An open letter to Roger Waters

Roger,

You’ve never heard my name, but we’ve seen each other. Or at least I’ve seen you, twice during your 2000s The Dark Side of the Moon tour, in Prague in 2007 and in Landgraaf a year later; and if you looked at the public then, you might have glimpsed my face amid thousands of others, just for a fraction of second.

You know why I’m writing. It has to do with the reasons for cancelling your concert in Kraków next year; with who you blame for the war; and with your open letter to Olena Zelenska.

I’ll be frank with you: I didn’t read that letter.

Then why this correspondence? Isn’t it a basic responsibility of the author of a polemical opinion piece, to at least read carefully what they’re trying to rebut?

That would have been the case if this letter were a factual argument. But it’s not that. It is a letter of emotion, written in a trembling hand; a letter of deep sadness, frustration, disbelief, and anger.

These are the emotions that, I believe, a betrayed person feels. You’ve never owed anything to me, so “betrayal” is a bad word to use; but you’ve been important to me, all this time. Heck, you still are.

I vividly remember that evening in Prague. Especially “Leaving Beirut”. I had heard it before, but that flawless live performance coupled with a visual narrative produced an experience that was nothing short of mystical. The ancient Greeks had a word for it: “katharsis.” Never before or after have I experienced anything quite like it. I’ll never forget it.

I remember shouting “Not in my name, Tony” along with thousands at the Sazka Arena. I remember thinking—no, knowing—that here was someone who knew what it was all about. Someone who knew what it means to be a human being, someone to listen to, and take heed. I was with you.

I was with you all the time.

I was with you in the grief and contemplating the cruelty of war in “When The Tigers Broke Free.” I was with you when “The Final Cut” helped me through difficult periods of my life by dissolving my despair in music. I was with you when you proclaimed, in big letters from big displays at the 2018 concert in Gdańsk, “Set the media free, set the courts free!” to the joy of many.

I was with you even after this war started, when I discovered your pandemic rendition of "The Gunner’s Dream" and it has driven me insane again, penetrating to the very bottom of my soul.

And yet here we are.

When I say I haven’t read your letter to Zelenska in its entirety, it’s not because I don’t care. On the contrary, it’s because I care too much. It’s for self-protection; it’s for fear of being too devastated. I know the little that has reached me made me devastated enough.

I’m told that you blame the war on Ukrainian nationalists. I wonder where you got that from.

There are two ways of knowing something: either by witnessing it first-hand, or by trusting someone else who knows. But who to trust? When you have the luxury of being out of range, you hear echoes of bombs shouting, killing on both sides; both would have you believe that the other side is to blame. Who to trust?

Well, I’ll tell you who NOT to trust. That’s simple.

You locate the guys who kill children, and then not trust those guys. Problem solved.

The thing about this war is that there’s one side that does that. Not two. There are attackers, and then there are defenders.

I’ll name them: it’s Ukrainians who are defending themselves, and it’s Russians who are killing children. Mr. Waters, the simple fact is that you have chosen to side with the children killers.

You, of all people? That makes about as much sense as 2 + 2 = 5. Less, even. I can’t fathom how it’s possible. And yet, apparently, it is.

And I can’t help thinking: was it all just a lie? All the music, all the poignant words—a cheap magician’s trick just to delude people? A hollow emotional vampirism to let you feed on all the emotions? Can no one on the planet be trusted anymore?

I feel bitter and devoid of faith in man.

I have heard tragic stories of Bucha and Mariupol and Izium, and so should you have. I was very careful not to watch any footage, either video or static, of the casualties (again, self-care). But one picture made it through my filters. Two pictures, actually, of the same little girl on a sunny day—it might have been April—in Vinnytsia. In the morning, playful and lively; in the evening, dead. Killed by a Russian missile.

I dream the gunner’s dream, and that girl is in it.

Roger, I have seen the writing on the wall, and it says TEKEL. (Put on there not by some cruel Jehovah, but by your own actions.) You have been weighed and found wanting: on one dish of the scales, you with all your beautiful words and music; on the other, a corpse of the tiny girl.

I don’t have any asks. I have no hopes of being heard, let alone listened to. Just wanted to let this out of myself.

Know this: every time I now hear a Waters song, or a Waters-era Pink Floyd song, something in me will die. And I very much intend to keep myself alive.

— Daniel