A broken heart, a severed friendship, the death of a loved one: all catalysts in building a metaphorical wall to protect ourselves from the tribulations of the outside world.
Some are more susceptible than others, but we all have our walls to varying degrees. The more we build them the more we isolate ourselves from society.
Not all walls are bad, but some are so catastrophic it can ruin your life and permanently damage the psyche.
Pink Floyd, a progressive rock group from the 1970s, explored the latter in a concept album aptly named “The Wall.”
The album centers on Pink Floyd, a rock musician dealing with his self-imposed isolation as a world-renowned rock star.
Floyd’s wall is built by the emotional trauma of his father dying before Floyd was born, the “dark sarcasm” of his school-teachers, and his failed marriage.
The front man of Pink Floyd, Roger Waters, explained the metaphor in an interview.
“You can say, on the simplest level, when something bad happens he isolates himself a little bit more,” Waters said. “Symbolically he adds another brick to his wall.”
In the climatic song of the album, “The Trial,” Floyd manifests in his mind the people in his life that are his “bricks in the wall” to confront himself in an attempt to tear down the wall.
In Brett Urick’s analysis of “The Trial” he wrote, “Consequently, as negative creations of the wall – that great metaphor of isolation and emotional repression – it is only natural that the charges leveled against Pink – that he has experienced ‘feelings of an almost human nature’ – would be considered a high crime tantamount to treason.”
Picture a scale from one to 10, one being completely involved with society and 10 being completely detached. The further you get to 10 emotions become increasingly foreign.
Urick continued, “The irony of the ensuing trial and the recriminations against him is that, for the creatures of the wall, Pink’s selfishness throughout his life proves that his moment of ‘feelings’ was a singular albeit punishable error; as Pink has come to realize, however, the offense isn’t in a single moment of humanity, but rather an adult lifetime devoid of it.”
Emotions and logic cannot be mutually exclusive as both are integral to the human experience. Without love and logic, life has no meaning.
For people who already understand isolation and detachment the concept of revealing yourself emotionally is terrifying. You’ve been burned so many times the very thought of letting someone get to know you contradicts everything about your thought process, but in succumbing to isolation you’ve lost a part of you.
I cannot in good consciousness offer a concrete solution, partly because tearing down the wall is a never-ending process, but mostly because everyone is different. The way I tear down my wall may not work for anyone else, and that’s okay.
The only comfort I can offer is that you are not alone.
Tearing down the wall demands constant vigilance and cognizance concerning the extent of your wall. As long as you remain aware and work to tear it down you will make progress, even if it’s only one brick at a time.
