Roger Waters Freaked Me Out

This past Thursday I had the pleasure of going to see Roger Waters "Us and Them" tour. It was my first live experience with Pink Floyd, but I thought I had some idea of what I was in for.

From the very beginning of the show, I could feel a tension in my body. The large screen behind the stage had a video scene of a girl sitting on beach looking out towards the ocean. The scene didn't change for the first twenty or so minutes I was in my seat. I felt that at any moment something shocking was going to happen to that girl, but I couldn't put my finger on it.

Now, to back up, I know the anti-war sentiment of Floyd, especially Roger Waters. I know his feeling about the apartheid in Israel, his true progressive lefty views. Do I agree with a lot of them? Not really, but I respect authenticity. I expected an anti-war feeling to the concert, but I was not prepared.

Back to the girl.

So as I expected, the scene began to change. The sky over the horizon began to true blood red, and if an invading force was on its way.

I don't remember the set order, or even the order of the imagery, however, the whole concert was an aggressive punch to the gut. Video of tortured Arabs, Israeli apartheid walls, drones, children throwing rocks at tanks, Trump collecting blood money, etc.

All of me was in awe of what I was witnessing, with part of me enjoying myself, and the other wanting to scream at the top of lungs "SEE!!! Don't you people SEE!!". I looked around the arena and saw most people enjoying themselves and the spectacle in front of them, but I kept wondering how many would be going home with the same anger and passion towards war as I have, and Waters also has.

It's a concert, I know. But this artist is clearly trying to mold your views. He wants you to cry at the images he shows, slam your fist at the naked violence towards them. I sure do. I am almost violently antiwar. To the point where I can't sit back and just enjoy a Floyd concert.

I will close with a description of one of the new songs he presented. It was about drones. The screen above the stage puts you in a POV of an air vessel floating over a town. The music is soft and not aggressive. I thought we were getting a break from the high intensity of the previous images. Then, all of sudden, a missile hits the quiet town below you, and you watch the carnage unfold. The audience seemed to be taken back a bit, before erupting into applause.

This experience reinforced my disgust for war and the imperialism of my home country. I only hope the audience I experienced it with took some of the same feelings home with them. There was a faint energy in the arena that all this horrific shit was the result of "evil white men" "capitalists" and Republicans. I can only hope that if Hillary Clinton had one the election of 2016, that Roger Waters would have written a whole song about how she too, was a pig.

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