Rules for Life by Pink Floyd – Eclipse

Everyone knows that in order to survive we must keep moving forward. For many of you that means working hard and advancing your career.

However, working too hard in order to get to the top can (and often does), rush one into an early grave.

This is a lesson to you all – learn to balance your work life with your home life – or you risk losing both.

Always remember – ride with the tide not on it.

That’s our Rules For Life over with for today, now, without further ado, let’s get into this musical message from Pink Floyd.

To fully understand the meaning of the message found in the lyrics of Eclipse one must interpret the album – The Dark Side of the Moon – by Pink Floyd which many say reflects life as it really is.

For some of us anyway…..

First of all lets enjoy the track – Eclipse

Eclipse – Lyrics

All that you touch and all that you see
All that you taste

All you feel

And all that you love and all that you hate
All you distrust, all you save

And all that you give and all that you deal
And all that you buy, beg, borrow, or steal

And all you create and all you destroy
And all that you do and all that you say

And all that you eat and everyone you meet everyone you meet
And all that you slight and everyone you fight

And all that is now and all that is gone
And all that’s to come and everything under the sun is in tune

But the sun is eclipsed by the moon

Tracks from the album – Dark Side of the Moon

Anonymous has analysed the Hidden in Plain Sound messages in six of the tracks on The Dark Side of the Moon album.

Breathe:

First your heartbeat begins then grows, and you are born. Then you start to breathe. You get exposed to external sounds and influences (like adult’s voices saying things that you cannot yet understand). You also get exposed to your mother’s cares and her worries (‘smiles you’ll give, and tears you’ll cry’) and all her good advice (‘balance on the biggest wave, you race towards an early grave’).

Time:

You grow up and enter the rat-race of modern society, you start to see the passing of time and you start to experience your first disappointments (‘no-one told you when to run..’) You begin to understand what it means to get old (‘every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time’).

Money:

This is the materialistic phase of your life, working and earning money, not thinking of the greater things in life. A life balance.

Us and them:

The elderly phase of life: you have seen it all, and you feel you have done your part. You become narrow minded and start thinking in terms of ‘us’ and ‘them’.

Like many elderly people do, you retract socially into an ever decreasing inner circle of close family and friends.

Society as a whole becomes less important, you begin to realise that you will not be part of it for much longer.

Brain damage:

In the next phase your mind starts to degenerate, you become detached from the outside world and ‘real’ people do not see you anymore – or hear what you think.

You loose touch with reality, your mind starts going its own way, but it feels to you like the rest of the world is doing the strangest of things (‘when the band you’re in starts playing different tunes’).

At this point in your life you may get locked up in an institution or an elderly home, but more importantly, you get locked up in your head, sometimes even purposely by ‘making the cut’ (lobotomy).

Eclipse:

The end.

Finally, all the actions, contradictions and conflicts of your entire life are resolved. They all disappear – you’re at the point of death (‘the sun is eclipsed by the moon‘) the night starts to fall in your brain.

Even time itself has now disappeared (‘all that is now, all that is gone, all that’s to come’).

At this point everything melts together and you find/realise/experience that (‘everything under the sun is in tune’) and that all your struggles were only the constructs of your conscious brain.

You find your peace – then your heartbeat stops.

And you’re gone…