I: Introduction

Close to the Edge is the fifth album by Yes, released in 1972. This is the second Yes album to have a cover design by Roger Dean, the first one being Fragile, CTTE‘s predecessor. (These two also apply to classically-trained keyboardist Rick Wakeman, who replaced original keyboardist Tony Kaye, who unlike Wakeman, was reluctant to expand his keyboards beyond the organ and piano, and thus, he was fired.) CTTE is also the first album to have the distinct Yes logo.

It’s also the first Yes album to have a side-long track, the title track, with two tracks of about ten and nine minutes each on Side Two, “And You and I,” and “Siberian Khatru,” respectively. This was the topmost height of the band’s musical experimentation, in the opinion of their then-drummer, Bill Bruford, and for this reason (among others), CTTE was the last Yes album to have him on drums (the later Union period notwithstanding…and quasi-Yes Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman, Howe, for that matter). Bruford left Yes upon finishing the recording of CTTE to join King Crimson.

This was the third Yes album to feature the pyrotechnics of guitarist Steve Howe (after The Yes Album and Fragile), who replaced original Yes guitarist Peter Banks shortly after finishing their second album, Time and a Word. Banks was fired after conflicts in the band escalated with the addition of orchestral arrangements to a number of the songs on the album; Banks didn’t like how these arrangements drowned out much of his guitar contributions to the music.

The lyrics of CTTE‘s title track were inspired by Herman Hesse‘s novel, Siddhartha. Similar religious, mystic, and spiritual themes can be found on the two tracks on Side Two, so they can be seen to be connected to Siddhartha, too, if in a looser sense.

Singer Jon Anderson, who read Siddhartha and wrote most of the lyrics of CTTE (with some lyrical contributions by guitarist Steve Howe) as a reflection of the novel’s mysticism, has also admitted to having done acid back in the late 1960s, as part of the profound influence of the Beatles on him. Some who do acid have a positive, ‘religious’ experience from the trip; others have bad trips and can develop serious mental health problems. I think it’s safe to assume that Anderson had the former kind of trips, as is evidenced in the happy, even sentimental nature of so much of Yes’s music.

The creation of side-long, epic songs would continue and be developed further on Yes’s next studio album, Tales from Topographic Oceans, a double album with four side-long tracks, and with Alan White on drums to replace Bruford. Since Bruford had found the making of CTTE laborious, one of his reasons for quitting, I suspect that, with the release of TFTO, he had no regrets about quitting, despite the fact that Yes, with such hits as “I’ve Seen All Good People” from The Yes Album and “Roundabout” from Fragile, was much more commercially successful than King Crimson, whose more eccentric, complex, and dissonant music has forbidden hit singles.

Here is a link to all the lyrics on the album.

II: Siddhartha

Though I’ve wanted to do an analysis of a Yes album for quite some time now, and my analyses of music have depended to a great extent on programmatic content, I’ve been inhibited from doing one on Yes for a simple reason–Jon Anderson’s lyrics.

His lyrics tend to focus more on their sound and feeling than on their meaning, so trying to make sense of them can be frustrating. In the case of CTTE, though, we have Siddhartha as the lyrics’ inspiration, so I have something to work with here.

Before going into the lyrics, it will be sensible to give a synopsis of Hesse’s novel, to give us a foundation on which to build an understanding and interpretation of the lyrics.

Though the title character shares the first name of Siddhartha Gautama, Hesse’s book is not a fictionalized account of the Buddha’s life. The protagonist’s story, however, parallels much of the life of the man whose first name he shares.

Siddhartha is the son of a Brahmin, and he wishes to leave his family to further his quest for spiritual enlightenment; in this, we see a parallel with Gautama’s leaving his family to seek enlightenment. Siddhartha becomes a Samana, practicing austerity and being a homeless mendicant. He is joined by his good friend, Govinda.

Eventually, the two meet Gautama, and they are most impressed with his teachings. While Govinda decides to join Gautama as a Buddhist monk, Siddhartha decides not to, instead preferring to find his own way to enlightenment, without the words of a teacher.

Soon after, he decides, against his nature, to be involved in the ways of the world, to experience sensuality. He sees a beautiful courtesan named…get this…Kamala [!], and he falls in love with her. To have her, though, he has to make money, wear fine clothes, etc.–pretty unusual for a homeless, begging ascetic, but he does it, having met a local businessman named Kamaswami and working for him.

He makes the money, gets the fine clothes and a home, and learns the ways of love with Kamala. Though at first, Siddhartha is detached from material pleasures, he grows to like them, and therefore falls into sin.

Eventually, it dawns on him that he is living a meaningless life, and that he has lost his way. He goes by a river, the same one he crossed with the help of a ferryman whom he would pay later when he acquired money. This river, by the way, is the one referred to repeatedly in the title track of the album.

Full of despair and self-loathing, Siddhartha is contemplating suicide by jumping in the river. He is “close to the edge.” Just when is about to jump in, though, he falls into a meditative sleep and hears the holy word, Om.

He wakes up inspired, and decides to resume his quest for enlightenment by living next to this spiritually inspirational river. He’s “close to the edge” of nirvana.

As a side note, it will be useful now to consider the multiple meanings of ‘close to the edge,’ as well as their larger implications. These meanings are, paradoxically, both negative and positive.

First, Siddhartha was close to the edge of life and death, in his despair and wish to drown himself in the river. In fact, the title of the album was Bruford’s idea, reflecting the state of the band at the time. He hated how difficult it was to make the album, with all of the “endless debate” over how to arrange the parts for each instrument, and he didn’t get along with bassist/back-up vocalist Chris Squire, who was typically late for bad practice. Finally, as an aside, one might also consider, perhaps by way of synchronicity, the Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five rap song, “The Message,” about inner-city poverty, being lured into a life of crime, and committing suicide in one’s jail cell; the song has the line, “Don’t push me, ’cause I’m close to the edge.” As we can see, ‘close to the edge’ can be seen in a negative light in many ways.

After his despair, Siddhartha was close to the edge in a good way, for to be close to the divine, inspirational water of the river is like being close to nirvana, as I mentioned above. Nirvana is the cessation of suffering, and the loss of an ego in favour of selflessness, something with which Siddhartha is particularly preoccupied towards the beginning of the novel. In nirvana, the cycle of reincarnation (samsara) ends, which in a way is a kind of death. Though the novel is set in ancient India and Nepal, the German-Swiss author would surely have had Charon in mind, at least unconsciously, when he had a ferryman take Siddhartha across this river of life/death/nirvana.

