. Funnier because he had Clapton perform it.
this is a really helpful essay, thank you. I never 'made it' to that kind of elite educational institution, but I can very much recognise the same tendencies. Going to be digesting this one for a while.
Weirdly I felt an urge to listen to The Wall yesterday and it sadly holds up and up and up. Are there any ***** in the audience? Get them up against the wall!
In the course of deleting all my tweets this week, I saw your account there pop up and found you again here. I am glad I did it in time to see you post this essay.
Very good & important!
Like many of the great concept albums, The Wall arose from a kind of primordial soup w many still undifferentiated themes, audiences, styles, markets, etc. IMHO it grasps at enough real truths to ignore the things you still fault it for. 🤭
2 things: the acad job market... 1/
...is it's own torture chamber and more often than not those who teach carry a good deal of survivor's guilt, knowing they succeeded over equally or more qualified colleagues. Considering the history of pain you relate, you surely understand how much toxicity arises from this.
...the song's dialog has been going round my head for decades now. How else to understand the libidinal-oedipal weirdness that MAGA exhibits? Old men rambling about daddy taking out the belt. The repressed abuse returns and yet again will leave a trail of corpses on its pilgrimage to the womb. 3/3
I had a mental break that I found solace in this album from. I even got the flowers (the ones that fuck and kill each other) on my ribcage as a healing moment.
✊️❤️🔥🫂🫂
This was a poignant and fitting essay, well worth reading. Thank you for sharing. ❤️
holy shit, josie. i’d been eagerly awaiting reading this all day and… whew. i’ll have to read it again and sit with it, but i will immediately say, thank you for writing and sharing this. i hope it impacts at least someone in a very meaningful way.
Man this is a really moving piece and also has been something that's been reminiscent of my own thoughts about being a metalhead; the catharsis through anger, the seductiveness of hate, and the ongoing struggle to keep nazis the fuck out.
thank you for sharing this josie. this line hit me like a ton of bricks
> If loneliness has already found you: let art save you. We are bound and dragged by our urges, but the challenge of life is to satisfy them in ways that don’t annihilate the world around you.
You're welcome! It would add such an illuminating angle to Danny's longing and isolation. If I ever end up teaching a religion and film class again, I'd assign it in a heartbeat.
this makes me think of the film The Childhood of a Leader, which has a similar view of the neuroses that are eventually satiated with fascism's obliteration of the void at the center of oneself, and is adapted from a story by Sartre that was originally published in a collection called, yes, The Wall
The second I saw the comment of the father about Pink Floyd, I knew I wouldn't like the family and the environment in which they raised the writer of the article. I am so sorry. :(
thanks for sharing, i have never listened to the whole album, only seen the film, but i know the part you mean! not to be That Girl but i only listen to Piper era Pink Floyd bc Syd Barrett is my ride or die (up there with Karl Marx on my Myspace heroes page in the old days)
What a fascinating read. Thanks for your vulnerability. This part got me. Those first two sentences…wow. Thanks for the words today. I’ve never listened to the album before, so I might give it a listen. I share in the Pink Floyd aversion you described in the start LOL.
This was an excellent read. I'm a huge Floyd fan, despite Roger's potent ego and noxious politics. One reason for that love is how their lyrics speak to me.
The Wall frames fascism in a crucial way too: we are all capable of falling for it. But capacity is not inevitability.
I listened to The Wall for the first time since the 1990s a couple of weeks ago. "Man, that's what this political climate has brought me to," I thought. "It's making me want to listen to The Wall again." I can't say it's nice to know I'm not the only one thinking about it, but you know what I mean.
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I had something similar. Self-harm thoughts. And for me it was a 17 minute Joe Strummer song. Decided I needed to listen in a dark room.
And it’s repetition of this beautiful violin bored me, then broke me, then brought me back.
Thank you so much.
This is a great essay. Thanks, Josie ✨
I understand a bit better why my dad did *not* encourage me to go to an elite school as an undergrad (as several in my HS peer group did); he said ~ "Save that for grad school."
❤️🩹
Like many of the great concept albums, The Wall arose from a kind of primordial soup w many still undifferentiated themes, audiences, styles, markets, etc. IMHO it grasps at enough real truths to ignore the things you still fault it for. 🤭
2 things: the acad job market... 1/
Re: "Mother," .... 2/
✊️❤️🔥🫂🫂
This was a poignant and fitting essay, well worth reading. Thank you for sharing. ❤️
> If loneliness has already found you: let art save you. We are bound and dragged by our urges, but the challenge of life is to satisfy them in ways that don’t annihilate the world around you.
This would be a *perfect* essay to pair with a screening of The Believer.
(Pink Floyd always left me cold. Nothing in them ever moved me, save maybe "Learning to Fly" little bit)
Trans folk are crushed when we're young and we figure out a way of fighting back. Some better than others
The Wall frames fascism in a crucial way too: we are all capable of falling for it. But capacity is not inevitability.
Once again, you've given me a lot to think about (complimentary)
Thank you for this.