Time (The Story of my Life)


The fellows of Pink Floyd… They make my life fit in a seven minute song, with lots of time left over for instrumental solos and a medley of chiming clocks. The song is great. If you don’t have an ear for it, skip the intro… Listen to the lyrics, if you haven’t already memorized them…

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
You fritter and waste the hours in an off-hand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way

Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today
And then the one day you find ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun

And you run and you run to catch up with the sun, but it’s sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in the relative way, but you’re older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death

Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desparation is the English way
The time is gone the song is over, thought I’d something more to say

Home, home again
I like to be here when I can
When I come home cold and tired
It’s good to warm my bones beside the fire
Far away, across the field, the tolling of the iron bell
Calls the faithful to their knees
To hear the softly spoken magic spell

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Hanging on in quiet desparation is the English way

I’ve loved the song for 34 years and hope to love it for another 34 at least.

I tried my best to get my wife to let me play “Welcome To The Machine” as my first child was being born but she would have none of it.

Pink makes a connection with me in much the same way Dylan does. Not to get mystic on you but I consider it spiritual.

I always wondered why that was the English way, when Thoreau coined the phrase:

Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.

I think it may be more than just the Brits who do it this way.