The point is that, as I’ve discussed in other posts, far from being absolute, mutually-exclusive opposites, what we call ‘heaven’ and ‘hell’ are really two states of being that are dialectically close to each other. Heaven and hell, or nirvana and samsara (as the Mahayana Buddhists also see them), are examples of opposites that are actually unified.

In many posts, I have used the ouroboros as a symbol of the dialectical unity of opposites. The serpent’s biting head and bitten tail represent, as I see them, two extreme opposites that meet at the bite, and the serpent’s coiled body represents a circular continuum of every point between the two extremes.

So we can see in Siddhartha’s life a movement from the serious wish to be at one with Brahman (at the ouroboros’ head) to his indulgence in sensual pleasures, his suicidal despair, and upon hearing Om, he revives his commitment to attaining enlightenment by staying close to the edge of the river. He first moves down from the serpent’s head by leaving his Brahmin father and family, then slips further down the serpent’s coiled body by rejecting the teachings of all spiritual leaders, even those of the Buddha, whom he avowedly admires. He approaches the serpent’s tail when indulging in worldly pleasures, feels the bite of the tail in his despair, and comes back, through the bite, to the head in his resumed commitment to achieving enlightenment.

So anyway, to get back to the story, Siddhartha decides to become a ferryman, just like the one who helped him across the river before; in fact, this first one teaches him how to do the job and has him live in his humble abode. Siddhartha is happy for a while doing this job.

Soon, he is reacquainted with Kamala (who is now a Buddhist) and her son (remember, many years have gone by since his first meeting with her), who we learn is also Siddhartha’s son. She has learned that the Buddha is dying, and she wants to see him. Now, young Siddhartha is used to the rich, privileged life, and so the boy is annoyed to have to go on a pilgrimage to see a dying man who means nothing to him.

A snake bites Kamala, and now she is dying, too. Old Siddhartha does his best to take care of her, but indeed, she dies, and now their boy is under his guardianship, though the spoiled boy has no appreciation for this father he never knew before.

Siddhartha is as patient as he can be with the bad-tempered boy, having grown quite attached to his discovered flesh and blood, as irascible as young Siddhartha is. Eventually, the boy, in a fit of temper, expresses his contempt for old Siddhartha and leaves him, causing his father great sadness and distress over the boy’s safety going out into the world all alone.

His ferryman friend tries to convince him to be patient and let the boy go, stressing that the lad must find his own way in life, just as his father has had to do, but old Siddhartha can’t just let the boy go. He goes after him, trying to find him, but not succeeding.

He goes into another state of extreme sadness. The attachment that is causing him great pain now, however, is far more profound than the last one, because this is an attachment to another human being, the fear of losing love, not attachment to mere worldly pleasures. One would think that his selfless love of the boy, including his patient tolerance of the brat’s constant verbal abuse and slight regard of him, would all be good karma for Siddhartha…but it’s still attachment.

So while the ferryman is trying to comfort him, Siddhartha is in his saddest state since his contemplation of drowning himself in the river. But once again, he hears that sacred word…Om.

In this sequence of Siddhartha becoming a ferryman, seeing Kamala and their son, her dying, his taking care of the ungrateful boy (which significantly includes him leaving his ferryman duties and distancing himself from the holy river–a kind of Ganges for him, if you will), him losing the boy, going into a depression, and then finally being spiritually rejuvenated from hearing Om again, we see another movement from the bliss felt at the ouroboros’ head, going down its coiled body and experiencing increasing misfortune, thence to the bitten tail of extreme sorrow, and upon hearing Om again, crossing the tail back to the serpent’s biting head, back to bliss.

Such is the growth, through pain, of samsara.

Or, as Jon Anderson sings, “I get up, I get down.”

This Om that Siddhartha experiences is part of the ferryman’s form of consoling him, by getting him to let his son go and listen closely instead to the many sounds of the river. In his listening to the river, Siddhartha also remembers that he, too, left his Brahmin father and similarly broke his heart.

Hearing all the river’s sounds, Siddhartha also experiences all the joys and pains of people in the world. He feels himself at one with them. An amalgamation of all of these sounds is Om. He experiences the cosmic unity of everything–Brahman, enlightenment.

Now that the ferryman can see that he’s taught Siddhartha all there is to be taught–not through empty words, but through the fullness of experience as expressed in the holy water of the river–he knows he can leave Siddhartha, who is now whole. The ferryman goes off into the woods, never to be seen by Siddhartha again.

Siddhartha, now radiant with happiness, is once again met by his old friend Govinda, who has heard of the great wisdom of this ferryman whom he at first doesn’t recognize as Siddhartha (remember, many years have passed, and both of them are old men now). This reunion is another cyclical repetition in Siddhartha’s life, for just after his contemplation of suicide and hearing of Om by the river, Govinda had appeared and watched sleeping Siddhartha to ensure he was safe. Once again, the old friends are reunited when Siddhartha has experienced great spiritual edification.

Now, it is Govinda who, after so many years of soul-searching, feels unfulfilled, even after having learned from the Buddha’s wisdom. Siddhartha tells his friend again of his belief that teachers are of little help, since words and thoughts help us little. Each concept has its opposite in dialectical relationship with it (recall my ouroboros symbolism above): in wisdom, there is folly, in happiness, misery; etc. The key is to experience life in all of its fluid movement, to know the unity in life’s diversity, and to love the world, in spite of how painful it so often is.

Govinda, steeped in Buddhist teaching, has difficulty understanding what his friend is trying to tell him. So Siddhartha, in a cyclical variation of what the ferryman had him do, tells Govinda to bend down to him and kiss him on the forehead. When Govinda does this, he has essentially the same mystical experience of the river, of the universal unity of all souls in the world, all their joys and sorrows. Enlightenment cannot be taught: it must be experienced. Time is a human construct–there is only now. These are the experiences I’ve described as The Three Unities.

Govinda is overwhelmed and awed by what his friend has had him experience. He bows in veneration before radiating, enlightened Siddhartha.

III: Close to the Edge

Now that we know Hesse’s story, we can begin to understand the lyrics of this album. They may seem like a word salad, but then again, words can never express the infinite.

i) The Solid Time of Change

The eighteen-minute suite opens with the gentle sounds of nature: running water, birds chirping, and wind chimes, all sounds from ‘environmental tapes’ collected by Jon Anderson. These sounds suggest that peaceful place Siddhartha sits at, beside the river.

