Time & Perspective Quote by Al Stewart

A hand reaching out is supposed to find something - a shoulder, a door handle, a pulse. Stewart’s line weaponizes that expectation, then yanks it away: you reach, but the world doesn’t meet you halfway. The gut-punch isn’t just loneliness; it’s the moment you discover you’ve been performing connection by muscle memory, like dialing a number you still know even after it’s been disconnected.

“Time passages” does a lot of stealth work. It’s not the grand, cinematic “passage of time” but a corridor you move through, half-lit, with doors that don’t open. That plural matters: not one heartbreak but a series of chapters, eras, old selves. The phrase makes loneliness feel architectural, like it’s built into the design of adulthood rather than caused by a single person’s absence.

Stewart, a songwriter often tagged as cerebral, frames emotion through imagery that feels almost historical: time as a place you travel, not a thing you measure. That fits the late-70s mood around the song: post-idealism, post-party, the comedown where nostalgia becomes both refuge and trap. The line catches you mid-gesture, suspended between past and present - reaching forward while your mind keeps backtracking.

Intent-wise, it’s less confession than diagnosis. The subtext is that memory can mimic intimacy, but it can’t reciprocate. You can revisit the “passages” endlessly, yet the only person there to answer your reach is you.