Tag: poetry

Analysis of ‘Sleuth’

Sleuth is a 1972 mystery film directed by Joseph L Mankiewicz, with a script by Anthony Shaffer, based on his 1970 Tony Award-winning play. The film stars Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine, both of whom got Oscar nominations. Mankiewicz’s final film, Sleuth received overwhelmingly positive reviews, with an Oscar nomination for Best Director, too, as well as one for Best Original Score.

Here is a link to quotes from the film, a link to the script, and links to the full movie (in case any of them are pulled from YouTube).

Hints to what the dominant themes of the film are–theatricality, deception, mind games–are already given during the opening credits…provided one already knows better. Fictional actors’ names are listed, meant for roles that do not exist onscreen. These include ‘Alec Cawthorne’ as Inspector Doppler, who is actually played by a disguised Michael Caine; also, ‘John Matthews’ as Detective Sergeant Tarrant, ‘Eve Channing’ as Marguerite Wyke, and ‘Teddy Martin’ as Police Constable Higgs, all characters only referred to by Andrew Wyke (Olivier) and Milo Tindle (Caine), the only two people ever seen throughout the film. The reason for this deception was that the production team wanted to reveal as little as possible to the audience to maximize the element of surprise.

Another hint of the theme of deception at the end of the opening credits (as well as at the end of the film) is the framing of the visuals in a theatre stage with curtains. It’s hardly necessary to show such a framing in the cinema–as opposed to a stage production of Sleuth–unless the very idea is to stress that what we’re seeing isn’t real.

The film begins with Tindle driving into Wyke’s country manor house, a vast area of property indicating how obviously wealthy Wyke, a bestselling writer of crime fiction, is. That Wyke considers the enjoyment of his genre of writing to be “the normal recreation of noble minds” is a further association of him with the aristocracy, something against which middle-class Tindle, who “[doesn’t] know very much about noble minds,” will be sharply contrasted.

As Tindle is walking about outside trying to find Wyke, he can hear the latter reciting his prose aloud into a tape recorder. Wyke is among hedgerows designed like a labyrinth, and Tindle cannot locate the voice until Wyke moves some hedge, which has been like a wall separating the two men.

When they meet, introduce themselves, and shake hands, Wyke welcomes Tindle to “Cloak Manor,” the name of his home and yet another early indication of the film’s theme of subterfuge.

Wyke notes how “all detectives were titled,” as is the sleuth of his novels, Lord Merridew. His sleuth, far cleverer than the comparatively dimwitted and frequently baffled police detectives of his novels, represents an idealized version of his egotistical, elitist self. This is so in spite of Wyke’s claim that we are living in a “classless society,” a bizarre assertion to be made in capitalist England, when not even any of the socialist states of the twentieth century, for all of their accomplishments, ever achieved classlessness, let alone the giving-up of money or the withering-away of the state.

Snobbish Wyke would never allow his fiction to be adapted for television, which for him is “no recreation for noble minds.” Wyke leads Tindle inside, where he is now to be acquainted with Wyke’s many automata, including a sailor named Jolly Jack Tar, who laughs at Wyke’s jokes. These automata, or fake people, once again reinforce the themes of theatricality and deception.

Finally, Wyke gets to the point of why he’s invited Tindle to his home. He knows that Tindle has been having a sexual relationship with his wife, Marguerite, for some time, and so he, in all bluntness, asks about Tindle’s wish to marry her.

Normally, a man would be furious to learn that his wife has made him a cuckold, especially a man as narcissistic as Wyke obviously is. Nonetheless, he pretends not to be angry, and instead acts as though Tindle’s affair with her is an excellent opportunity for Wyke to get rid of her by having Tindle take her off his hands. Then, Wyke can be free to live with his mistress, a girl named Téa.

Wyke needs first to know of Tindle’s family background. Tindle’s answer indicates humble beginnings: his mother was a farmer’s daughter from Hereford, and his father was an Italian watchmaker who immigrated to England in the 1930s and anglicized his original name, Tindolini.

