“All alone or in twos
The ones who really love you
Walk up and down outside the wall
Some hand in hand
And some gathered together in bands
The bleeding hearts and the artists
Make their stand

And when they've given you their all
Some stagger and fall
After all it's not easy
Banging your heart against
Some mad bugger’s wall”

—“Outside the Wall,” The Wall, Pink Floyd

I spent a lot of the seventeenth year of my life analyzing the lyrics of The Wall with my dear friend Herman. My children like to point out that I’m probably amongst the .001% of Pink Floyd devotees whose relationship with the band is non-cannabinical, and, though my reflections might have been more profound if I’d partaken of the sacred herb, it’s hard to imagine that I'm not also amongst a .001% of devotees who mined those double cassettes like they were the Old and New Testaments. To me it was all one and the same—Shakespeare in English class, St. Paul in Religion, Pink Floyd over lunch hour. If you sorted through the clutter, you would find the gems sparkling in the debris, and, if you followed where they led, you would surely find your way. For me, “Outside the Wall” was one of these gems.

After an eighty-minute descent into the depths of human isolation, fear, and despair, Pink, the protagonist of The Wall, is condemned to ultimate exposure and vulnerability. As you hear the wall come crashing down around him, the wistful opening bars of Outside the Wall begin. Almost a throw-away at the end of the album, this final song—like the closing scene of any great novel, movie, play, or show—delivers the meaning of the entire story, and to me, because of this song, the story of The Wall has always been one of redemption—real, true, gritty, existential redemption, comprised of the unending but ennobling work of love. I think “Outside the Wall” is an apt and artfully understated title for this perfect song, but “What Wondrous Love Is This,” would also have been money.

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