Top Rated Interpretation

anonymous March 5th, 2007 05:41AM  

This song is for each individual to interpret through his own feelings. The song may mean something to Roger Waters personally, but it should also have a personal meaning for yourself.

The introduction suggests the weight of time that we all feel from being in an inevitably decreasing life in which we are always walking towards the end. The entire introduction is to represent the entire plane and span of your time of consciousness, starting from the heavy silence which is present only before we turn our hour glass. We are awoken by the loud alarm clock which represents the first acknowledgement of time. From there time only grows more intense, a heavy presence which is ceaselessly building towards a culmination or climax. It continues to grow until our emotions are reawakened into the present dimension of time in which we become conscious after a loud clash of drums.

As if a voice in the back of our heads, it mocks how we try to play it cool; how easily we slide time into the back of our minds. So we just stick around where our decisions have already been made for us, because it’s easier to just sit around and wait. We have all the time in the world and besides, we don’t know what’s right – no one told us. So we wander in circles; waiting.

Then comes the beautifully done jam session, which suggests how we will eventually begin to drift forward into life, instead of standing on our feet and taking it on. The music takes on our emotions in the sensation that we are lost. It begins to sound like a burning monotonous pain, our hearts constantly yearning for something that we just can’t reach and are constantly battling in our weariness, every once in awhile coming upon our own internal clocks; waking up and realizing we are getting older.

So we pretend to except who we are to quiet our anxieties; picking a better character to play the parts of ourselves, because we were too cowardly to follow the truth. All the time, we are dwindling towards our end, living as zombies who can’t come face to face with ourselves or time’s destiny lying before us. For hanging on a quiet desperation has become our society’s way. Be proper and follow the rules is what we were told even if you deny yourself freedom.

Then we are dropped into another dimension of time where we have accepted, without resistance (though still painfully), an empty existence. And when the cold iron bell comes ringing our names and taking our numbers, we do just what we did in life.

This song basically says time is no joke and to find the answers in this life you can’t look to anyone else but yourself. Time does catch up.