DistantSoul September 27th, 2009 01:58AM  
I'm going to go verse by verse for the song. Much of what I write will be similar to the top rated interpretation which I like a lot. My reason for doing this really is to put my spin on the "distant ship smoke on the horizon" section. But I want to do the whole song to get there.

"Hello.
Is there anybody in there?
Just nod if you can hear me.
Is there anyone home?"

Syd Barrett had a mental breakdown at one point in his life. This part of the song clearly indicates an interaction with doctors and continues throughout the song, an image reinforced by the Pink Floyd's movie "The Wall". This is clearly the tone a doctor takes with a patient when the patient has his eyes open but as the saying goes "the light's are on but nobody's home".


"Come on, now.
I hear you’re feeling down.
Well I can ease your pain,
Get you on your feet again."

This is what doctors and therapists promise all of us isn't it? Not a real cure, but to get rid of enough of the pain to get us "back to work". If I sound like I'm mocking here I'm really not. Without work life falls apart quickly. But the verse here feels like so many Paxil commercials so it's hard for me not to feel cynical at the tone layered in the words.

"Relax.
I need some information first.
Just the basic facts:
Can you show me where it hurts?"

Doctor's office dialogue, pretty plainly. And now the "patient" speaks.

"There is no pain, you are receding.
A distant ship’s smoke on the horizon.
You are only coming through in waves.
Your lips move but I can’t hear what you’re sayin’."

Complete disassociation. The mind, overwhelmed by the pain of life, can't turn off the senses, but instead turns off the part of itself that creates meaning from them. Alone in a crowd to infinity. Nothing is real.

"When I was a child I had a fever.
My hands felt just like two balloons.
Now I got that feeling once again."

The mind is now firmly split in two. There's a body somewhere, I can point to it because I believe I still have hands, but there's virtually no feeling. To have almost no feeling in your hands, which are your primary contact with, and how you touch the world and affects even how you see and hear the world, is a devastating symbol of numbness.

"I can’t explain, you would not understand.
This is not how I am.
I have become comfortably numb."

As written. He and "the doctor" are not able to communicate. He is indeed comfortably numb and out of contact with a world that is to painful to bear.

"Ok.
Just a little pinprick. [ping]
There’ll be no more --aaaaaahhhhh!
But you may feel a little sick.

Can you stand up?
I do believe it’s working. good.
That’ll keep you going for the show.
Come on it’s time to go."

More doctor-therapist speak as if to say 'Who needs emotions? What you need is to work. The show must go on and your personal agonies are a distant second to our success rate as a clinic. Here's a new kind of comfortable numbness. It will let you participate as a fellow member of the sleepwalking wounded, snug in your blanket of chemically induced numbness.'

"There is no pain, you are receding.
A distant ship’s smoke on the horizon.
You are only coming through in waves.
Your lips move but I can’t hear what you’re sayin’."

The chorus, repeated.

"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.
I have become comfortably numb."

And now here are the lines I wanted to comment on because they rip into me in a very special way. Please note, this is more intended for those of us that have been brutally disappointed by our lot in life and how this world treats us and how we treat each other. Those of you insulated in a current dream of happy youth or passionate love will not see a connection with what I'm about to say. You are lucky and may your good fortune last. But for the rest of us here's my interpretation.

We like to pretend as people that the past is in some dark distant corner of our mind, far away, where it can not hurt us. But you are the same person that played with toys as a baby, had your heart broken at school in a variety of ways, and patched yourself up to get a job, perhaps fall in love and have a family, and are reading this now. The same person. Every day when you first wake up that part of you that as a child saw the magical possibilities of the world, flew in your dreams, fantasized about becoming a poet, a millionaire, a rock star, opens it's eyes for a millisecond and wonders if it's OK to come out and play. But before the pain of disappointment can start the mind slams shut, the memories restart, and we raise our shields against the pain of day to day living. Those of us who don't, well they get to dance with Syd Barrett's doctors and therapists. Those who can't do even that are not here anymore. They've checked out. "The child is grown, the dream is gone." It's like that dream you have that haunts you when you wake up. You feel as it slips away a desperate meaning that somehow explains an important truth, or is a glimpse of a better place and if you could just remember the key it would take you away from all this, but the instant you look too hard it dissolves into infinity. Lost forever.

That was the part I wanted to comment on. All of us have a part of our mind that reminds us to be who we were yesterday when we wake up. Despite the fact there are a million different people we could be, somehow we repeat the days of our past almost identically until it's time to leave. Somewhere underneath what we think of as "us" is the real us, the person that was there even before we learned to think with words and were a being of pure emotion. But for the vast majority of us, there's only the continual murky dream of "me".

