Reno McCarthy’s “Time & Place” offers a sonic dreamlike mood that forces its listener to straddle the line of reality and the surreal.
Not unlike Chris Isaak’s “Wicked Game,” the song is able to convey a similar state of serenity – like soft beach waves crashing rhythmically nearby and the feeling of never wanting it to end – almost to the point of obsession. It’s so perfect that you can’t help but refuse to let go. As it relates to a romance, McCarthy’s sultry mid-range croon tells the story of infatuation, but never makes the full leap to that 4-letter L-word – Perhaps because deep down he knows it can’t last forever.
You are all along the only one I’ve been dreaming of
You disappear in a corridor like you wanna wake me up
I don’t wanna fall back baby, just know this, I’ve never kept a dream alive
Never let me go goddamnit, I mean it, cause you’re the best I’ve ever had.
We’ve all probably had those dreams that are so awesome you don’t want to wake up from – but inevitably we do wake up – and when we do, we feel a little disappointed when it happens. Maybe in your dream, you’re a billionaire on a giant mega-yacht or maybe you possess some sort of superpowers and live on a magical, tropical island.
Whichever the case, those are the type of dreams where you wish you could force yourself to pick back up where you left off by falling back asleep again (and some of us talented lucid dreamers can.) In the song, the person McCarthy is describing is this kind of dream – and one that keeps reminding him of how it can’t last forever no matter how good of a dreamer he may be.
This is neither the time nor the place for the feeling that you’re making mine
As you come on like a wave I’m a slave to the second that you kill the lights.
As eluded to in the song title, the words are describing the relationship of what he’s feeling in this particular time and place. Sometimes our feelings can be affected by the mixed signals we receive from being at what feels like exactly the right place at just the perfect moment with someone. But the truth is that once the circumstances of reality set in, the feelings can’t last outside of what exists within that ideal setting.
Oh and things that I don’t understand
That everybody’s so sure of
Yet I don’t think I give a damn
Cause you’re the one thing that I’m so sure of.
When others around us are not affected by the intoxicating ether of our own infatuation and haven’t felt the dream we’ve experienced in that special time and place, they’re able to clearly see what is right in front of our own eyes but we refuse to see. McCarthy’s metaphoric use of words is effective in transporting the listener into his passion-fixated headspace without forcing a singular idea.
