Somewhere a voice says "... we came in?"
The audience just got played.
I heard about them Pink Floyd shows.. they start off with heart beats, or calming synths... easing up on the lights.. as we all feel calm and relaxe-..
Wait.
This is not Pink Floyd. There's fire, and yelling, and a giant banner of hammers... That's.. not even them playing, they're wearing masks! We're just the audience in a show, we can't even recognize our idols from up here. A man comes to the microphone, and jeers at us.. IS THIS NOT WHAT YOU EXPECTED TO SEE?
He explains the whole show is a farce, wool covered over our eyes, and ignited with explosions. This is the world he has come to know as our rock idol.
We're taken along the bumpy life of a young boy, born into an overbearing protective household, as his father is shipped off to war. These things are shown to us, bit by bit, as we start to lose ourselves to the show. We chant along, us students and teachers and well adjusted members of society.. WE DON'T NEED NO EDUCATION.. our system is broken, and we are the product. And we cheer.
Our religion, our mannerisms, our society, capitalism and greed, selling us overpriced beer and tshirts. These things fuel the corruption that's tearing our brave new world apart. All of the promises we were told when we were young, are falling from the sky and crashing upon us. Our innocence slowly detaches,
Our hero Pink, our rock god, he slowly falls into his own shelter. He builds up the wall of being his true self with drugs, and money, and possessions, all of these things we crave, as he becomes something he can't even recognize he whores himself out to the public, eager for applause and admiration at the hands of the sea of faces in the arena.. He drowns himself with the flesh of women, being eaten alive by the prospect of vagina. Our lives lead to experimentation, detachment from love and pleasuring ourselves with the cheap thrills of meaningless orgy sex. And we cheer.
Pink becomes even more a monster, turning inside out on himself, unable to contain his outbursts and reactions, and he destroys everything around him. He doesn't need anything to make him feel better, no people, no drugs, no things. He doesn't need the world as we know it anymore, as he crawls into the depth of his mind, his isolation wall complete. The last brick is put in place between him and us, and we cheer.
We stare at a giant brick wall. Spanning the arena. It wasn't there before, but we watched him build it, brick by brick. He calls out from behind it, Hey You! , and asks if there's anybody out there like him..
and we cheer. And he rejects our response, searching for something meaningful. He reaches out for the hope he once had, but finds an empty dial tone on the other side of a phone call for help. He feels hopeless, dejected, and lied to. From all sides. He remembers Vera Lynn, a girl who sang of soldiers returning home victorious, but he realizes now that life doesn't work out that way, and many times the boys are sent there to die. Alone. Like him. ... and we cheer.
He falls into a coma, comfortably numb to these outside influences, oblivious to the remnants of his once human life, remember his dreams and lofty expectations of what life could be like as he was a child, sick with the flu, feeling something so intangible.. the only way he can achieve that now is to pump himself full of drugs. And he does, to chase that feeling, so fleeting... he awakes to realize that there really is a concert going on, and he asks us "Must the show go on?" , as he cries for his lost soul. But the show must go on, and he decides to test the limit of our blind sheep movement for him.
Our original host returns, with marching hammers, and informs us that this is no ordinary concert. We're to be tested, how far are you willing to go for your idol? We're just sheep, minions, to be ordered at his concert! Throw the queers, the jews, the coons.. against the wall. They don't deserve to be here, not like you. Are you willing to do that for him? To kill for Pink? He shoots into the crowd, riddling his audience with bullets, and if they get hit, they explode with a mix of blood and happiness. We're sent out to do his evil bidding, a mad rock star full of hate and disgust at everything and us all, to chase down those he deems unworthy in a mad run.
When he finally comes to, he's trapped in a cell. Aware of his misdeeds, and is dragged through his conscience to a trial, where his sins are thrown up for all to judge. His mother, his girlfriend, his teacher, they come out to prove that he was an emotionless monster, who shut them out instead of accepting their malice. The judge decides that his actions deserve the fullest penalty, that his encompassing wall, his comfort, his safety from judgment, is torn down violently and his true self, a limp ragdoll- is exposed to the crowd. Lying there naked, defenseless, motionless... and we cheer, for every brick.
At the end, they take the stage, and they sing a song declaring how hard it really is to live our lives with our walls up. We let nobody in, and become comfortable, but the day will come when they're torn down, and we'll find ourselves musing with those we love, and the artists, roving amongst the rubble of our defense mechanisms that keep people out.. Because iife is hard when you spend it banging your head against some mad body's wall.
And we cheer. And somewhere a voice says "Isn't this where..."