The first minute and twenty seconds or so of the title track inspired the opening of my Symphony in One Movement (in case you’re interested), though where my piece is full of joy and happiness, when the band comes in after the nature sounds, it’s all tension.

They’re playing in a compound duple meter, with Steve Howe playing a lead of hammer-on minor seconds that go down and up in four octaves (“I get up, I get down” being implied in this tone painting.). Squire’s bass is doing an ascending D harmonic minor scale, though he’s playing it from E to upper E.

The tension of this music suggests the spiritual struggle that Siddhartha has been going through as he sits by the river, full of despair, first, over his fall into sin after his indulgence in worldly pleasures, and second, his depression after losing his abrasive son. Note that ‘Close to the Edge’ does not retell Siddhartha in musical form: it merely reflects the themes and feelings of the novel, picking moments here and there from the story and putting them, as it were, under a magnifying glass.

In the middle of this tense musical jam played by Howe, Squire, Bruford, and Wakeman (very fast notes on a synthesizer), there are three brief vocalizations from Anderson, Squire, and Howe that interrupt the instrumental tension. Though we don’t hear them chant Om, the vocalizing can be interpreted as representing the sacred word, just as Siddhartha hears it, and feels his pain soothed by it.

After the third of the vocalizations, we hear a more serene theme, still in the compound duple, with Howe playing a lead that will be a recurring motif at various points in the suite, and a motif given considerable variation, too. Essentially, the motif is made up of notes of a fourth, third, root, second, third, root, second, third, root, second, then four fifths, but inverted, below the root. Then, Howe plays a fourth, fifth, root, seventh, fourth, fifth, third, and second. Normally, the third is a major third; at one point, though Howe replaces this with a minor third, and the fifth is flattened.

Next, we come to the first of the lyrics, sung with vocal harmonies, the band playing in 3/4. Actually, most of this song is in 3/4 (as is “And You and I,” too), except for such passages as the 6/8 mentioned above, the “I Get Up, I Get Down” movement, largely in 4/4, and other sections, some of which I’ll point out soon enough. This predominance of 3/4 symbolically suggests such ideas as the Hindu Trimurti—Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva, or beginning, middle, and end (Om as divided into A-U-M), as well as the Hegelian dialectic, typically conceived of in three parts: thesis, negation, and sublation, this last of which reconciles the duality of opposites, finding a unity in them…and recall, Siddhartha finds peace in that ultimate, reconciling unity.

The “seasoned witch” calling you “from the depths of your disgrace,” could be seen as Kamala, who initially tempted Siddhartha away from his life of austerity, bewitching him into preferring a life of sensual pleasures. She did, however, later become a Buddhist around the time that he realized how empty a life of worldly indulgence is. He came out of the depths of his disgrace, that descent into sin, around the time she did. As sensuality personified, Kamala is also samsara personified, and the Mahayana Buddhists, as I mentioned above, equate samsara with nirvana. So her pulling him into sin, paradoxically and dialectically, was also her pulling him out of sin, from the depths of his disgrace.

The liver has been seen in the past to be the seat of the emotions and of the soul: recall the tearing-away of Prometheus‘ liver by an eagle or vulture every day as punishment for giving fire to man. So rearranging one’s liver “to the solid mental grace” is a readjustment of one’s spirit and emotional life (liver as that which lives) to a higher state of enlightened being, what Christians would call grace, which is “solid” in the sense of being unshakeable. In this connection, calling the first movement of the title track “The Solid Time of Change” is paradoxical in calling change a solid thing, for the one constant in life is change.

The music that comes from afar is, from our Western perspective, Eastern music, specifically that of India, where so much of Siddhartha is set.

To “taste the fruit of man…losing all” sounds like Adam having the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge and losing Paradise. Something comparable has happened to Siddhartha in his meeting of Kamala, the Eve of this story who directs him away from his search for nirvana and towards a world of sin, of sensual pleasures. This interpretation ties in with the opening line about the “seasoned witch” who, in leading him astray, has paradoxically also led him back “from the depths of [his] disgrace” to the road of enlightenment, as I described above. The Tree of Knowledge leads to sin, but knowledge is also enlightenment. Sin bravely.

Now, “assessing points to nowhere” sounds like considering paths that will get us lost, as Siddhartha has done in being with Kamala, getting involved in money-making, wearing fine clothes (as opposed to being a naked mendicant, as Adam was naked and blissfully ignorant of that in Eden), and being attached to a son who despises him. This being lost can lead to being found again, as happens to Siddhartha.

The tiniest, most insignificant of things can edify us as much as the greatest of things can, as Siddhartha learns, such things as “a dewdrop” and “the music of the sun.” This getting lost and being found, being equally enlightened by the smallest and the greatest of things, these examples are all part of the course we choose to run on to find nirvana.

And how do we know we’re near nirvana?

When we’re “down at the edge, round by the corner…close to the edge, down by a river,” the river that Siddhartha has found. When we get there is “not right away”: we must be patient and have faith that we’ll get there eventually.

During the next verse, we can hear Wakeman playing a one-note ostinato of sorts on his synthesizer; it sounds like the dashes and dots of the Morse Code. Someone on the Genius lyrics website tried, with what seems little success by his own admission, to figure out a specific message from the Morse Code. Is it “Abraxas,” or something close to that? Is it a message in Latin? I don’t think it matters whether there’s an actual message Wakeman is playing or not. As I see it, it’s sufficient to hear the musical idea as representative of the idea of a mysterious message: it’s the message of how to obtain liberation from the physical miseries of the world, and for most of us, it shouldn’t be surprising that that message is indecipherable.

Going “around the changes of the summer,” the time of the heat of passion, one is coming to recognize and accept the reality of change. “To call the colour of the sky” is to recognize heaven as symbolic of nirvana. To find “a moment clothed in mornings faster than we see” is to see the beginning of the appearance of the light in a night of darkness, to receive edification faster than most do.

With such edification, one understands that one no longer needs to worry. One can leave the changes, those that are so upsetting, much, much farther behind oneself. “We relieve the tension” and “find out the master’s name,” a name that represents the spiritual mastery in enlightenment.

We return to the chorus–with alternating bars of 3/4 and 4/4–that includes the words of the name of the title track, with some new ones. “Seasons will pass you by,” heard in the first of two bars of 5/4, are representative of all the cyclical changes we inevitably face in life, musically represented by the time changes we’re hearing here. Then, “I get up, I get down,” in the second bar of 5/4 (and one bar in 3/8), represents how these cyclical changes will one time make us happy, another time unhappy. Note also the tone-painting in the singing high on the word up, then singing descending notes on down.

