luckyse7ens September 10th, 2007 05:33PM  
Interestingly, in the line: "I see the words on a rocking horse of time," Vedder is making a reference to the short story, THE ROCKING HORSE WINNER, by D.H. Lawrence. In this story, a boy rides a rocking horse to magically gain advanced knowledge of the winners of numerous horse races. At the end of this story, the obsessed boy dies mysteriously while riding the rocking horse as hard as he could to learn the winner of the next race. In his dying breath, he states the name of the winning horse, which would eventually bring his family out of poverty.
There are strong schools of thought that maintain that D.H. Lawrence was, in fact, alluding to the act of masturbation. However, Vedder refers to this horse as a vessel through which one would gain advanced knowledge through the passage of time.

Surfer_Coyote October 8th, 2007 02:24PM  
Eddie Vedder was still coming to terms with his "daddy issues" at the time the songs for "Ten" were being penned. This song and "Alive" are testaments of the feelings he had about his biological father, as well as the man he grew up thinking was his father. It's a recurring theme in his songs, especially the first three Pearl Jam albums.