ON THE RUN (Gilmour, Waters)
[Female announcer, announcing flights at airport, including 'Rome']
Live for today, gone tomorrow, that's me
[Laughter]
The first of the “pressures of modern life” delved into on the album is travel in ‘On the Run.’ ‘On the Run’ is clearly an apt title for this theme. Before it got this name it was know to the band as ‘The Travel Sequence.’ This, like several other songs on the album is instrumental and has no lyrics. Through the use of sound clips and effects, the song does take on meaning however.
It is clear that the setting depicted in this song is that of an airport. Sounds of jets can be heard in the background, as well as a female voice announcing flights. Someone’s footsteps can be heard running with heavy breathing, someone clearly trying to make it to their flight before it takes off.
Next we hear a man saying “Live for today, gone tomorrow, that’s me” and laughing maniacally. The line “Live for today, gone tomorrow, that’s me” shows that this man is aligned with the “balanced on the biggest wave” philosophy of living each day like it is your last. We then hear more laughter later in the song, which gets particularly strong right before the sound of a plane crashing, and then the laughter is no more.
Based on the fact that the man is laughing right before the plane crashes and then the laughter stops, I conclude that the man laughing was on the plane, that he knew it was crashing and found it amusing for some reason. One theory as to why the man is laughing is proposed by a fellow fan: "As he is plummeting to his death, he finally realizes the futility (madness) of being a 'rabbit.' How ironic, 'I had to catch this plane. But why? To die an early death?' I suppose it is one of those situations where one can either laugh of cry. Laughing seems to be more appropriate."
Then all sound stops and we hear the running and breathing again. Hearing the footsteps again after the plane crashes implies that the first man we heard running to catch his flight was not the man laughing. Apparently the man missed his flight, but him missing that flight saved his life as he missed the crash. This also serves as a reminder of the role that chance plays in our lives. The future is so uncertain even on the most fundamental levels. Success in life is only determined partially by our own choices, and partially by that which we have no control over.
The exact nature of the situation in the song is ambiguous to be sure, however regardless of that the song certainly does give us a sense of how stressful travel can be. The fast paced (pre-cursor to techno) music gives a sense of great urgency. This along with the images invoked by the sound clips paint us a brilliant picture of the pressure in life that is travel, particularly by plane. I think it was a wise choice to have this song be instrumental. It still has a potent message, whereas lyrics about this subject may have come out sounding contrived.
Another interesting note about this song is that during the tour promoting the release of this album, the band had an almost full size Spitfire plane crash into the stage at the end of ‘On the Run.’
Some additional insight: “In one sense I do hear the song as literal travel, a people traversing the globe like ants; planes dot the sky, cars litter the ground. There’s really no place that we can’t go anymore. But for me, I’ve always thought of the ‘travel’ in this song as being a metaphorical journey, not a literal one: that the planes are a metaphor for us, and that we are traveling through life, growing up, jetting by each other without so much as a wave, not slowing down to notice the scenery outside of the windows. While some of us cruise along just fine, slow and steady, others are spiraling out of control, ultimately crashing too soon (like riding the ‘biggest wave’), a big reminder of our transitory nature.
“And what is it that we are ‘On the Run’ from? In slang terms, being ‘On the Run’ is very much like being ‘On the Lam,’ that is running from something (usually used to imply running from the law.) Is this the same running that we encountered earlier as ‘rabbits’ in ‘Breathe’? To me the implication is that we’re on the run from time, trying to outlive this world, speeding by on that ‘biggest wave,’ trying to outrun our own mortality. Yet such running only leads to an abrupt stop, either in death or the sudden realization that we are mortal, that we are transitory, that time is eternal and will outlive us all. That’s where the crash comes in at the end of the song, I believe. That’s where the alarm clocks ring, waking us up, so to speak, from the tedium of everyday life to the realization of time not just as a concept, but as a real thing, something that will continue running long after we are dead.”
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