Comfortably Numb

ok this song is part of the album the wall to fully understand this song u first must understand the album and watch the movie it helps. in the movie pink sits locked in a hotel room, somewher in La. too many shows to much dope, too much applause: a burned out case. on the tv, an all too familiar war film flickers on the screen. we shuffle time and place, reality and nightmare as we venture into pink's painful memories, each one a "brick" in the waill he has gradually built around his feelings. Slowly he withdraws from the real world and slips further into his nightmare as he imagines himself as an unfeeling demagogue, for whom all that is left is the demonstration of power over his unthinking audience, the culmination of the odious excess of his own world and the world around him. his internal self trial follows as the witnesses of his past life, the very people who have contributed to the building of the wall, come forward to testify against him.

thats the story of the wall.

comfortably numb is a song about how pink has finally burned out he can no longer tell the real world from the one he has created. his wall is built and he can no longer make it out. He has lived in pain and anguish for so long that he has finally given into the pain and the drugs. He now sits in his room realizing the only people that care anymore are the people only trying to make money off him like his manager. Instead of getting ready for his shows he now just lets them drug him up get him dressed and get him going hoping the drugs last long enough for him to get on stage perfom then crash.

while most of the artists from pink floyd did experiment with many drugs this song is mainly about syd barret and how he quit the band early on when things started getting good it wasnt what he wanted and soon gave up quit the band.

To me the song was of an extreme sadness. Even the name "Comfortably Numb" is an oxymoron, as the song plays I can here the desperation in the voice. The feeling of desperation that few can feel. Imagine having every last thing on earth you could want, and yet having absolutely nothing. Wanting to claw your own eyes out and yet not having the energy to lift your hands up. Being totally alone in a room full of people.

It brings to mind a person who is shaking hands and smiling for the camera while in his own mind is in a cold dark room, naked on the floor in the fetal position.

I can totally relate to this song... I haven't done it either (taking drugs), but I can understand the desire to feel COMFORTABLY NUMB.... not to feel any pain, no to feel anything whatsoever... sometimes life just hurts so much :(

"When I was a child I caught a fleeting glimpse Out of the corner of my eye I turned to look but it was gone I cannot put my finger on it now The child is grown The dream is gone And I have become comfortably numb "

Damn...Just damn. I totally know what that's about, even if it's only in my own way. I can't put it into words, though...

The Wall is a concept album, and deals largely with themes of personal isolation.The songs create an approximate storyline of events in the life of the protagonist, Pink. Pink's father dies during his childhood (Waters' father was killed during the Second World War). Oppressed by his overprotective mother, and tormented at school by tyrannical, abusive teachers, each of these traumas become "another brick in the wall".The album includes several references to former band member Syd Barrett, In 1975 "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" – a song that happened to be about Barrett. By that time, the 29-year-old Barrett had become quite overweight, had shaved off all of his hair (including his eyebrows), and his ex-band-mates did not at first recognize him. In the film The Wall, where the character Pink shaves his body hair after having a mental breakdown, just as Barrett had. Due to mental illness exacerbated by heavy drug use Syd went into self-imposed seclusion lasting more than thirty years. As with the other songs on The Wall, "Comfortably Numb" tells a segment of the story about Pink, the album's protagonist. This song has to do with Pink's battle to handle the world. According to Rolling Stone, the lyrics came from Roger Waters' experience when he was injected with tranquilizers for stomach cramps by a doctor prior to playing a Pink Floyd show in Philadelphia on the band's 1977 In The Flesh tour. "That was the longest two hours of my life", Waters said. "Trying to do a show when you can hardly lift your arm". The experience gave him the idea which eventually became the lyrics to this song.

This song really strikes a chord with me.. The Lyrics

"When I was a child I caught a fleeting glimpse Out of the corner of my eye I turned to look but it was gone I cannot put my finger on it now The child is grown The dream is gone"

Sometimes i feel EXACTLY that way... "I caught a fleeting glimpse.. The child is grown.... the dream is gone." and i just want to cry... not soft tears but a stream of heavy and loud sobs...until i cannot cry anymore...... but i don't know why.....

Zen

See...how I always saw this song was as a sick or dying man that was in severe pain. The speaker at the beginning is a doctor or medic of some sort. Hense the "I need some information, first/Just the basic facts/Can you show me where it hurts."

The next stanza is, of course, the man in pain speaking. He is reliving a childhood experiance, perhaps the first time he was hurt or sick. At this point he is becoming so engroused in his feelings and the pain that it all just stops hurting. The only thing he can concentrait on is the childhood experiance that he has forgotten but is trying to grasp now. The first time he says comfortably numb means he has lost all sense of reality and is just in his mind, completely lost from the world and engrossed so much into this memory from his past.

Now, the next time the doctor speaks to him, he is giving him a shot, or fixing him in some way. In the line "That'll keep you going through the show" I believe that the "show" is either life, or going with the theme of The Wall album and movie, war.

The last stanza is of course, him recovering. But in a very different way. He still cannot hear the doctor at first, and is still in his memory. Slowly, though, the memory begins to fade and slip away from him. The second time he is "comfortably numb" is either because of the doctors drugs, the fact that he does not want to go on anymore, or a combination of the both.

But other than the doctors drugs...there are no drugs involved in this.

songs from the wall are almost impossible to decipher for many reasons. First of all, the story is loosely based around the lives of Syd Barret and to a lesser degree Roger Waters, but alot of the plot is just theatrics used for novelty. Second of all, no song can be taken out of context, the story is of a troubled, detached rock star caught up in the frenzy of the lifestyle, but if we only read the lyrics of just one song, it looks like he's making drugs out to be some kind of magical potion that can fix everything, while infact he is quite unsettled by the experience. Third of all, too many people just sit around smoking pot and watching the wall. not that the wall is bad, i myself have watched it a disgusting amount of times, but people think they "figured it out" when the movie is just showing roger waters visual interpretation of his song. music is a product, so listen to it and come up with your own ideas instead of simply regurgitating what happened in "The Wall"

I always thought this song was a description of someone who is no longer mentally sound but still has to play with the band. A doctor is brought to see him and injects medicine just to keep him going, so he can get through one more show. The term "Comfortably Numb" also resonates deeply with me as the gradual numbing that begins when we first realise how morally depraved society and the human race in general are. "Comfortably Numb" is an easier state to inhabit than the constant awareness that we are living,sometimes, in a form of hell.

you can say the song is about drugs as there is obviously drug references.
But there's a despair, a depression "The child is grown, The dream is gone." During the times where I felt despair, I would recite those 2 lines. The fact that there is often so much hope when you are young, but then setbacks, circumstances crush that hope, crush the ambition, obliterate the idealism.
Those 2 lines really are for all those who feel terrible that dreams & hope were replaced with an ugly reality that ends up reminding them of how they didn't measure up, how they fell short, the mistakes made and those who rubbed your nose in those mistakes. Very very painful indeed