Part one of the Comfortably Numb series.
Although the artwork doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the meaning of the song that is the series' namesake, the lyrics have always captivated my imagination. This work happens to be the result of what I felt at the time that I created it.
My interpretation varies each time I hear the song. This time it happened to be a shell-shocked SpecOps soldier holding his slain friend in the aftermath of a firefight deep in the jungles of French Indochina.
Of course, I suppose Apocalypse Now also had a little something to do with it.
There's something awfully horrifying about the thought of dying thousands of miles away from home, at unrecorded coordinates in an unnamed jungle that nobody will ever think about again after the conclusion of the operation.
It makes me wonder, sometimes, if we're all destined to suffer a similar fate of our own. When we die, how well will we be remembered? Will we be remembered at all? Oh, you might be remembered in the immediate aftermath of your death, and for a few decades afterwards. Once a few generations pass, though, chances are you'll simply become another "ancestor", all your wit and charm and charisma forgotten as the last people you knew in life meet their end as well.
In a way, I feel like perhaps the soldier lying dead in the wilderness is representative of all but the greatest and most noteworthy of public figures, all doomed to be forgotten sooner or later. All the more reason to live it up while you can, really. Who knows, perhaps through some crazy alcohol-fueled antics something could occur to plant you in the public consciousness as a historical figure. I'm not saying it would be something good that you'd be remembered for, but you'd be remembered, so there's that.
So yeah, memento mori, or something.
