Time Passages

Simply how nostalgia comes up and grabs you suddenly, maybe when it's dark and cold and you're alone, and even though you don't want to retreat into the past there's the recollections of things incomplete, times that were filled with fun but on which you didn't build anything substantial for the rest of your life.

I love this song... To me it means... The person is going about their life on a short, cold, winter night...and they start to day dream about things that have happened in their past. Maybe they are even a little lonely... They dont want to go backwards to the past, cause life is real short....and its never quite the same when you try to recapture it. BUT, you think someone or something may be there in your old town etc you had fun with or shared a time, and they may still be there for you, but you get there and its not the same...You were hoping for a familiar, comfortable time....it may even seem like it would be easy to go back to...but also too, it could be going over old stuff.You may just be remembering only the good stuff at the time of reminiscing... Years later your into a different life style, and you see someone from the past and you are glad to see them, but they kind of blow you off, and they are into their own thing, and whats important to them.

It's about how the past doesn't really ever go anywhere, but remains part of the present. And then sometimes we realize "there's something back there that you left behind." What's been left behind is our Original Self, Who we were before our mother and father were born. You realize you are not BECOMING anything -- not any better, wiser, etc. because the "you" you thought you were is an illusion (the ego). Your True Self (that you left behind) is always already Are Whole and Complete. That's why he says, "Don't know why you should feel that there's something to learn" -- because that's not what life's about, it's about recovering connection with Soul, that part of us that already is Whole, Complete, and Happy. So this is really a very mystical song about returning to the innocence of childhood and coming Home (to God, or our True Nature as they say in Zen).

The singer/author dreams about the past--and retreats into memory--fantasizing about what was left behind; what was not entirely realized. It's not an unpleasant fantasy. He's enjoying his recollections.

And the way the saxophone suddenly blares out: he's RECOVERED with new energy. He revisited the past--and returned, empowered with his recollections.

He remembers the girl he "once used to know." But he can't grasp her. She's out of sight. Still, he wants to go home: can't let go so easily.

He lives within the dream for quite a while (the song keeps on keepin' on): But then the TRIUMPHANT RETURN TO THE PRESENT. I love this song.

there's an element of sadness almost intentionally masked in this song mixed into it's otherwise cheerful wisdom. the lines "Buy me a ticket on the last train home tonight" implies a slight suicidal urge but also an acceptance of things past looked at with the wisdom gained from the lessons of living life which doesn't always make us super strong beings but more likely, although smarter, with greater sensitivity. the line also implies the character in the song requests the "ticket" be purchased for them rather than pay for it themselves, which is interesting b/c if so, rather than suicide they just feel like they feel ready to move on from this life since pain might be all they have to look forward to with fleeting intervals of fulfillment, joy and happiness. the reference to "last train home" most likely means the forever " death Home" where we go when we die.

"buy me a ticket on the last train home tonight" means that he wants to stay in the reverie of his nostalgic past as long as possible. He doesn't want to go "home" (real life) until the very last moment that he has to.

In 1978 I was 15. I didn't know where my life was going. Did anyone? This song, with its dreamy melody takes me back to those places in my mind so long ago. I turned 60 this year.. I was listing to it on XFM, all alone driving home from work. I could not help my eyes from welling up as dreamt I was15, buying and fixing up my first car-- knowing that space was mine --- and Al was there to ride along with me.. in The Year of the Cat... Thank you!

This song is one of the best of all-time, and no one has made any posts?!?!?!?! This song kicks Year of the Cat's ass!

I think this is a brilliant song and I think Lewis Carroll would have liked it; maybe even some scientists and William James too. And I'm willing to bet there is a mathematically equivalent expression of it. It's kind of like each decision you make veering off to a new direction for your life path like the tracks of that last train he's going to ride. You could say it's like Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken except it isn't because, the chooser goes both ways on alternate planes.(I didn't come up with this alternate universe idea but, I can't remember the scientist who did.) But, I do say, there is no solid past or memory as it becomes as option filled as the future and as he reaches his hand as the girl comes towards him he once used to know, he's all alone because his track and her track crossed again but on different planes so they know each other yet never met because, it's only time and like night flows like a river.

I believe that the song meaning comes from the authors' looking back at his previous life in a simpler time in Europe compared to the "present" life in the late seventies California. I loved this song when it came out when I was 12, the combination of lyric and music encouraged me to become a thinker. I can project myself into the lyric about daydreaming and then all of a sudden you realize that there's loud music playing and you didn't hear it when you're thinking about the past.