Thanks for reading. I hope you find what you are looking for in life. Never stop looking. Ever. Even if you can't see past the darkness.

anonymous December 4th, 2009 12:49AM  
Hello.
Is there anybody in there?
Just nod if you can hear me.
Is there anyone home?

---Pink, was in a condition of a deep depression, near coma
he's only thinking, unable really to speak

Come on, now.
I hear you’re feeling down.
Well I can ease your pain,
Get you on your feet again.

--Someone see Pink's bad condition and unhappiness, offering some help

Relax.
I need some information first.
Just the basic facts:
Can you show me where it hurts?

--Pink now experiencing something completely new. For the first part of his life, Pink has only fall further in insanity where others don't count, now he understand he is in a new emotional track, where he feel the importance of empathy and care for the others. (can you show me where it hurts?) He experience an awakening.

There is no pain, you are receding.

--everything seems right maybe for the first time of his adult life

A distant ship’s smoke on the horizon.

--Yes, now he understand things going to be different a new way of living his life has arrived

You are only coming through in waves.
Your lips move but I can’t hear what you’re sayin’.

-The state of mind of his new condition comes in waves, but his body is out of motion

When I was a child I had a fever.
My hands felt just like two balloons.
Now I got that feeling once again.

--everything seems right maybe for the first time of his adult life, referring to happy childhood early in his life where the blue sky existed for him.

I can’t explain, you would not understand.
This is not how I am.
I have become comfortably numb.

--Strange experience he is experiencing: a mix of euphoria, happiness not understandable to other

Ok.
Just a little pinprick. [ping]
There’ll be no more --aaaaaahhhhh!
But you may feel a little sick.

Can you stand up?
I do believe it’s working. good.
That’ll keep you going for the show.
Come on it’s time to go.

--this awakening comes very late in his life, he must stand up and be functional again (for the show)i.e. every day life

There is no pain, you are receding.
A distant ship’s smoke on the horizon.
You are only coming through in waves.
Your lips move but I can’t hear what you’re sayin’.
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.

--He learn things that makes him more an adult and now more a functional person and less a dreamer

I have become comfortably numb.

comfortably numb song is the first inning of a new life where dirty feelings and dirty thoughts disappear and let place to more human friendly feelings.

anonymous December 23rd, 2009 05:31PM  
Unless I didn't read all of these interpretations on the song. All of you are wrong. This isn't from my point of view. It is the facts. This song was written about Roger Waters experience after being shot with tranquilizers for stomach cramps by a doctor, before a show in Philidelphia on a tour in 1977. The song was put out 2 years later in 1979. --Chad B.--

pixiegrl141 February 17th, 2010 01:10PM  
Now I have not seen the movie and I have read about it quite a lot in here. The guy above me sounds pretty right on if that's true. That would explain it.

Dont condem me when I say my opinion cause it's out there.
I thought this song had to do with the government. I listened to the album The Wall and I think it definitely could be about a man building his own wall against the world, or is it the government building a wall around us?

In that time there was a lot of people protesting about how the vietnam war wasnt being told to them and trusting the government was seldom. That within the government there were and are people in the army being tested on. I mean that's what I think is kinda whats goin on.

That maybe even followed from childhood saw a glimpse of something and never saw it again till he was older in a chair being told he's been hurt wheres the pain? But I'll need some information first before I help you.
Then the courus I think that he is slipping from himself being drugged morphine w.e, and he can't hear what they are saying....like.. "like a distant ship's smoke on the horizon and your only coming through in waves" so small and many echoes I think. It's describing the fall of his conciousness and what he's beginning to hear. |

he remembers his childhood feeling sick and knowing that he's been sick before and this is not like a sickness back then its much different.

the pin prick therell be no more ahhhh
I think it's almost a resisting thing that he is understanding whats happening and hurts him and resisting and here's the pin prick. The doctor looks at him while he relaxs "I do believe its workng, can you stand up? for the show....." I think the show is America that you need to show that you are ok and that everything is fine, but it's not he's just drugged like a zombie I think. Fooling everyone. Like the media did...

then when he was a child last verse. Maybe the government has been watching him since he was young. Father was in the Army maybe and maybe it was really something more that happened...The son being watched and the kid noticed it out of he corner of his eye turned to look but it was gone couldnt put his finger on it now the child is grown (he is coming back) and the childhood dream is gone because he is now property of the government.

there lol that is mine. But I think a lot differently then a lot and I don't care if its wrong.

nomore March 10th, 2010 07:19PM  
he means that his life has become so overwhekming and traumatic, that he has to become numb to kill the pain... he is basically an empty shell. he is okay with that now... he is comfortable with being numb to the pain of his life. therefor, he is comfortably numb...