Time - Intellectual

The track before “Time” called “On the Run” deals with the pressures of travel, while this reprise touches more on coming back from those travels and being able to kick back

The decision to place Breathe Reprise after Time arose during the process of working the piece up live before we started recording. Referred to as “Home Again” during the recordings, it was simply the third verse of “Breathe,” detached for structural/emotional reasons.

—Roger Waters

In some versions of the Dark Side of the Moon booklet, the lyrics to “Time” are separated into the lyrics for “Time” and the lyrics for the “Breathe” Reprise.

This part breaks the fourth wall by saying that the song is over. (after all, the next part isn’t “Time” per se, but a reprise of “Breathe”) This could also be Wright talking about how this is his last line he sings in the song.

The singer is using his song as a metaphor for his life. He fears that when his “song” ends, he won’t have much wisdom to pass on to those he leaves behind. A harsh reality as there aren’t many absolute truths in life.

It can also be taken as that the singer thought he had something more important or unique to offer the world, because most people never really make a significant mark on the world.

“Time” starts with layers of clock noises that were originally recorded as a quadrophonic test by Pink Floyd’s engineer Alan Parsons.

I had recorded them previously in a watchmaker’s shop for a quadraphonic sound demonstration record, I went in with a mobile and recorded each one separately, ticking then chiming.

—Alan Parsons

The clock noises are followed by a 2-minute passage with a drum solo from Nick Mason

The drums used on the “Time” track are roto-toms. I think we did some experiments with some other drums called boo-bans, which are very small, tuned drums, but the roto-toms actually gave the best effect.

—Nick Mason

The clocks ticking at the beginning suggest that time is going by as it always does, but then there’s this strange two-minute drum solo. The band is just killing time with the slow, heavy drum part.

But then the song starts really quickly, and when Gilmour starts singing, he breaks into it with little buildup. Just like the person he’s describing in the song, he realizes they’ve “wasted time” with the drum solo and belts out a quick verse trying to make up for the time.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.

—Henry David Thoreau, “Walden”

According to journalist and guitarist Nigel Williamson, who has written and spoken extensively about DSOTM, this line is a “description of the English character” that “permeate[s] the whole record, and indeed the whole of Pink Floyd’s career”

There’s some clever play here as well, because as soon as Wright says “hanging on in quiet desperation,” he goes on to say desperately that he “Thought [he’d] something more to say,” And then refuses to end the song!

Roger Waters uses the image of a sinking sun as a metaphor for growing old and coming closer to death. Once you realize you’ve wasted all this time, you anxiously try to catch up to the time lost – in this case, represented by chasing the Sun as it rises in the east, sets in the west, each and every day – and do something with your life. However, whatever you manage to accomplish will have little affect on the bigger picture. Large ideas/things like the sun will continue along their path as you breathe your last breath.

Throughout our lives, the sun is “the same in a relative way” – it appears to move across the sky although it’s the Earth that travels in an orbit around the sun. Whereas both the sun and Earth’s inhabitants have had intense activity throughout the years, the sun has barely altered while people grow and change. Although they both age, a person may seem older because they are closer to death than the sun is in relation to its own cycle.

This section also references a line in “Breathe (In the Air”-

Dig that hole, forget the sun

Waters was so absorbed in his tasks earlier in life that he failed to acknowledge the passage of time, and it is during this track that this catches up with him- he ignored the sun, and now the sun has run its course without him.

As you get older, you experience the interesting temporal phenomenon of time seeming to go by faster. When you’re 10, a year is 10% of your entire life so it seems longer than when you’re 60 and a year is 1.7% of your life

How many times have you spent a day not doing anything and just kind of doing things to fill the time?

The phrase “dull day” is also meant to be ironic. The entire idea is that no time should be wasted in our lives, and there should be no such thing as a dull day.

We only have so many days, and yet we act like we have so many, spending them in an offhand way (especially during youth) like we might get rid of spare change, and treating our precious time as if it could be dull.

Describing the all-too-common creative paralysis that many people suffer from: Writer’s block. Many people have a book, or a song, or a painting waiting inside of them, waiting to be made, but most people get caught up with the day-to-day business of living, making a paycheck, and worrying about mundane things that will amount to nothing when one’s days are done. It could also mean writing a list of things you expect to do, where as Syd Barrett said a few years prior “You only have to read the lines in scribbly black and everything shines.” , but barely accomplishing anything out of those plans.

Too often we let time slip by us without taking the time to pursue our passions, the things that give meaning to our lives and nourish our souls. We keep telling ourselves that we’ll get around to it when we’re not so busy. Then another year has passed, and the song in your heart is still unwritten, save for a few throw-away lines scribbled in a notepad one afternoon.

Soon enough, we all run out of years. Too many of us go to our graves with the song in our hearts left unwritten, and this line is Roger Waters exhorting the listener to wake up, embrace life, and chase down the muse before it’s too late.

Roger Waters made a late lyric change replacing this line with the earlier live version’s

Lying supine in the sunshine

The supine position is when you lay on the ground face up (versus prone, on your stomach)

The lyric “Lying supine in the sunshine” continued to be used, even during the 1974 tours.

There’s another ironic line here.
He’s grown tired of sunshine, generally a symbol for good times, and is instead fascinated by the rain, generally a bad symbol. Just like how in the first verse we treat our time like it’s something to waste, this says that we ignore the good times we have (the sunshine) in favor of thinking about and watching the rain, or the bad things.

A track meet is used as a metaphor for life here. A starting gun is fired into the air to indicate the start of a race, but you’re never told when life is supposed to “start”

I suddenly thought at 29, hang on, it’s happening, it has been right from the beginning, and there isn’t suddenly a line when the training stops and life starts.

—Roger Waters

People pass the time while waiting for the moments for someone to guide them to maturity. Roger Waters, in an interview, described the feeling he had growing up:

I had the strangest feeling growing up – and I know a lot of people share this – that childhood and adolescence and one’s early adult life are preparing for something that’s going to happen later.

The tolling of a church bell is done during a funeral service. It is usually rung in slow succession with the malaise of the bell rippling through the fields.

At funerals everyone is depressed, sometimes falling to their knees as if to ask God “why?”. Roger Waters is a known atheist, so it’s possible Gilmour’s performance here is a thinly veiled critique of religion (“magic spells” referring to a priest’s words spoken at a funeral).

This also segues into the next song, which has been described by Richard Wright about life gradually descending into death.