“Now that you find, now that you’re whole,” heard in the second of two bars in 7/8, is that moment of enlightenment. Still, this moment is transitory, as it has been for Siddhartha on a number of occasions in Hesse’s novel. This sense of the transitory in spiritual edification is apparent in the music, too, for the tension returns in the next movement of the title track.

ii) Total Mass Retain

As Steve Howe is strumming his chords and Jon Anderson is singing in the familiar 3/4 themes, Bruford and Squire are doing a cross-rhythm in 4/4. With a thick, meaty bass tone, Squire is playing C, B, then G, A; next, he plays G, F-sharp, then D, E, and two strongly accented Es, an octave lower on the off-beat, after that.

Siddhartha’s eyes are “convinced, eclipsed” because once one is convinced of the truth of an idea, one can become attached to it, instead of going with the flow and being open to newer ideas. Hence, one’s eyes are eclipsed by what had once convinced them. (Note also the “Eclipse” section of “And You and I” on Side Two–a lot of imagery recurs on this album.)

“The younger moon” sounds like a new moon beginning its waxing phase, therefore going from total black to a growing light “attained with love.” This slow movement to the light with love suggests the beginning of spiritual edification (compare this to the “morning” imagery found elsewhere); “it changed as almost strained” because of the difficulty and pain involved in overcoming one’s ignorance, while being rewarded with “clear manna from above”: enlightenment.

Siddhartha “crucified [his] hate,” that is, felt the pain of sacrificing his animal nature–including hostile feelings–to grow spiritually and hold the world within his hand, that is, to know Brahman in Atman, and to know the mysteries of life, “the reasons we don’t understand.”

This and the next verse are separated by a brief keyboard part by Wakeman in 6/8.

The next verse expresses Anderson’s intense anti-war feelings. Here the Bruford/Squire cross-rhythm in 4/4, as against Howe and Anderson in 3/4, musically brings out the sense of conflict and tension associated with war. And since I already explained above what the three in 3/4 symbolizes, we can know how the four in 4/4 represents the ongoing contradiction and duality of clashing opposites (i.e., 2 + 2). The “armoured movers” [who] “approached to overlook the sea” are the hellish warmongers coming ‘close to the edge’ where the heavenly sea of nirvana is, since the holy water of the river will eventually empty into the sea and ocean. And heaven and hell, or nirvana and samsara, are dialectically close to each other.

Remember that this tension and the imagery of war happen just before a tense return of the “close by a river, close to the edge” verse. To be close to the edge can be both a positive and a negative experience, as discussed above. To be close to heaven is also to be close to hell, depending on one’s situation, and depending on one’s willingness or unwillingness to give up one’s ego. It’s that area of the ouroboros where the serpent’s head bites its tail: does one bite the tail, and be a spiritual victor, attaining liberation from the miseries of the world, or does one receive the bite at the tail, and experience those miseries at their worst, falling into madness and despair?

Jungian Shadow Work can bring one close to the edge: if done well, it can heal one of trauma and bring the darkness into the light; if done poorly, it can cause one to fall into madness, as Jung himself almost experienced.

In the next verse, the music gets more uplifting and cheerful, as Anderson sings of how “the journey takes you all the way.” However the ups and downs of life may be, one should be patient and just go along for the ride, faithful that one will eventually reach the goal. The reality of this goal will be a total mystery, unlike “any reality that you’ve ever seen and known.”

One goes “halfway into the void,” close to that no-thing-ness of nirvana that can’t be verbalized, only experienced, as Siddhartha has learned. “We hear the total mass retain,” one of CTTE‘s lyrics that especially perplexed and irritated Bruford.

So, what does ‘total mass retain’ mean? Anderson explained what he meant to the magazine Sounds in 1973: he related the concept to his deep sadness over all the wars and destruction of the planet he saw all around him at the time (imagine how much worse he must feel now, as of my publication of this post!). For him, ‘total mass retain’ is common sense in knowing what’s right and wrong.

‘Total mass retain,’ or conservation of mass, is also a concept in physics, wherein any system closed to all transfers of matter and energy, the mass of the system must remain constant over time. It’s implied that mass cannot be created or destroyed, though it may be rearranged in space, or the entities associated with it may be changed in form.

I suspect that Anderson was using the physics concept as a metaphor for how everything in the universe is one, constant, in its essence. Even if things change form or are moved around, at the atomic or monadic level, all is one and eternal–Brahman. With this mystical understanding of cosmic reality, the moral imperative to avoid things like war and environmental degradation should be common sense.

Next, we get the “close to the end, down by a river” refrain, and with a repeat of “I get up, I get down,” there’s a segue in 4/4 played by Squire and Howe, while Wakeman is playing that 6/8 motif on the…pipe organ…as it sounds to my ear–that motif I described above, played originally by Howe to end the beginning instrumental section.

iii) I Get Up, I Get Down

This movement begins with a beautiful, peaceful passage with Wakeman playing Mellotron (string section tapes) and Howe playing an electric sitar. The sounds evoke an atmosphere of nature, suggestive of Siddhartha sitting by the edge of the river. We’ve gone from the tension of the second movement to the peace of this one. Again, this is a reflection of how ‘close to the edge’ can mean close to heaven, nirvana, or close to hell, the worst of samsara, hence the name of this movement.

Squire and Howe sing of a “lady sadly looking,” one “in her white lace.” I suspect that this is Kamala. The white lace sounds like the kind of sexy clothing a courtesan might wear…perhaps not an Indian, or Nepalese, courtesan, but the association with courtesans in general is sufficient. She’s sadly looking, because in her decision to become a Buddhist, she is repenting of her former sensual life. “She’d take the blame for the crucifixion of her own domain,” meaning she’ll accept responsibility for her sins, the crucifixion being a metaphor for her atonement.

“The crucifixion of her own domain” could also mean the ecological destruction of the Earth, of which she, symbolically, is the goddess. I said above that Kamala personifies samsara, this physical life of pain and suffering, but also of worldly pleasures, that Siddhartha fell into. In this sense, we can link the lady to both Kamala and to our Mother Earth.

Anderson sings “I get up, I get down” again, while Squire and Howe vocalize “Ah” in the background at high pitches. Later, we’ll hear Wakeman playing a pipe organ. I remember when I used to listen to this album on vinyl as a teenager in the 1980s, and my older sister, whom I’ll call J., and who had nothing but contempt for Yes, used to make ignorant comments about it being “choir music.” This section of the title track must have inspired her to call it that.

