Isn't This Where We Came In?

While many fans tout Pink Floyd's follow-up album, the Final Cut, as a sort of unoffical sequel to Pink's story, as the Wall itself stands we are left in an uncertain position with just as many questions as we had coming into the album. Like all good fairy tales, does Pink live happily ever after? Does he live unhappily ever after? Does he rejoin society after the collapse of his wall a changed man or is he back to his old tricks again? Is he killed, either metaphorically or physically, by the sudden absence of his psychological barriers? Some may feel cheated that we are never specifically told. Others like myself are glad that the band left the album so open ended, or more appropriately, so circular. Pink Floyd is not a band concerned with "happy endings." "The Wall" is not an album concerned with them as well. Similarly, the band and album are not concerned with "unhappy endings," either. For both the artist and piece of art, there are no endings. Only continual life and abounding potential.

As we listen to the album, the question of what happens to Pink should become less important as we begin to apply the record's themes to our own lives. Rather than worrying about Pink's fate, we should worry about our own. In the end, Pink's story becomes less about a singular rock star and more about us, the audience, and the world we live in. Similarly, the characters in Pink's story are just as universal as its protagonist is. While they are never given names throughout the entire album, their roles in Pink's life define their personalities as Mother, Father, Teacher, and Spouse, possibly mirroring those very same characters in our lives. These could very well be our Mothers, Fathers, Teachers, and Loved ones. Accordingly, Pink's story could be our own. In a sense, Pink's story IS our own. Though the details are different from each individual to the next, the underlying themes of humanity and its subsequent degradation as a result of personal and societal disconnection are universal. These themes apply to our lives and our world just as much as they apply to Pink's fictional (yet just as authentic) story. Just like the "bleeding heats" in "Outside the Wall," Pink Floyd has taken it upon themselves to convey this timeless story of personal decay, perhaps in the hopes that these omnipresent patterns, these cycles of violence, might be averted. Yet such is the ultimate aim of art: to illuminate, edify, and hopefully correct the personal and global world for the better. Pink's story is finished. He constructed his wall, fell into moral decay because of it, and ultimately destroyed this isolating barrier. Our story, however, is still taking place. What happens to Pink soon becomes nowhere near as important as what happens to us. How do we live our lives? Are we currently constructing or tearing down those hindrances that produce disconnection and degeneration? How do our personal walls contribute to those of our nation, our world? How much of the world's ills are we really responsible for? Is there still time for change? Most importantly, which versions of Pink will we choose to be? Will we sit idly by and watch the world collapse out our feet? Or in that final moment of potential, will we be brave enough to enact change?

The next song in the album is ours. What it will say is up to us.