The Post War Dream

Well today I really couldn't get any homework done, so I listened to the Final Cut one again. It made me think of what was really being said in the lyrics. The first track is title the Post War Dream and it sets the mood for the entire CD. It talks of how high expectations were after WWII, but yet the expectations were too high and people got let down. "Should we shout, should we scream? What happened to the post war dream?" As for the expectations they were high. The second world war wasn't ended with a stupid treaty that would cause hate between countries and lead to another world war 20 years later. The U.N. was created and it was going to work out unlike the League of Nations. While Russia did answer with the Warsaw Pact this was more out of fear of losing communism then in intent to gain more power or start another war (although it wouldn't hurt if all the battles were fought in surrounding countries instead of in Russia if another world war broke out). In respect to Russian communism I would like to say that Vladimir Lenin was not a terribly bad man (although he did negotiate the Treaty of Brest-Lotovsky) and that Stalin took his ideas in the wrong direction and became far too paranoid and power hungry. The world had ended the great depression and wasn't going to look back. The baby boomers came and populations soared. The economies improved. England was no longer the dominant world power, two wars had sapped its resources and funding and its economy suffered from it. It also lost nearly all of its colonies. While the United States comfortably entered both wars when they felt that it was only completely neccessary and that they would look good out of it. The U.S. became the dominant world power and that led into the times we live in now. They would enter several foreign wars in the next half century, mostly against communism and really did little to hault it. Would England have entered these futile battles? Who knows
Many foreign countries hated the lifestyle of the typical U.S. person and the United State's war against communism may have caused more countries to create a communist government than it stopped. If I were a country I certainly would have gone commmunist just to spite the United States. But anyways whatever happened to their policy of.........i believe it was called isolationism, where they said they would stay out of foreign affairs. They certainly haven't been interested in that in a long time. So really what has happened to the post war dream? It is deceased. Maybe once the U.S. gets out of Iraq, or if they get out, we can have a new post war dream............that the United States will stay THE FUCK OUT OF OTHER COUNTRIES

The Final Cut - Pink Floyd (Roger Waters)

Today while sitting at home, not being at school since I am sick, I was trying to pass the time and figured that I could listen to a CD besides In A Coma, which I have been listening to non-stop since I got it. So I looked to the Final Cut, Pink Floyd's last CD with Roger Waters. I feel that it is absolutely brilliant CD. The insight and depth in the lyrics is phenomenal. It was the first Floyd CD that Roger wrote all the lyrics for with no help from the other band members, in fact on the back of the CD it says "The Final Cut - a requiem for the post war dream by roger waters". Unfortunately it sales were very poor and it was considered a failure by many. After this, Roger decided that Pink Floyd was a dead cause, he was the creative genius behind them and a CD written entirely by him had flopped. Dave, Rick (actually Rick Wright was not considered a memeber of the band on the Final Cut CD and is given no credit on it), and Nick agreed with him and the band broke apart. However, shortly after Dave, Rick, and Nick changed their mind and wanted to get back together and record as Pink Floyd, without Roger. It all got very ugly after this; Roger attempted to sue them so that they could not use the Pink Floyd name. He had a point, without himself and Syd Barrett there were only two original members left (neither of them really had ever written lyrics either) and the band certainly was not the same. But it proved very hard to argue this in a court of law and there was no choice but to dismiss Roger's case. He felt betrayed as his former band members went on without him. They only had moderate success (nothing compared to before) and Roger went on to work on his own solo career but he had lost some of that special talent inside of him and his solo projects never had the same flare or brilliance that his work with Pink Floyd did. Perhaps it is unfair to compare his CDs to that of Pink Floyd's that were so phenominally successful. Roger Waters was Pink Floyd, when Syd Barrett went completely insane from his mental dependency on LSD Roger picked up the band on his shoulders and brought them to their greatest works of all time: Darkside of the Moon, Animals, Wish You Were Here, and The Wall. I find it amusing how quickly people can forget what he did and what he meant to the band. Imagine if AC/DC had given up once Bon Scott died and never found Brian Johnson, we would never have heard their greatest CD: Back in Black. Yes, well there was a point to be made in here somewhere, which I got away from when I began to talk of Floyd in general and then AC/DC got in there? lol But yes on to my real point............................I feel that it is completely outrageous that Pink Floyd broke up because of the Final Cut and that anyone would question the creative genius of Waters because of it. So now I sit here and firmly say that the Final Cut is Pink Floyd's greatest CD and possibly my favourite CD of all time. If I ever got the chance to meet Roger Waters I would congratulate him on his fine piece of work and tell him that it's "bloody fucking ridiculous what happened".
Roger you da man

sitting here thinking;

a million thoughts race through my mind at a million m/s

passing through one another and criss-crossing

forming a patchwork of ideas which make no sense

why do I think of them? why are they there?

what do they mean? why do I care?

it is a struggle to juggle all these thoughts and feelings at once

"It's like a jungle sometimes it makes me wonder how I keep from going under"

sitting here attempting to get something constructive done,

to concentrate even if it's just for a minute

it's frustrating how simple the world is, yet how complicated people are

if I cannot understand what is going on in my own mind then it is

futile to attempt to understand what is going on in other's

but never the less I try, I try.

and it makes me wonder..........

why do I try?

time in english class well spent

the human race is hindered by pretensions of knowledge and suffers from its ignorance