She also used to call Yes’s music “depressing.” Wrong again, J.: if you’re going to make any kind of criticism of the music, it’s too happy, sentimental. That’s why I prefer King Crimson over Yes–I like music that’s darker. But I digress…

Anderson sings “Two million people barely satisfy,” suggesting how few of the billions of people on the Earth feel any substantial happiness–presumably the wealthy, who don’t feel the struggle to survive under the unsure material conditions of the poor. This pain is what is suggested by the Buddhist concept of duhkha: suffering is universal because poverty is, especially in Third World countries like ancient India and Nepal. The rich don’t satisfy the needs of the poor, either, of course.

“Watch one woman cry ‘Too late’,” sounds like Kamala when the venomous snake has bitten her, and she knows she’s going to die. In the next verse, Anderson sings of how much better honesty is than deceit. Overall, one must accept the painful realities of life, of getting up and getting down, how we’ll be happy one moment, and sad the next.

“In charge of who is there, in charge of me” sounds like a questioning of those in power and authority, and does their authority have legitimacy? People look on blindly at that authority, fooled into thinking it’s legitimate, and yet they say then can see the way. This is the difference between honesty and deceit as discussed above, and it’s part of why suffering is so universal.

“The truth is written all along the page”…of a scripture in the Pali Canon, perhaps. Still, words cannot fully grasp the experience that enlightenment teaches, as Siddhartha learns, so one has to wonder when one will be ready to receive that experience, to “come of age for you”, Brahman.

Normally, Anderson sings “I get up, I get down” with the descending pitches on down, as I described above, and as fitting with the tone painting. On a few occasions during this passage, though, he sings down with higher pitches, contradicting the meaning of that tone painting…but only superficially so. Remember how part of the meaning of Siddhartha is how nirvana is equated with samsara, that an ending of suffering is contingent on accepting suffering.

So, to get down, in this context, is to get up. This is how the “seasoned witch,” Kamala, in pulling Siddhartha down into sin, is also pulling him up “from the depths of [his] disgrace.”

Anderson’s singing of the refrain is answered with Wakeman on the pipe organ, giving us a churchy feeling suggestive of spiritual edification.

Another refrain of “I get up, I get down,” and another pipe organ passage by Wakeman leads to him adding some flamboyant synthesizer playing. This, in turn. leads to the band coming back in full force with a fast, tense restatement of that 6/8 motif I described above as originally played on Howe’s lead guitar, then on Wakeman’s organ leading into the I Get Up, I Get Down movement, and now played on his synthesizer as we reach the fourth and last movement of the title track. The tension of this music reminds us of the tense beginning jam in 6/8, and recalls Siddhartha’s spiritual struggle in general.

iv) Seasons of Man

We return to the 3/4 music of the first two movements, but before the singing is resumed, Wakeman does a solo on the Hammond organ.

The harmonized vocals, as heard in the verses of the first movement, return. “The time between the notes” can be related to “space between the focus.” It’s not the things themselves that matter, but what’s between them, so to speak, that does. To discover the mystery, we must go beyond the things we see and hear around us, beyond what we normally focus on, and find the empty spaces, the rhythm of the universe, in order to “ascend knowledge of love.”

While this verse is being sung, Squire is playing the C, B, and G, A notes, then G, F-sharp, and D and E, but this time without the two accented Es an octave lower, and without Bruford’s 4/4 cross-rhythm. So the bass line is in 3/4 with the rest of the band, musically suggesting a reconciling of elements, an advancement toward enlightenment.

Still, one must be careful not to succumb to hubris in one’s spiritual ascent, for “A constant vogue of triumphs dislocate man.” The shift up to the biting head of the ouroboros, where spiritual victory, nirvana, heaven, are, can easily lead to a slipping past that triumph back into the hell, the samsara, the sin, of the bitten tail.

“The man who showed his outstretched arm to space” is apparently based on a dream Anderson had of being on a mountain with a man who was pointing and saying, “That’s the whole human experience.” I can see the man in his dream as easily related to Siddhartha, who is saying essentially the same thing to Govinda at the end of Hesse’s novel. And Anderson, “knowing all about the place,” has achieved enlightenment.

“The silence of the valley,” which is “viewed” and not heard, must mean the valley’s peacefulness, for I can imagine Siddhartha’s river flowing nearby. “To witness cycles only of the past” might remind us of how the Buddha, meditating under the Bodhi tree and approaching enlightenment, had a vision of his past lives, as well as visions of samsara in general.

These cycles are the “seasons of man,” how we get up and down, experiencing fortune and misfortune, the seasons that pass us by and that we must accept if we want to overcome suffering. “Now that it’s all over and done…now that you’re whole,” you’re enlightened.

The sidelong suite ends–in a state of full bliss and happiness, all while repeating “I get up, I get down”–with an acceptance of the ups and downs of life, an acceptance of samsara in nirvana and vice versa. We return to the sounds of nature, of the river, that we heard at the beginning of the suite, a going full circle that implies a cyclical quality of going back and forth between samsara and nirvana, similar to what Siddhartha has experienced.

IV: And You And I

i) Cord of Life

Side Two of the album begins with Howe saying “OK” to producer Eddy Offord, then playing a flurry of acoustic guitar natural harmonics. He then plays something plaintive in E minor on a 12-string acoustic guitar before strumming a happy progression in D-major in 3/4, musically suggesting the recurring theme of the album that there must be sadness before happiness. Note that Howe’s D-major progression gets up and gets down, again and again. Wakeman accompanies Howe with a solo on a Minimoog. In the background, you can hear six hits on Bruford’s bass drum (accompanied by Squire hitting a low D on his bass) and Bruford’s tapping of a triangle.

Over the music, we hear Anderson singing a melody that ascends a fourth, goes down a third, and repeats these ups and downs four more times. This up-and-down ascent will be a melodic motif used on and off throughout the song. Since the two songs on Side Two are also related with Siddhartha, we can hear this motif, ascending by fourths and descending by thirds, as part of the album’s “I get up, I get down” theme of spiritual progress: there are difficulties–the downs, but with patience, one will ultimately reach the top, to reach “the man who showed his outstretched arm to space.”

I suspect that that man is the same one who “conceived a moment’s answers to the dream,” the one who’s solved the mysteries of the dream of life, since he’s “sensing all the themes.”

