On Comfortably Numb

I’ve never really liked that much Pink Floyd’s The Wall. It is to be sure a good and solid record and an absolute classic besides, but perhaps it’s just too long for me. It’s certainly not even: while the story has unity, as a collection of songs the album lacks some. The Wall was more interesting as a movie, I think. That said, the double album contains a couple of real gems. One of them is Comfortably Numb, a song written by David Gilmour and Roger Waters.

The song - any song - can be interpreted in more than one way. Sometimes it’s better to look for the context before you start to think about the meaning of a song. Comfortably Numb is a case in point. You shouldn’t overlook the fact that it’s a part of a larger story. The Wall if any is a full-blown concept album, as such thematic unities are sometimes called. In the story, especially how it’s portrayed in the film, the song describes Pink the rock star’s state at a certain moment. He’s in a hotel room, in an unresponsive stupor, unable to perform, unable to do anything. He’s given a fix. They drag him away - the show must go on! Then some flashbacks and hallucinations that connect with the rest of the Wall story. (For a full analysis of the story, see e.g. http://www.thewallanalysis.com)

Yet the song’s meaning can’t be exhausted by its role in The Wall. There’s more to it - or less, if you like. The song paints a unique kind of picture and it succeeds in that remarkably well. Of course, the song also has some connections to real life events. Pink’s not the only one who’s been drugged to perform, as one might put it. Probably there are more such connections: to childhood, to war, to anything. But I don’t think these connections are interesting. Songs have their own lives, so to say. They’re not documentaries. Comfortably Numb is more than anything else about a feeling which it captures perfectly. In total numbness the song describes, it is as if time stopped. A fleeting imagery, looked from a kind of nothingness - a view from nowhere - replaces the real existence here and now. And then the outside world comes back into play as somebody knocks on the door…

When we started to put our next song together, we were heavily drawn to Comfortably Numb. There were other songs too, but the Pink Floyd classic was the most important one in the process. It’s not that we were trying to imitate it or any other song. Far from it, our new song is not going to resemble Comfortably Numb at all, or at least we won’t be able to recognise that. The relation to the song was much more intimate - a kind of having a beacon in the dark. Perhaps that’s what they mean about inspiration after all.