ECLIPSE (Waters)
[Waters]
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
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.
There is no dark side of the moon really. Matter of fact it’s all dark.
Waters: "This was interesting because it was something that I added after we'd gone on the road. It felt as if the piece needed an ending. It's just a run-down with a little bit of philosophizing, though there's something about its naive quality that I still find appealing. In a strange way it re-attaches me to my adolescence, the dreams of youth. The lyric points back to what I was attempting to say at the beginning. It's a recitation of the ideas that preceded it saying, ‘there you are, that's all there is to it’. What you experience is what it is. The rather depressing ending, 'And everything under the sun is in tune/but the sun is eclipsed by the moon', is the idea that we all have the potential to be in harmony with whatever it is, to lead happy, meaningful and right lives."
As Waters mentioned, this song harks back to one of the first messages in ‘Breathe.’ “All you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be.” The real significance in this song comes in the last two lines, summing up the entire album into one profound message. Like Waters said everything our lives can work together in harmony; this is true only if we keep the “pressures” of life in check. We must constantly deal with these “pressures”, and fight the urge to let them depress us or take a hold of us. Otherwise madness will take over our lives, and the sun will be “eclipsed by the moon.” Solar eclipses only occur when the sun, moon and Earth are in perfect alignment, which is quite rare. This is a metaphor for the “pressures” in life causing madness, as in rare situations these “pressures” can cause a person to snap into madness.
Another interesting observation I received, “It’s also interesting to note yet another appearance of ‘the sun.’ In ‘Breathe,’ the rabbit was trying to escape it; in ‘Time,’ we were running and running to catch up with the sun; and now, in ‘Eclipse,’ the sun is being eclipsed by the moon. I think the overarching effect is that throughout the album the sun has been presented as this constant, this great power that is unchanged and unchangeable, very much like God, and perhaps even a metaphor for God. Yet even that great power, that thing we try to hide from, that thing we try to run and catch up with, that thing that is relatively immortal, can be completely obliterated from sight, even if for a moment. While I totally agree with your interpretation of the eclipse as meaning insanity, I think there is another interpretation that suggests that we should take nothing for granted, that even the sun, a thing that is one of the most powerful and important things in our galaxy (at least for life on this Earth), can be blotted out and taken away from us in an instant by something as small and seemingly dead and insignificant as the moon. In a sense, everything, all of life, all of the universe, time, etc. is fleeting; here for the moment and gone in the next. While this might be seen as a pessimistic view, I think it plays back into that original moral of living life to the fullest while you still can, because it can all be taken away in the next breath.”
The last sound clip on the album was originally “There is no dark side of the moon really. As a matter of fact it's all dark... and the thing that makes it look alight is the sun.” The last part of the line was cut because it was considered anticlimactic, although it was more of an accurate statement.
The album closes the same way it opens in ‘Speak to Me’, with the heartbeat. This time the heart beats until it stops, signifying death, just as the initial heartbeats symbolized conception. This album is certainly about life, and it is appropriate to have these heartbeat sequences, adding even more meaning to the album. This symmetry technique of starting and ending an album in the same way was a technique Waters used on several albums, intrigued by the idea of making cyclic albums made to be listened to repeatedly.
As one fan writes, "The heartbeat at the
beginning represents the start of life. The heartbeat at the end represents
death. But when you combine the two in the cyclic technique Waters created, you
get the idea that life goes on after one is dead. Life repeats it’s self in
another’s body with the same pressures that the person before experienced. It
is all cyclic with the sun, time, life and death, and the changing of the moon’s
phases."
I particularly like the point that the major symbols that Water used on this album, the heartbeat, the sun, the moon, and the tides, are all cyclic. The choice to use these symbols was a major part of the album. Not only are they all cyclic, but they are all stellar in proportions. I think this implies to the listener that the symbols represent something of great importance, and maybe even make the listener feel small in comparison. The cyclic nature of these bodies is also complex and intertwined. The moon is rotating and revolving around the Earth which is rotating and revolving around the sun. We have cycles within cycles within cycles. It seems clear that these cyclic symbols correspond to the fact that lives keep playing out, over and over, each with the same major themes explored in the album. The fact that these themes are so general and apply to all life, is what truly makes this album, in my opinion, timeless.
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