“The spiral aim” seems to be another way of describing the goal of reaching enlightenment, with its ups and down, its progress and setbacks expressed in the form of a cyclical spiral that ultimately still takes us to the top, like a spiral staircase. “A movement regained and regarded both the same” sounds like those good and bad moves between samsara and nirvana, seen as the same thing, as I’ve discussed several times already.

A refrain heard many times in this song is “All complete in the sight of seeds of life with you.” The understanding that samsara is an indispensable part of nirvana, that the alleviation of suffering necessitates, paradoxically, the acceptance of suffering, is what makes us “all complete”: we see the “seeds of life,” its birth, and the Buddha taught that birth is pain, life is pain, etc. and we are complete “with you.”

So who is the you in “and you and I”?

Is this you singular, or plural?

Are these ‘you and I’ people Govinda (or Kamala) and Siddhartha?

Or are they all of humanity and Siddhartha? Brahman and (Siddhartha’s) Atman?

The repetition of and you and I reinforces the sense of interconnectedness between the self and other, of friendship and love.

There’s a sense of Brahman’s monadic unity underlying all the surface differences in the next two lines. “Changed only for a sight of sound” would represent the surface differences of the senses; “the space agreed” would thus correspond to the invisible, underlying unity, a unity “between the picture of time,” time being a human construct that the mystic must learn to transcend. The unity is “behind the face of need,” of the desire that leads to suffering.

“Coming quickly to terms of all expression laid” is an understanding of what’s expressed outside of oneself, which results in a greater mutual understanding of self and other. The “emotion” that’s “revealed” out there, in Brahman as expressed to Atman, is “the ocean maid,” a metaphor to give us a sense of the beauty of the Absolute. My blog’s name, Infinite Ocean, is a metaphor for that Absolute, Brahman-like reality of subatomic unity underneath the surface differences experienced through the senses.

These surface differences are all too often the cause of so many of our troubles. “Coins and crosses” are money and religion, the Church in particular; we “never know their fruitless worth,” or their uselessness in giving us true happiness. Anderson explained, in an interview with Rock History Music.com, that the lines of this verse were his favourite in the song. He felt that we, being spiritual, should follow our own spiritual instincts and therefore we don’t need organized religion or the corrupting influence of money.

“Cords are broken,” each cord of life, I take it, and are “locked inside the Mother Earth.” Because of illusory maya, we are swayed by money and religion, and so we’re alienated from each other and the natural environment.

These problems won’t hide, that is, their ill effects will surface and trouble us, but “they won’t tell you,” either, for they won’t speak to those who don’t listen. We’re “watching [all of] the world,” that is, caught up in all the surface, worldly pleasures, but not paying attention to what’s truly important.

Musically, this verse has switched from 3/4 to 4/4. Recall how, when analyzing the title track, I interpreted the three beats of each bar as representing the mystical three of the Trimurti, and of the resolution of Hegel’s dialectic. I also mentioned how the Squire/Bruford cross-rhythm in 4/4 represents an ongoing conflict, a clash of duality (2 + 2) that leaves the dialectic unresolved. Since this verse comments on the problems of the world, as opposed to the blissful mysticism of the preceding verse, it’s fitting that this verse should be in 4/4.

To go back to the mysticism, we hear Anderson sing “and you and I climb over the sea to the valley.” The sea, a vast body of water like an ocean, is a metaphor for Brahman, as I’ve described above. The holy water of Siddhartha’s river, in the valley, empties out in the seas and oceans, so going “over the sea to the valley” represents the attainment of enlightenment, nirvana, as opposed to being distracted by “coins and crosses,” and all of the problems that they give us.

Reaching out “for reasons to call” is a calling out to the Divine, to be connected with it.

ii) Eclipse

The next movement is mostly instrumental, based on a theme Bruford composed, his only compositional contribution to the album. Normally, drummers don’t contribute much to the songwriting of a band, being focused on the beat rather than melody or harmony. I’ve discussed a number of Bruford’s complaints about working in Yes, but one thing he was deeply grateful for was the band’s encouraging him, in their democratic spirit, to contribute compositional ideas, which he did on a number of occasions over the period of the first five Yes albums we hear him play drums on. These contributions gave him the confidence to keep writing music, and as a result, we have Bruford’s jazz-fusion solo albums of the late 1970s and 1980, the best of which was his first, Feels Good to Me, an inviting demonstration not just of his chops as a drummer, but of his compositional ability as well.

The title of this movement, ‘Eclipse,’ fits with the theme of the relationship between light and darkness, nirvana and samsara. Just as the moon blocks out the sun’s light…temporarily…so does the light of truth, or the truth of nirvana and enlightenment, get blocked out by the lunacy, as it were, of samsara and desire…yet this blockage can also be temporary if we have the patience to wait for the opportunity to be enlightened again. Hence the verse we hear at the end of this movement, a repeat of the spiritually edifying lines of the first movement. Now, what I’ve said holds true if it’s a solar eclipse.

But what if it’s a lunar eclipse, with a ‘blood moon’? If so, that could tie this movement in with the last one–“Apocalypse.” The notion of the horrors of the end of the world doesn’t have to be taken literally, the way the Biblical fundamentalists would have it. An allegorical interpretation of the apocalypse preceding the Kingdom of Heaven would tie in with what I was saying before, about a confrontation with the hellish bitten tail of the ouroboros leading to a crossing past it to reach its dialectical opposite, the biting head of heaven, nirvana. Recall Siddhartha’s despair by the river before hearing Om.

This movement ends with a return to that plaintive music in E minor on Howe’s 12-string acoustic guitar. This soon switches to him playing something happy in E major, beginning the next movement. Again, to reach happiness, we must first go through a period of sadness.

iii) The Preacher, the Teacher

“Sad preacher nailed upon the coloured door of time” brings up two images simultaneously: Christ nailed on the Cross, and Luther’s 95 Theses nailed to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany. Sadness and happiness are once again being dialectically juxtaposed: the pain of the Crucifixion leading to salvation for all, and the tension of Luther’s confrontation with, and his excommunication from, the Catholic Church, leading to the Protestant Reformation and the curbing of those Church abuses (Indulgences, etc.). Luther will later be referenced in “Siberian Khatru.”

The juxtaposition of sadness and happiness is also reflected in the relationship between this verse and the music. Anderson is singing this verse in that ascending line heard in the first movement, going up by fourths and down by thirds, all with Howe’s happy chords in E major in the background. We’ve also returned to 3/4, the three of the Trimurti and Hegel’s triadic dialectic.