Now, just as Wyke has disingenuously claimed that ours is a “classless society,” so does he claim that, in response to learning of Tindle’s (lapsed) Catholic background, “we’re all liberals here,” and that Wyke has no prejudice against Catholics, lapsed or not. Here, “Catholic” can be seen as a metonym for ‘Italian,’ an ethnicity against which Wyke is decidedly prejudiced, as he’ll soon demonstrate.

Changing the family name from Tindolini to Tindle was meant to make the family become English, something Wyke doesn’t seem to think is possible. The fact that Tindle’s father went broke from being nothing more than a watchmaker reinforces the class divide between him and Wyke, but it must be emphasized that none of this divide makes Tindle in any way a proletarian, and it’s important to understand this fact to make sense of the class analysis of this film.

Tindle owns two hairdressing salons, one in South Kensington called Casa Tindolini, and another in Brighton. Therefore, Tindle is petite bourgeois, as contrasted with Wyke as a member of the gentry. So the nature of the class conflict as allegorized in Sleuth is not between capitalist and worker, but between big capitalist and little capitalist; and as Marx once observed, “One capitalist always strikes down many others.” (Marx, p. 929)

The film’s liberal bias is to have us see Tindle as the poor underdog, and therefore to have us sympathize with him. If we’re paying attention, though, by the time we get to the end of the movie, we’ll realize that Tindle is every bit as cruel in his humiliating games as Wyke is. It’s the nature of the bourgeoisie, petite or haute, to step either on those below them (Wyke), or to step on those above them in their ascendancy to the top, as Tindle is attempting to do in either cuckolding Wyke, getting money for Wyke’s jewels, or playing games of revenge on him.

Now, I mentioned earlier that Wyke pretends not to mind Tindle’s sleeping with Marguerite, but sooner or later we have to see Wyke’s narcissistic injury come out. He makes a few crude references to her copulating with Tindle, offending him and making him want to leave the house in a huff. Wyke manages to deescalate the situation by pretending to reminisce about the woman he used to love, remembering how “intolerably tiresome” she is now, and asking if Tindle can “afford to take her off [Wyke’s] hands”.

As a mere petit bourgeois, of course Tindle cannot afford the luxurious life that Marguerite has been accustomed to as Wyke’s wife. Tindle will have to help Wyke defraud the insurance company that has covered the jewelry Wyke bought for her. Wyke will recoup his losses from the insurance claim, and Tindle will get enough of a cut to subsidize her now-high-maintenance lifestyle.

Note how Marguerite’s very existence is coupled with all the expensive things to be bought to ensure that she’ll stay with Tindle and not go running back to Wyke for support. This is because she is a much an object to Wyke (and to Tindle, as Wyke imagines) as the expensive things are objects to her. In capitalism, people are as commodified as things are.

This brings us back to my point about the liberal bias of this film, which makes us see Tindle as the poor underdog, when, though nowhere near as wealthy as Wyke is, he’s as much a capitalist as Wyke is. Marguerite is Wyke’s property, and Tindle is appropriating that property for himself, as part of his ambitious upward mobility.

The actual underdogs of Sleuth are so marginalized that we never see them onscreen. They’re only referred to in Wyke’s and Tindle’s conversations: the women (Marguerite, Téa, Joyce, Wyke’s maid, his secretary) and the servants (Wyke’s gardener, etc.). They’re invisible because they hardly matter. The sexual objectifying of Wyke’s two women, in fact, is so complete that their very names sound like puns on drinks–tea, or thé in French, and margarita.

Wyke wants Tindle, disguised, to ‘break in’ and ‘steal’ the jewels, all as deception to defraud the insurance company. Though Tindle has his worries about the crime going wrong and him being charged, Wyke will reassure him that they can pull it off safely.

The two enter a room with a pool table and play a brief game of billiards as the topic of Wyke’s sexual relationship with Téa is broached. Note the sexual symbolism of the men’s handling of phallic pool cues, knocking balls into yonic holes, as Wyke insists upon his his sexual prowess…at his age, in about his mid-sixties, to go by Olivier’s age as of 1972. Such bragging is, of course, reaction formation and denial of Wyke’s actual impotence, as revealed by the end of the film, rather like how his professed liberal lack of bigotry is reaction formation and denial, as well as his supposedly not being infuriated at having been cuckolded by Tindle.

