Pink Floyd’s “Breathe” and “Time” Hit Harder The Older I Get

I'm sitting here, listening to Pink Floyd’s “Time” and “Breathe.” Man, I love these songs. I have since the first time I heard them as a kid. A million listens later, I could listen to them a million more times and never get sick of them.

Of course, the music is great. “Time” is, in my estimation, at least, the masterpiece of an album that is itself a masterpiece, and “Breathe” may be the best opening track of an album ever. But I don’t hear it as just great music anymore, especially the music for “Time.” Now that I’m older, I hear how the music of “Time” casts the shadow of our mortality across the entire song.

Then there are the lyrics. No standard fare here, no pop pablum, no thinly veiled euphemisms for rolling around between the sheets. No, even when I was a kid, the lyrics of these two songs, especially “Time,” struck me with their gravitas, and I knew they carried real meaning and weight. Now, thirty-something years later, the weight they carry, set against the backdrop of the shadow that the music for “Time” casts, hits harder because they hit so much closer to home.

The alarm goes off. It’s time for us to be thrust into this world. At the moment of our birth, the metronome starts ticking, keeping the timing of our lives. We don’t hear it when we are young, but it’s always there in the background, clicking away, marking the countdown to the inevitable.

Our earliest years pass, and we start growing into awareness. The musical intro kicks in with a heavy, ominous chord. The music grows. We are progressing through our childhood. And still, like “the tolling of the iron bell,” that heavy, ominous chord strikes like clockwork every few measures. But we don’t feel the weight of it when we are young. We don’t hear “the tolling of the iron bell.” Our minds are still too immature to perceive how, from the moment we are born, we live in the shadow of our mortality.

The first verse starts. We’re growing from adolescence into early adulthood. Though we still don’t feel its weight, that heavy, ominous chord still hits every few measures. We still don’t hear it, but that bell keeps ringing; it is a reminder of the fate we cannot escape hanging over the frivolity of youth.

I look back to when I was at this part of the song in my life. So many hours of my youth “frittered and wasted in an offhand way,” never thinking about the future, just living for today. I was young, and life seemed so long then. There was still plenty of time to figure things out. Plenty of time to find my way. But that was all still far off in the future, and I’d think about those things when I got there. Until then, I’d live for today.

The funny thing about living for today is that it is always today. When you live for the moment, you get trapped in the moment. You lose sight of the fact that the past was once the here and now, and the future will soon be the here and now. It’s very easy to lose track of time. It’s very easy to find yourself one day realizing that “ten years have got behind you.” Damned if that didn’t happen to me. Damned if twenty years hadn’t gotten behind me. Damned if I didn’t “miss the starting gun.”

There was only one thing to do: “Run, rabbit, run.”

We come to the guitar solo, the visceral reaction we have when we start to perceive the shadow of mortality in which we live. Our youth is gone. That heavy, ominous chord keeps hitting every few measures. We’re starting to feel the weight of it now. We feel the sense of urgency of the solo as we see that every year behind us is one less ahead of us. Soon, if they haven’t already, those years behind us will outnumber the ones ahead of us. The youthful illusion of the infinitude of life and its possibilities gives way to the cold truth of the finite nature of the time available to us.

After the solo, we come to the next verse. We’re moving into middle age. We’re running and running, the urgency of the finite nature of the time available to us pushing us on. Running to try to make up for lost time. Running to try to do what we want in this life. Trying to keep plans from “coming to naught.” Trying to finish that “half a page of scribbled lines.” And that heavy chord keeps hitting, ringing louder in our ears, the ominous shadow that it casts growing heavier upon us by the day.

That’s where I find myself in the song now, in middle age, when the years go by quicker, and life doesn’t seem as long as it used to be. I’m running and running, trying to “catch up with the sun,” trying to catch up with a life that is passing me by. But when you’re chasing the sun, it seems like it is always “racing around to come up behind you again.” When you’re chasing a life that is passing you by, it seems like it is always moving too fast to catch up with.

You have to catch life at the right time to “ride the tide.” If you miss that wave, well, there’s not another one coming along. You watch that wave roll by, the possibilities and potential of your youth being carried away with it. You watch as it crashes into the shore, breaking into a thousand regrets and “what could have been.” Instead of riding the tide, you find yourself fighting against the undertow, trying to keep your head above water.

That PhD in decadence and debauchery that I earned in my youth is useless to me now. So I make my living by the sweat of my brow. I “dig that hole” because that is the only door of opportunity still open to me. And I keep digging because “when at last the work is done, don’t sit down; it’s time to dig another one.” Every day is like the one before it. Digging those holes. Scratching out a living while “every year is getting shorter,” and I can “never seem to find the time.” Digging those holes, chasing after something that has too much of a head start on me to be caught up with. Watching as plans “come to naught.” Writing “half a page of scribbled lines” that will never be finished.

We come to the last part of the song. The music softens. “Time” slips into “Breathe (Reprise).” I’m not at this part of the song in my life yet, where the time for running is past, and all there is to do is “warm my bones beside the fire” until “the song is over,” and the inevitability of my mortality overtakes me. But I can hear that metronome as it ticks away now. And I can hear the tolling of that iron bell, the one that will toll for us all someday, and I know for whom that bell tolls.

It’s still faint and “far away, across the field,” but not as far away as it once was, and every day it draws a little nearer and grows a little louder.