“Insane teacher be there, reminded of the rhyme.” These criticisms of the “sad preacher” and “insane teacher” remind us of Siddhartha’s attitude toward spiritual teachers, that however wise their words may be, it’s better to be edified by direct personal experience of enlightenment. The words of Christ, Luther, and the Buddha all pale in comparison with that direct experience. Their words may remind us of the rhyme, of the cyclical repetitions of good and bad experiences, but feeling that rhyme in one’s heart is far more edifying.

Speaking of bad preachers and teachers, we should consider something else. In spite of all of those demagogues out there who try to manufacture consent for more wars by vilifying this or that political leader whom they feel is somehow threatening their status as global hegemony, “There’ll be no mutant enemy, we shall certify.” The “political ends,” in the form of the demagogues’ propaganda, “will die.” Instead of listening to their garbage, try the experience of enlightenment, as sent into your Atman from Brahman; so, “Reach out as forward tastes begin to enter you.”

Siddhartha “listened hard” to his teachers among the Brahmins and among the Samanas, “but could not see,” that is, he could not receive the needed edification from the preachers of organized religion. He had to find the truth himself, not from words. The tempo of life would change within him and outside of him, from his own direct experience of it.

However much training the preacher received, he ended up losing his name, or his potential for greatness, since all he learned were someone else’s wise words, not edification from his own experience. The teacher, in his travels, just wanted the same verbal wisdom of the preacher. He ended up no wiser.

“In the end,” though, “we’ll agree,” that is, come to a state of harmony with the Absolute, for we’ll receive a higher wisdom than that of mere words, and merging with Brahman thus, “we’ll immortalize.” “…the truth of the man maturing in his eyes” sounds like the man of Anderson’s dream, the man on the mountain “who showed his outstretched arm to space,” telling Anderson “that’s the whole human experience.” Recall that I related this man and Anderson to Siddhartha and Govinda respectively, the former edifying the latter.

After this, we have repeats of lines I interpreted the meaning of above: “All complete in the sight…,” “Coming quickly to terms…,” etc., until we get to a new line, sung to the up-by-fourths, down-by-thirds melodic ascent: “A clearer future, morning, evening, nights with you.” As one approaches the “clearer future” of enlightenment “with you,” that is, Siddhartha with his companion in Govinda or Kamala, or Atman with his companion in Brahman, one sees the coming of the morning light and the darkness of night–the juxtaposition of nirvana and samsara, heaven and hell, bliss and pain. One must accept the bad with the good to alleviate suffering fully.

I get up, I get down.

There’s a return to the music derived from the Bruford theme, the “Eclipse” music, which will fittingly segue into the final movement, “Apocalypse,” fittingly for the reasons I discussed above. Interesting additions to the music this time around include Wakeman playing chromatic descensions on the piano. These descensions musically suggest, once again, the idea that one must descend into hell, like Christ‘s harrowing of it, before experiencing the heights of heaven.

I get up, I get down.

iv) Apocalypse

And after the hell of the apocalypse comes the bliss of the Kingdom of Heaven, nirvana after the suffering of samsara. So Anderson sings a happy tune in B major, accompanied by Howe’s guitar.

That repetition of “and you and I” reinforces the sense of the unity and interconnectedness between oneself and one’s friends (i.e., Siddhartha with Govinda/Kamala), or between Atman and Brahman. These united souls “climb, crossing the shapes of the morning,” that is, they come up to the morning light of bliss and nirvana. They also “reach over the sun for the river,” or, they go past the sun’s light to touch the greater enlightenment that Siddhartha’s river provides.

They “climb clearer towards the movement”: with greater clarity, they rise to an understanding that, as Heraclitus observed, “everything flows,” the wave-like movements of the infinite ocean of Brahman, which brings us to the last line. They “called over valleys of endless seas.”

The climbing and reaching over is the getting up. The going “over valleys of endless seas,” instead of climbing the mountain (where the man with his outstretched arm is), is a descent to valleys and to sea level, the getting down. The spiritual journey isn’t about always rising and invariably getting better. Because we’re human, we’ll always fall, then get up again.

I get up, I get down.

V: Siberian Khatru

“Khatru,” according to Jon Anderson, means “as you wish” in the Yemeni dialect of Arabic. It’s been said that the lyrics of the song are about “unity among different cultures,” and perhaps that’s how we should take “as you wish” to mean: whatever culture you happen to have been raised in, express your truth in whatever way feels right to you.

Siddhartha, as we learned from reading his life story, found the truth in a way that suited him: not through words and teachings, but through lived experience. Now, the words of the Brahmins, Samanas, and Buddhists all pointed to the same truth, hence “unity among different cultures,” but Siddhartha had to feel that truth, not hear the clumsy, inadequate expression of that truth through mere words.

The song begins with Steve Howe strumming a jaunty tune on his electric guitar. Then the rest of the band comes in, with Wakeman playing a theme on the Mellotron, and Squire and Bruford backing him up with three bars of 4/4 and one in 3/4. This is all played again, then on the third playing of it, Howe joins in with a motif we’ll hear in a number of forms on and off throughout the rest of the song: a pull-off from a third to a second, then the root and a hammer-on back to the second, and a fifth, then the motif goes back to the beginning with the pull-off from the third to the second, and the whole motif is heard again and again, including a move up an octave, then up another octave.

Then we change key, and the main riff–which incorporates that motif–is heard, the riff that introduces the vocals. Wakeman’s organ is playing a parallel harmony line to Howe’s guitar riff. Anderson, Squire, and Howe are singing in Yes’s signature three-part vocal harmony.

“Sing, bird of prey/Beauty begins at the foot of you.” They sing of the beauty of a bird that kills other animals to survive. Once again, we hear of that juxtaposition of heaven and hell, of nirvana and samsara, of bliss and suffering that Siddhartha had to learn and accept as the truth of living. From the perspective of the individual ego, this feels intolerably painful; but from the divine, pantheistic point of view, Brahman is doing all of this hurting to itself–this is what the ouroboros, biting its own tail, represents. If “you believe the manner” of this, you’ll understand and accept this reality.

This paradoxical idea is developed in the next line, “Gold, stainless nail.” One is reminded of those nails that went through Christ’s hands and feet. They’re gold because, from a Christian’s point of view, they lead to man’s salvation, hence they’re “Torn through the distance of man,” that is, his sinful distance from God. From a mystic’s point of view, though, they’re gold–through the pain they cause–because it’s pain that teaches us to give up our attachment to pleasure.

