Roger Waters, the Atheist

Roger Waters, the Atheist
"Is there anybody out there?"

I'm the type of guy, who when I get into something, like a band, I really get into it. I spend a lot of time listening, exploring, enjoying, and hunting down their back catalog. I will play an album for three weeks straight . I will read interviews, read biographies, and watch documentaries on them. I stay a while.  You get the point. You may even notice that with Greater Than…certain artists get spoken about more than others around here. The astute reader will most likely be able to name my favorite bands.

Lately, I have been on a Pink Floyd kick.

I never liked them in high school.
Something about their music never did it for me. Maybe I didn't "get it."

I have just recently come to enjoy the layers and beauty of Dark Side of the Moon.
It's hard to deny the magnitude of The Wall. A double album of greatness.
Even Wish You Were Here, with it's 13-minute opening track, "Shine on you Crazy Diamond."
All three are killer (concept) albums.

I just really am impressed by the creativity and compositional prowess of David Gilmour and Roger Waters.

After digging a bit deeper into their personal lives, I discover that both of these men are atheists.

Really?

Roger Waters, the man responsible for writing The Wall, an atheist?

I let that sink in awhile. I asked myself what I thought about that. I wrestled with it.

He does not believe that we humans have a soul.

No soul?

One of the pillar pursuits of this magazine is finding & celebrating things that have soul.

It's hard for me not to see a sunset and give some sort of praise or compliment to the Creator of all things.
Especially as an artist, I find it difficult to detach that which is artful from that which is soulful.

Shoot, art may very well be the visible manifestation of the invisible soul within us!

How could The Wall, an album packed with so much depth, richness, texture, imagination, and……soul……..be created by a man who has no soul?

Art by it's very nature is soulful. Most of it is, anyway. Especially great art!  I can see, feel, touch, and hear soul while experiencing art.

As Bono states, "the goal...is soul!"

I would ask Roger Waters: where then does all of your consistently great, moving and stirring music come from? You just created it through your own human limitations and abilities, with no outside help? It's sad to think that this art can't, or doesn't, come from another place and part of you.

There was somehow no mixture of heart, spirit and soul that went into the creation and recording of some of the most beautiful rock and roll albums we have heard?

I personally find that hard to believe.