I’m nowhere near Pink Floyd’s biggest fan. I own several albums,  (The Wall, Dark Side of The Moon, and Wish You Were Here) and enjoy them very much, but as you can see there is a lot I do not have. What this story is about is how I first listened to Pink Floyd.

It was the mid 1980s and I was an usher at a movie theater, UA Glasshouse 6 – no defunct and long out of business. I was involved with a lovely redhead and she and I were going through rough times. My shift had ended at the theater, but I really did not want to go home. I suffer from depression, and already in a black mood I knew it would get worse because she was not going to be there.

A life lobe love of movies had given me the avenue of escape through film. A good movie was my preferred method of getting away from my troubles and out of my head. It was late at the theater and the midnight movies would be starting soon. Free movies as an usher was the best benefit for working at the theater. I scanned the titles and found nothing I knew and flt strongly about, still I knew I did not want to go home.

hmmm, The Wall, My pal ray had told me that The Wall was a very good film and he and I tended to have similar tastes, so The Wall it was.

I was not prepared for a film that was entirely music and visual, but I settled in and let the film wash over me. Quickly disturbing parallels between ‘Pink’ the subject of The Wall and myself revealed themselves. We both lost our father’s when we were young, a devastating event, we were both artistically inclined, we both kept most people at a distance, had lovely redheaded girlfriends, but relationship troubles, and both given to wild mood swings. (ahh yes, One Of My Turns is a song I very much identify with.)

This movie was NOT cheering me up. I felt like I was drowning in a sea of depression and that to quote another song, “he was killing me softly.”

I made it through the screening with my wrists intact, and my head throughly spinning. The music stuck with me. The songs reverberated in my skull and while my depression lifted, as it always will do given enough time, the impact of that film and those songs did not.

Being horribly depressed is not my recommended introduction to Pink Floyd and The Wall, but it did work for me.