“The sun is the same in a relative way, but you’re older

Shorter of breath and one day closer to death”

The wonder and wisdom of the words in this song, the beauty and bliss of its soundscapes, they simply stretch beyond time.

This song lives in an era of infinity.

Pink Floyd’s masterpiece “Time “ was composed more than 4 decades ago, but I instantly connect with its tunes of timelessness and the undying lyrics about time.

“And you run and you run to catch up with the sun, but it’s sinking.

Racing around to come up behind you again.”

Running out of time surely feels like sinking—in a boat out on the deepest sea­.

We may think we are sailing in vast oceans of time. We tend to imagine that our ride on the waves of existence are endless.

But suddenly we realize that we will not be floating around forever.

We notice that we are not cruising in a sea of infinity—we are not even swimming in a tiny pond of it.

We are drowning with the speed of light in muddy dried out oceans of presence and soon-to-be past-time.

In one changing second, we have to learn how to navigate our hastily sinking ships through the most narrow streams of our surprisingly approaching ends.

We come to see that we have run out of waves and water—of time and space.

To me, this song was always a marvelous reminder—not just about the fleeting moment and the finite duration of our existence in time—but also of our realization, navigation and acceptance of this.

Pink Floyd, in an instant of infinity, you have taught me so much about Time.

Time. [Poem by Cecilia Vinkel]

Time. An interval of eternity, an odyssey of an unknown—but certain—span.

We are born into a sea of infinity but not blessed with more than a short and final swim in it.

Our birth gift is a final stagnating end.

Every second is a breath of time.

But the already given end bites of our fragile oxygen.

The final stop in the journey of time will come.

A destination that may be of eternity, but we are only terminally instants in it’s peculiar substance.

We are travelers in time. But we are made of temporality. Our voyage has an end.

We are visitors in time—but not of it. 

And the odyssey is beyond navigation.

For time has only one direction.

That

Of

None.

Watch this amazing animation of Pink Floyd’s “Time” full-screen—or just float away with your eyes closed and enjoy the temporary ride on these sound-clouds of time until the end of eternity.

Pink Floyd  / Time  (1973).

” ‘Time,’ he said, ‘is what keeps everything from happening at once.’ “

~ Ray Cummings, from The Girl in the Golden Atom.

 

Author: Cecilia Vinkel

Video & Screenshot: Youtube. The Time sequence by Ian Emes was the first animated film to be commissioned by Pink Floyd for their Dark Side Of The Moon concert tours.