Eclipse

To understand Eclipse you must interprete the album: the album reflects life as it is.

• Breathe: First your heartbeat begins/grows, you start to breathe and you are born. You get exposed external sounds and influences (like adult's voices saying things you cannot yet understand) but you get also exposed to your mother's cares and worries ('smiles you'll give, and tears you'll cry') and good advices ('balance on the biggest wave, you race towards an early grave').
• Time: You grow up and enter into the ratrace of society, you realize passing of time and experience first disappointments ('no-one told you when to run..') and what it means to get older ('every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time').
• Money: The materialistic phase of your life, working and earning money, not thinking much of the greater things in life. Reflected in even so cliche music.
• Us and them: The elderly phase of life: you have seen it all, and you feel you have done your part. You become narrowminded and start talking about 'us' and 'them'. Like many elderly people do, you retract socially in a more inner circle of close family and friends. Society as a whole becomes less important, because you realize you will not be part of it for a long time anymore.
• Brain damage: In the next phase your brain degenerates, you become detached from the outside world and 'real' people do not see anymore what you think. You loose touch with reality, your mind starts doing its own ways, but it feels to you like the rest of the world is doing strange things ('when the band you're in starts playing different tunes'). You 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 actions and apparent contradictions and conflicts in life are resolved and disappear at the point of death (=the sun is eclipsed by the moon: the night falls for your brain). Even time itself disappears ('all that is now, all that is gone, all that's to come'). At this point everything melts together and you find/realize/experience that 'everything under the sun is in tune' and that all struggles were constructs of your conscious brain). Then the heartbeat stops. You're gone...

I see no messages or judgements, or philosophies about darkness, just a tale about the phases of life. It helps me to realize what lies ahead for all of us. The Dark Side of the Moon is one of those rare works of Art where message, form and performance have come together in a perfect marriage.

It means that everything we do is meaningless

It could mean that. I can see that. I always thought it ment that with all the things that you can do...everything you have ever thought of or accomplished...everything...can change that quickly when the "sun is eclisped by the moon." Not litterally, of course, but just one little tiny insignificant thing can change everything about your life.

Oh, and I always thought it was "and all that you spite and everyone you fight." Of course, I could be wrong...that has happened on occasion.

No matter what we do, it will always be in tune with the sun, meaning that everything will be all right in the end. Unfortunatly, the sun is eclipsed by the moon, the moon, especially the dark side of the moon, is all the things in life that cause horrible things. Money, war, etc. Then after the song ends, we find out, if you turn up your speakers, that the entire moon is dark, so that no matter what, this metaphorical moon will always be a problem if we continue to let it eclipse the sun.

The Sun represents the concious waking mind, the moon is the subconcious 'darkside'. Everything in the cosmos IS perfectly in tune,its WE who are all screwed up. Since the lunar is in opposition to the solar, humanity's mind torn into two seperate poles (duality: light/dark, male/female/,good/evil) we will forever be subject to time, decay and death.

The world is ruled by symbols & signs, not words & rules- Confuscious was right. Learn to read the symbols surrounding you & EVERTYHING will begin to make sense. Seek & and you shall find

The Sun represents the concious waking mind, the moon is the subconcious 'darkside'. Everything in the cosmos IS perfectly in tune,its who are all screwed up. Since the lunar is in opposition to the solar, humanity's mind is torn into two seperate poles (duality: light/dark, male/female/,good/evil) we will forever be subject to time, decay and death.

"I don't see it as a riddle. The album uses the sun and the moon as symbols; the light and the dark; the good and the bad; the life force as opposed to the death force. I think it's a very simple statement saying that all the good things life can offer are there for us to grasp, but that the influence of some dark force in our natures prevents us from seizing them. The song addresses the listener and says that if you, the listener are affected by that force, and if that force is a worry to you, well I feel exactly the same too. The line 'I'll see you on the dark side of the moon' [Brain Damage] is me speaking to the listener, saying, 'I know you have these bad feelings and impulses because I do too and one of the ways I can make direct contact with you is to share with you the fact that I feel bad sometimes." -Roger Waters

I'm kinda siding with him on this. Sorry if someone else posted this... I didn't really bother to read other comments.

i love the last lines:

"everything under the sun is in tune but the sun is eclipsed by the moon"

i believe it means: everything is fine when there's light or happiness [sun], but that the light is covered [eclipsed] by the darkness or depression [the moon].
because the entire song leads up to those lines, he's saying that life is meaningless when you're depressed.

THIS SONG MAKES LIFE WORTH LIVING!!!

I'm a little surprised by all the different interpretations of this song, because what it means to me is simple and powerful.

Early in the album the lyrics go, "all you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be." A pretty grim take on life, that it has so little meaning.

As the album progresses, the lyrics portray a man grown tired by the drudgery of life. It's about working, running to catch a plane flight, wasting time, money, building status, politics, and war. Even the act of breathing, existence itself. It's enough to make anybody go insane. How crazy would you be to think that just one man's life holds any kind of significance?

So maybe that's the answer, madness. To trick ourselves into thinking anything matters. What if you thought there was more?

For me this is probably the most uplifting song I've ever heard. It says, EVERYTHING matters. As he lists all of the experiences of life during Eclipse, he's saying there isn't one thing that one of us ever does that doesn't matter. Listen to the words and know each one of those things impacts the universe and all of us, everything under the sun.

But then you'd have to be crazy, on the dark side of the moon, to think that's true. If that's the case, I say let the moon eclipse the sun and put us all on the dark side.