Time Is All Around

I think the 'Time is all around, except inside my clock' part is about how when someone breaks up with you, and they move on really fast, but you can't seem to get over them. Like life goes on around you, but you can't move on.

Oh deaar. I'm afraid I may have fallen head over heels in love with a song.

she knows what it's like to be stepped on and left behind, and she's lonely, so she conjures up a cat to keep her company. she has empathy toward the cat and tries not to step on it as others had to her.

i'm thinking leaves are a metaphor for people? time is all around, making us older, until we die.

i really hope i will get more beautiful with age, like the leaves. (i don't mean by appearance.)

I love this song very much.

I was tired of loving once. I just didn't want to.

This is easily the best song from Far. Too bad it's a bonus song.

This songs makes me think that it is about how a woman in her thirties (or older) begins to see relationships. She has had a break up and now she is alone, again, maybe it is even a divorce. "time is all around, except for in my clock" and noting that leaves "dry up" are references to the biological clock, i think. "lover's to unlock" suggests that people are waiting around for prince charging to make them happy, that love will make life worth living, but she she finds herself getting older and without anyone to love. She doesn't want to have to love someone to feel happy or fulfilled. She imagines a cat, a symbol of a spinster. She says that people say she's changed, and she has. She has changed from a person looking for love to a person content in her own happiness. People who are settled down with a family might not understand that because their family is everything to them, but she is telling them that she has found something else. She doesn't need the love of others to be complete. She knows that with her age she has grown (more beautiful in all ways) and that she is happy with her transformation and doesn't need a lover to validate her.

Before I start, I want to say I like philaphobic’s interpretation too.

Now then.

I’m one of the unfortunate few who don’t fall in love on the third date, or the fifth, or the fiftieth. It’s not until years after I’ve met someone that I suddenly at some moment realize I’ve drifted into love for them. This has only happened with friends; significant others, of course, are not willing to wait. My dating escapades always end in a “This isn’t working out” or “You don’t seem like you’re into this” or even the ever-ridiculous “Why are you afraid to love?”

To me, this is what this song is about. I might be way off from what Regina was thinking when she penned it, but as she has so many not-love songs I have to wonder.

“You step on all my parts / And then you walk right out the door / And I know that your love ain't never / Coming back no more.” The speaker has been dating someone, and — I’ll say he for the sake of simplicity — he has become impatient with her inability to fall in love with him right away. So he breaks up with her, giving her all the reasons it isn’t working (stepping on or breaking up her parts — her self).

“Time is all around / Except inside my clock / Everybody's waiting for their lover to unlock.” But there’s plenty of time to fall in love! There’s time all over the place! Barring some tragic death, there’s so much time in a lifetime to allow love to grow. But nobody wants to wait for her love — she’s given no time (inside her clock/herself/the relationship). Everyone has to wait for their significant other to open up and show themselves completely in trust — these things take time.

“Leaves become most beautiful when they're about to die / When they're about to fall from trees / When they're about to dry up.” These lines mean two things to me. The first is that she is in the process of falling in love with these men when they break up with her. The relationship has died with the breakup, but her love (the leaf) was just starting (becoming beautiful). The second meaning is that love is most beautiful in old age, when the love has been given time to blossom, when two people have been together an entire lifetime.

“I hallucinate a cat between my feet / I'm stepping lightly so as not to hurt it.” She knows what will happen when she gets into a relationship. She knows it hurts the men that she dates too — the cat is the man. She treads carefully, trying to make it work and trying to make the man not fall in love with her so quickly, trying to be aloof. She has to pretend all this because that’s not how she would normally act if she thought the guy would understand. She might even be trying to pretend she’s in love already to make him happy.

“Everybody wants / To say that you have changed / Of course you've changed, you've changed, you've changed / Your mind's been rearranged.” This part is hard to put into words, because it means a lot of different subtle things to me. In a relationship, you change, your mind changes, the way you think changes. People outside the relationship always act surprised at this, but it’s to be expected. Love does that to your brain — it’s science, you get a little stupid when you’re in love. But he’s changing too fast for her, falling in love too fast.

“Why am I supposed to love if I don't want to love? / Why am I supposed to, I'm so tired.” There it is. Why is she SUPPOSED to love him? Why is she obligated to do this on command? She’s tired of the obligations and the having to pussyfoot around and pretend she’s something she’s not, and she’s tired of not being given time, time, time. If he would only give it time, the leaves would turn beautiful.

This song is so beautiful.

i love this one!

easily an all-time favorite. the overused musical rifts and repetition make such a powerful tune that both mocks and glorifies... ehh. i know what it's like to be tired of loving. she has so many songs about nothing particular, nothing at all, but they're all so emotional...