These people, be they Christians or mystics of any religion, “regard the summit,” that is, the highest point of spiritual attainment; they get up, trying to reach that summit, just as they get down, experiencing pain. Note that the summit is the top of the mountain–I assume it’s the same one where the man with his outstretched arm is. Note also that all three of these songs’ lyrics share similar imagery, since they’re all in some sense or another related to Siddhartha.

Recall what I said about Heraclitus’ dictum that “everything flows,” that is, “goes through the motion”…even a cold, desolate place like Siberia. That flow of everything moves “as you wish,” you in this context being Brahman. So even those places that seem stern, rigid, and unbending in their nature, like Eastern Russia, are part of that cosmic motion. It’s interesting to point out in this connection that towards the end of this song, Yes will play some music with stabbing, irregular rhythms reminiscent of Igor Stravinsky, a Russian composer.

“Hold out the morning that comes into view,” that is, experience the dawning light of spiritual illumination. And with that, we’re reminded of Siddhartha’s holy “River running right on over my head.” As I said, these songs’ lyrics share a lot of similar imagery, the recurring themes and motifs that unify the whole album.

Next we hear, in septuple time, that guitar motif I mentioned above, along with Squire playing roots, fifths, and roots an octave higher on the bass, first as G, D, G, up and down, then as B, F-sharp, B, up and down. Then the main riff in G major comes back, with Bruford shaking a tambourine.

“How does she sing?” seems to be referring back to that singing bird of prey of the first verse. The “cold, reigning king” sounds like an evil one, but his “secrets…produce the movement” that Heraclitus described. So just like the killer bird that sings and is beautiful, the king in his coldness (like Siberia) “goes through the motion.” We have to take the bad with the good to embrace Brahman, the All, the Absolute.

The chorus about Siberia is repeated, followed by other random images, including a “blue tail,” a kind of thrush found in places like Finland and Siberia, and “Luther, in time.” Recall, in “And You and I,” the “sad preacher nailed upon the coloured door…” as a reference to the nailing of Luther’s 95 Theses to the door of the church in Wittenberg. This song is about unity among cultures, so any reference to those who have brought up tensions between different religious factions, for example, would be a challenge to such unity.

There were tensions between the Catholics and Protestants, of course, and despite the efforts of some Lutherans to have a dialogue with the Eastern Orthodox Church (the Greek Orthodox Church in particular, but we can, for the sake of this song, make associations with the Russian Orthodox Church, too), there were changes in church teaching and policy of the Lutherans that the Orthodox rejected. So in the quest of unity among different religious factions, one gets up, one gets down. Perhaps Luther, in time, would find the unity…not in his lifetime, of course, but would Lutherans in our future, maybe?

After the verse referencing Luther, we hear Howe playing a tune on the electric sitar, once again relating this music to that of India, Siddhartha‘s setting. Then we hear Wakeman playing a harpsichord, with Squire accompanying him on the bass: together, the two almost sound like a basso continuo in Baroque music. Bruford joins the two on the drums, then Howe starts playing glissandi on a steel guitar.

After all of this, Anderson’s singing resumes, with reprises of “Hold down the window,” etc. After this, he sings two new lines, including “Green leaves reveal the heart-spoken Khatru.” So, we have here an image of the beauty of nature telling us, from her heart, just what we wish to hear. This all ties in with the holy river Siddhartha sits by: to be close to the Divine, be surrounded in nature. Speaking of “as you wish,” one is also reminded of that scene in As You Like It, in which Duke Senior speaks of how edifying it is to be in nature. The green colour of the album cover and Roger Dean’s picture of watery cliffs in the inner sleeve also tie in with the idea of nature’s beauty.

After Anderson has sung these lines, we hear Howe playing that guitar motif I described above, with Squire playing those roots, fifths, and roots an octave above; and Wakeman is playing atmospheric flute tapes on his Mellotron. The band coms back in the the main riff, though it’s varied at the end with a descending pentatonic/blues line. Bruford is shaking the tambourine again.

In their three-part vocal harmonies again, Anderson, Squire, and Howe are singing repeats of lines like “Gold, stainless nail…” etc., and “Cold, reigning king…” etc., but with two new lines: “Shelter the women that sing/As they produce their movement.” One would hope that that otherwise bad king would have a good moment, for a change, and help the women contribute to the cosmic flow of everything. After all, since one must take the bad with the good–these opposites being dialectically unified–then we can expect a bad king to be a good one from time to time, too, for the same reason.

Next, we have sung reprises of lines about the “river running right on over…,” as well as “blue tail,” and “Luther, in time.” We also have other, new random images, like “Sun-tower, asking…June cast, moon fast/As one changes…” as well as “Christian changer/Called out, saviour.”

Is the tower of light asking us to grow and be edified? Is the “June cast, moon fast” an example of what Anderson said is a relating “to the dreams of clear summer days”? Of course, “one changes” as everything else that flows. The “Christian changer” sounds like Protestant reformer Luther being referenced again as the “called-out saviour” of the corrupt Church. He would change the ways of the Church, as all things change.

After these lines, Bruford hits a gong to bring back that Mellotron theme from just after the guitar intro to the song, with the three bars of 4/4 and one of 3/4. Howe comes in with that motif I described above, but this time with an effect pedal to change his guitar tone.

We next come to the ‘Stravinsky’ section I mentioned above. In particular, it sounds influenced by The Rite of Spring. To be even more particular, I think the stabbing, irregular rhythms Yes came up with–accentuated in Bruford’s drums and in the vocalizing of Anderson, Squire, and Howe, the latter of whom is playing that guitar motif throughout in the background–were inspired by rhythms of such a sort in “Augurs of Spring” and “Ritual of Abduction,” from the first half of Stravinsky’s work.

Since, as I discussed in my article on Stravinsky’s ballet (link above), in the sometimes kind, sometimes cruel duality of nature, especially during the sections of the ballet that I suspect influenced this section of “Siberian Khatru,” we can see how that duality reinforces the themes of CTTE as a whole. I get up, I get down.

After this section, we return–with another hitting of the gong by Bruford–to the Mellotron theme in three bars of 4/4 and one of 3/4. Howe does a guitar solo over this, and the song fades out.

VI: Conclusion

Though Yes’s music in general tends toward the sentimental and overly-happy–in my opinion, at least–the lyrics should be interpreted as a kind of happiness-in-pain. One alleviates suffering by accepting it as an indispensable part of life. “Sweet are the uses of adversity,” as Duke Senior says in As You Like It, the Shakespearean Khatru.