Breathe

This song means "appreciate life" basically. Floyd's saying breathe in the air, enjoy what humans were meant to enjoy as intelligent beings. Leave, break away from monotony and typicality, but dont leave or forget your loved ones at the same time. Look around and find your own ground, path, existence.
Too many people get caught up digging holes one after another, it's almost senseless. Ride the wave, but if you concentrate on getting the biggest wave you'll miss out on life and eventually get an early grave. Enjoy existence, because after you're time is up, all your life has been are those laughs and tears, touches and sights, your memory man.

To me the album Dark Side of the Moon is a story of life. It begins with a heartbeat and ends with the heartbeat that stops. Brethe, being the first song, means the first breath of air after being born. The rest of the song talks about all the shit you'll do in your life, which gets explained later in the album..

Breathe is a warning. Breathe is about enjoying your life when you are young, before you have to worry about all the crap life chucks at you.

Look at the first line: "breathe, breath in the air," enjoy life now while you can. "Don't be afraid to care" Don't hide your emotions, let people know what you think. "leave, but don't leave me" Go out and see the world and make new ties, but don't forget the ties you had when you were young. "Look around choose your own ground" Make your own decisions, don't let others think for you. "For long you live, and high you fly, and smiles you'll give and tears you'll cry" You'll go through a lot of good and bad in your life. "All you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be" You have to make you're own way. the only way to make your life better is do something with yourself.

This may be life in general speaking to you, giving you advice. But the next lines are "society" talking, telling you to spend all your time working, "digging holes". The only way to be sucessful is to "ride the tide", do what everybody else is doing. But even here, some forshadowing is used. cus all this will lead you to "an early grave". Maybe not physically, but in brain damage, the guy is mentally non-existant.(Much like Syd Barrett)

The album is the disenchantement one feels when they realize that they have not been living their life at all. Waiting for some distant time, preparing for a life you will never live because you arent really living your life. This album is about developing awareness just enough to notice what's wrong with everything and feeling a little lost within that thought. Its a portrait of life from a bitter, albeit, brilliant perspective.

I see posts about insanity and people trying to analyze ..etc.etc. While this album does have some analytical value, there are several hints to a distant peace. This distant peace is found within. It is what we are all striving to reach. I dont honestly believe that Waters crafted this idea intentionally. in fact, the band was simply feeling. By feeling I dont mean emotions....I mean in the sense that they are connecting with something deep within themselves. Trying to analyze this work is fine as long as you can connect with the feelings laced throughout.

"all you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be" This line is very clear in the way that it shows that connecting within the moment is through your feelings, not your thoughts and trying to out-think a scenario. Now Waters says it with a somewhat bitter tone. Funny thing is that the answer is right under his nose. Accepting that experiencing is the most fulfilling way to live your life is not a let down. Its only a let down when you are EXPECTING it to be more. Expectations are false realities that steer you clear out of living. Taking in life through each experience is really the way to happiness...or so I'm told :-)

The guys in Pink Floyd describe a loose plot in the album Dark Side of the Moon as the experience of one person's life in this difficult world, from beginning to end. Breathe is about being born. The 1st verse is the realization of being alive, the freedom and endless possibilities ahead, and the desire of the parent to allow the child to be her/himself yet reluctant to let go.

The 2nd verse is about falling into obedience and the expectation of conformity. It's about finding one's miserable place as a cog in the machine, and how one's work never seems to accomplish anything meaningful.

This story arc is continued in Time, where time is flying by much too fast. Yet there is occasional respite in the Breathe reprise. The songs on side 2 (of the LP) deal with lessons learned as one grows older, though the guys in the band themselves weren't terribly old when they recorded the album. Still very profound though.

I'm not sure, but I think Eclipse finishes this arc by summarizing the one life begun in Breathe as a sort of death-bed lament.

I know it's bad form to say that other's opinions are wrong, but in the case of DSOTM, the meaning, the intended meaning; what Floyd were trying to get across, what they explicitly say they are trying to get through to us is the concept of regular, every day life driving you insane. All of the songs on this album deal with something common, be it rules, capitalism, passing of time, war... how could it all not drive you insane? Breathe deals with something so fundamentally sad, that we're mortal, that if we really understood it we'd all go mad. Instead we rush, rush, rush through life, always on the way to the next appointment, the next day, the next task, to our grave.

The first verse is what wisdom says about life and accepting it leads to peace The second verse (except the last line) is how society says you should live and accepting it leads to insanity and a wasted life

Breathe, breathe in the air: Pay attention to the breath it is the essence of life don't be afraid to care: Who gives a shit what society thinks leave but don't leave me: Forget the bullshit; Remember wisdom look around, choose your own ground: Pay attention, check your options then make your own decisions for long you live and high you fly: Be patient, you've got time and life can be awesome and smiles you'll give and tears you'll cry: Emotions are part of life and you're human like everyone and all your touch and all you see is all your life will ever be: The five senses are what make life experiences

Run rabbit run: Keep yourself busy/distracted/occupied so you can forget about life dig that hole, forget the sun: Work is most important and when at last the work is done don't sit down, it's time to dig another one: Don't take time to think or just be, keep working. for long you live and high you fly but only if you ride the tide: you need to live up to society's expectations and balanced on the biggest wave you race towards an early grave: you're spirit will die very early in life if you live like this.

I think The Dark Side Of The Moon is about a compressed moment of epiphany experienced during a roller coaster ride .Before the music starts you can hear a click-click sound like the anti-rollback mechanism of a roller coaster when it is ascending a lift hill, followed by the sound of ecstatic screaming...And then, o boy, we lapse into the world of The Dark Side Of The Moon and philosophical ecstasy. This is consistent with the heartbeats;anybody who's ever ridden a coaster knows how the heart jackhammers just before and after a fall.

This song is amazing... It starts off with the sound of a heart beat representing the start of life which is followed by the sound of a ticking clock putting pressure on the heart which is followed by the sound of cash registers, and with all the pressure of life with money and always being on a timed schedual you hear the sound of laughing showing that its to much for your brain to handle causing to the scream which builds to an explosion of music which is layed back symbolizing death and being free from the pressure of time, money, and everything else hard in life...

More clearly, the album Dark Side of the Moon is a concept album which tells of the factors within everyday life that drives a person to insanity.