Since we’re dealing here with a young man and another old enough to be the father of the first, the two having possession, in one sense or another, of the wife of the second man, we can see in them transferences of both the Oedipus and Laius complexes. Both men, as we learn later on in the film, would be rid of the other, if not actually, then in their games’ representation of actuality, to be free to have Mama-Marguerite. Wyke may not love her anymore, but she still ‘represents’ him (i.e., she is his ‘property’), as he’ll tell Tindle with his pistol pointed at the terrified man’s clown-wig-covered head.

The reason so much of Wyke’s wealth is put into jewelry, by the advice of his accountant, is to avoid being “virtually castrated by taxation.” Having Tindle fake the grand larceny of Wyke’s wife’s jewels in order to collect the insurance money is thus one capitalist helping another to cheat the ‘socialist’ taxman in his attempt at Wyke’s “emasculation.” Wyke is thus protecting his family jewels [!].

Marguerite and the servants are all away for the weekend, during which the entire film is set, so now is the perfect opportunity for Tindle to do the fake break-in and theft. Tindle’s worries about the criminality of the act are trivialized by Wyke, who notes how “all good moneymaking schemes in England have to be [criminal] these days,” a trenchant comment on capitalism. After Wyke reassures Tindle of the safety of the scam, as well as promising him that his cut will be 70,000 pounds, in cash, tax-free, Tindle agrees to do it.

Part of the reason for the disguise, which will be a clown costume (part of Wyke’s secret plan to humiliate Tindle), is to have him wear large shoes to hide his actual footprints. Tindle follows Wyke, who leads him down–with a further demonstration of his racism by ‘slanting’ his eyes with his fingers and imitating an Asian accent–to a room holding a number of disguises, including of course the clown outfit.

As they go down there, Wyke tells Tindle of how, before television, people used to amuse themselves with “treasure hunts, charades, games of infinite variety.” Just as the modern media lies to us with its corporate agenda, so did these games deceive, as Wyke’s and Tindle’s especially will, we’ll soon see. Take whichever form it will, the capitalist class tries to deceive us, engages in make-believe, manipulates us, just as Wyke does to Tindle, then later, vice-versa.

They rummage through Wyke’s old dressing-up basket, trying out a number of disguises before deciding on the clown one. Instead of “an old pair of sneakers and a sock,” Wyke insists on the disguise having a “sense of style,” some “amateur aristocratic quirkiness,” which once again links the ruling class with the film’s theme of theatricality and deception.

All costumed up, Tindle goes outside to get a ladder to put up on a wall leading up to a second-storey window for him to break into. Since he’s about to steal Wyke’s jewels (symbolic, on one level, of emasculating him–nicking his family jewels and cuckolding him), Tindle is also, as it were, climbing the social ladder, going from middle class to upper class, as he hopes.

This going up the ladder is difficult for him, as he’s “not very good at heights,” and he hopes that Wyke will hold the ladder steady for him. This is comparable to how difficult-to-well-nigh-impossible it is to move up from class to class, in spite of such fantasies as “the American dream.” Of course, Wyke won’t help Tindle, because this fake burglary must be simulated sufficiently to approximate reality so as to satisfy the police. Wyke also won’t help Tindle because it’s only natural that the upper class won’t help the middle class rise.

As Tindle is clumsily trying to go up the ladder in those big, awkward clown shoes, Wyke is inside pretending to be a female servant hearing Tindle’s noises outside. Wyke is speaking in a falsetto woman’s voice: this is one of a number of examples of Wyke pretending to be someone else, often imitating other accents. It’s part of the film’s theme of theatricality, fakery, and pretense.

Once Tindle is inside again, he must vandalize the place in a search for jewels whose location he pretends not to know about. When he finds the safe and blows it open with explosives, he discovers a red ruby necklace. Wyke never wanted to see it around Marguerite’s neck, feeling it made her “look like a blood sacrifice.” Again, the association of jewels with balls makes his aversion to the blood red colour symbolic of castration anxiety.

