Raised Toward Heaven By Angels, Then Dropped

I loaded up an old favorite tonight, and the lyrics hit me like a 900lb steel ball... Just like they have a thousand times before. Most people know this song, (I would hope so anyway.) - "Eclipse" by Pink Floyd. It's somewhat saddening, that I have talked to so many people that I didn't think could really understand the full scope and measure of the meaning in this song. I've been a Floyd fan all my life, literally; my parents were huge Floyd fans. I had been listening to the Dark Side Of The Moon album every since I can remember, but the point of this particular song didn't hit me for many years... when it did, though, the impact left me speechless, seriously... for several weeks. It has had such a tremendous effect on my life, and I have tried and tried but have never been able to describe the feel of it, the impact, until tonight. In this song I can hear the assertion of the deepest of all human fears - death with no afterlife. The main body of the piece seems to be only a simple recollection of life, as one's life would flash before his eyes at the moment of death. It builds a feeling up inside you but you can't exactly place it... and in the next to last line you're told how perfect it all is, how everything under the sun is in tune, and this suddenly catapults you off the face of the earth in complete happiness; as if you had died and all you could see were the beautiful faces of angels, smiling at you softly with so much care and love and reassurance...

But just as you start to make out the silhouette of heaven's gates in the distance, you're given the last line of the song -

"And the sun is eclipsed by the moon"

Then the faces of the angles distort all at once, and you see their sly grins for a split second just before they drop you, and you fall, forever, into nothingness.





"Eclipse", by Pink Floyd.

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 and borrow, or steal

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

And 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...

And the sun is eclipsed by the moon.