Comfortably Numb

Last June I abandoned my blog. I needed a break from the weekly meditations and thoughts about such philosophical niceties as freedom and liberty. I had to stop thinking about torture and what it means when a democracy commits crimes. I wanted more than the corruption I see every time I read or hear news from Washington. I started to feel like a nutcase—comparable to the old guy I used to see as a child standing on a corner of Highway One with a big sign and VW Microbus and waving an American flag. I began to wonder: Is There Anybody Out There?

I saw Roger Waters at The Hollywood Bowl last night. Every song rang as politically true as it did two, three, and even four decades ago. There were many divine moments in the show. In the first set, he played Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun, and just as the music hypnotically crept upward into the stands, the moon crested the Hollywood Hills behind the stage. It was Ali who noticed it first. It was as if the moon were tied to a string and dragged into the stars to the same steady beat as the song, like footsteps marching from the stage. Ali turned to me and said, “It’s moments like this that I believe in God.”

With each song I reflected on the time in my life when I first listened to them. The sad reality is how much things have remained the same since then. The corruption, the war, and the madness all still surround me, making the growing pains of childhood feel even more profound. I sang Another Brick in The Wall to my fifth grade class once. Mrs. Douglas had stepped out of the classroom. I’m not sure what possessed me to do it because as far as I can recall, I was a good kid. She went next door to borrow something from Mrs. George and I jumped up on my desk and asked the class to sing with me. We don’t need no education, we don’t need no thought control…I was actually surprised when I was given a time out and reprimanded during recess for my behavior.

Ali cried when the band played Shine On You Crazy Diamond to a montage of the late Syd Barret. She cried as we watched intently those deep, possessed, and tortured dark eyes disappear from the screen and into atmospheric particles and gas. Camera phones have now replaced lighters as an audience captures as many moments of the show as they can on film. Let’s only hope they do something important and fearless with it.