Tindle, on the other hand, wishes his father could see the rubies, for the poor old man never knew what success was. Wyke, as Tindle’s father transference, thus is part of a family romance, Tindle’s wealthy dream-father, as opposed to his broke real one.

Now that the jewels are pocketed, the explosion is meant to wake Wyke up, and a struggle between the two is to ensue. Tindle has to leave a wound of some kind on Wyke to convince the police. Since it would be rather difficult to hit Wyke hard enough without hitting him too hard, he suggests having Tindle tie him up; then he imitates the cleaning woman’s voice, imagining her to have found him all tied up and working on one of his stories. More of his theatricality and pretense.

Just before Wyke throws in the first plot twist and has Tindle understand that the whole fake jewelry burglary has just been the former setting the latter up to be shot and killed with the burglary as a pretext, Wyke does a number of things to foreshadow this twist. First, with the pistol in his hand, Wyke fires at a jug in Tindle’s hand, frightening and enraging him. Then, he makes “a bad Italian joke” about it being “open season all year round for…seducers and wife stealers,” as well as deliberately claiming that Italy, not England, is Tindle’s “country of origin.” In connection with Wyke’s elitist bigotry against even other Europeans, note that his surname is a pun on white.

While his intention to kill Tindle is as much theatricality and deception as is the fake burglary, or even the intention of defrauding the insurance company, his hatred of Tindle is real. It’s bad enough for Wyke that he’s being cuckolded, his wife and ‘property’ stolen from him–the narcissistic rage he feels from that alone is unbearable; but that the other man, of all men, is even just half a “wop” or “dago” (the same way being only part-Jew is tantamount to being a full-Jew to a Nazi) is enough to require a tit-for-tat humiliation. Sleuth being an allegory of class antagonisms, we see in Wyke vs Tindle how capitalism, even between haut and petit bourgeois, is all about abasing the competition to glorify oneself.

This is why Tindle must be ‘killed’ while fully dressed in his clown costume, right after he’s tearfully begged Wyke not to kill him. Tindle must be brought down because, as a mere petit bourgeois “half-dago,” he’s “a jumped-up pantry boy who doesn’t know his place” (a line loosely quoted, by the way, in The Smiths‘ song, “This Charming Man”). Just before shooting clowned-up Tindle in the back of the head, Wyke says, “Farewell, Punchinello,” a reference to Pulcinella, a clownish character from commedia dell’arte, and its English descendant, Punch.

The scheme to kill Tindle with legal impunity from the apparent attempted burglary is, as I’ve said, all just one of Wyke’s many games of humiliation, not at all real, more theatricality and deception. The firing of a blank from his phallic gun suggests Wyke’s impotence, his own private feelings of humiliation projected onto Tindle.

After the game is over, and Tindle, having come to from fainting and having gone home, we see Wyke at home alone, gratified from the narcissistic supply he’s got from humiliating Tindle and listening to old recordings of Cole Porter songs like “You Do Something to Me” and “Anything Goes.” In the former song, “that voodoo that you do so well” reminds us of the deceptive ‘magic’ of Wyke’s games. His old-fashioned taste in music reinforces the sense of the Generation Gap between him and Tindle.

This gap between crusty old conservatives and young liberals is emphasized in the lyric to “Anything Goes.” The breaking of the old Victorian taboo of “a glimpse of stocking,” as well as the switch from “better words” to “four-letter words” (as had only about a half-decade before Sleuth‘s release been allowed in films, and before that, “the end of the Chatterly ban”), reflects a social rift that distracts us from the ongoing rift between capitalist and worker.

“Detective Inspector Doppler” arrives at Wyke’s home, saying he’s there to investigate “the disappearance of a Mr. Milo Tindle.” Now, to those who’ve never seen the film or the play, Doppler is a third character just introduced to the story, played by “Alec Cawthorne” and not by Caine disguised in a clever makeup job to make him look like a middle-aged man, almost Wyke’s age. The theatricality and deception are as much for us, the audience, as they are for Wyke. Tindle’s disguise is so complete, it even includes his use of a rhotic accent.

As “Doppler” does his investigation, he gives off the impression that not only is Wyke genuinely guilty of having killed Tindle (we haven’t yet seen Tindle as himself since the firing of the pistol, so for all we first-time viewers know, that was a real bullet fired), but Wyke has also carelessly left out circumstantial evidence for “Doppler” to find. Actually, Wyke’s denials to “Doppler” of being guilty of murder are real, for Tindle sneaked into the house to plant the incriminating evidence (blood on the bannisters, Tindle’s clothes “all screwed up on the floor of a wardrobe”) while Wyke was out of the house for the day.

In playing this game on Wyke, Tindle isn’t just getting revenge for himself; he’s also avenging the sullied reputation of police detectives, who are routinely looked down on in Wyke’s fiction as “baffled” and not particularly intelligent. It is always the noble, titled Lord Merridew who, as the brilliant sleuth, solves the case.

Wyke here is demonstrating his elitism once again, with Merridew representing the gentry, and those “baffled” police inspectors representing the common masses, as Tindle is thought of as representing. What must be remembered, though, is that just as Tindle is a member of the petite bourgeoisie and is therefore no less a capitalist than Wyke, the police, of whatever modest means they may be, represent and defend the interests of the capitalist class. So Tindle’s humbling of Wyke through the clever detective work of “Doppler” is not the working class one-upping the bourgeoisie, but rather a capitalist doing this to a fellow capitalist.

Of course, in spite of Wyke’s looking down on common cops, just as with his denial of prejudice or Othello-like jealousy, he denies that condescension by claiming that “Merridew would have been proud of [Doppler]” for being so diligent in his tireless attempts to contact Tindle by phone. Now, Tindle knows this compliment to be fake, but in keeping with the theatricality and deception going on with both men, “Doppler” says the compliment is “praise indeed, Sir,” and claims to enjoy Wyke’s fiction.

Wyke enjoys the narcissistic supply he gets from hearing that “Doppler” reads his work, but his ego trip is short-lived when he isn’t allowed to finish naming his favourite of all of his books, The Case of the Crucified Communist (the title of which sounds like a capitalist’s wish-fulfillment), before “Doppler” resumes talking about the Tindle case.

As the evidence against Wyke seems to be mounting, he and “Doppler” go outside to where the dirt has been freshly dug, implying that this is where Wyke has buried Tindle’s body. Wyke tries to maintain his innocence by saying his gardener has been “aching for an opportunity to slander his employer.” In this quote, we see not only an example of class conflict, but also one of the marginalization of a worker, one only spoken of, not ever seen.

“Doppler,” on the other hand, defends gardeners and has nothing but praise for how perceptive he finds them to be. Note here how Tindle, in taking the side of gardeners, is again associating himself with the poor, downtrodden working class, as liberals are wont to do; though as a bourgeois himself, Tindle is no more a worker than Wyke is.

Finally, the pressure rises on Wyke until the circumstantial evidence against him seems so strong that “Doppler” makes to arrest him. Wyke is now feeling a stress and fear comparable to Tindle’s when he thought he was about to die. Then, “Doppler,” behind Wyke, pulls off his face makeup, wig, etc., to reveal Tindle underneath it all.

Now, the first-time viewer sees that not only was the fake burglary artifice, but so was Tindle’s death and the very existence of Doppler, a veritable doppelgänger for Tindle. Wyke is now as enraged as Tindle was to discover his fears were all for nothing.

Tindle is not yet satisfied in his lust for revenge, though. He’s got more tricks in store for Wyke, including the next game, immediately to be played on the old man.

He insists, though, that this game he’s about to play on Wyke is not pretend. He claims that he’s actually murdered Téa and planted four pieces of evidence about the house that will incriminate Wyke, and that the police will show up in a matter of minutes, find the evidence, which is all hiding in plain view, and charge Wyke with the murder.

To agitate Wyke all the more, Tindle claims he has had sex with her, her willing to it, before strangling her to death with one of the four pieces of evidence. Wyke has been assuming that Tindle is having him on (as he should), until he phones Téa’s home, getting her roommate, Joyce, to answer the call and tearfully confirm that Téa has, indeed, been murdered.

Now that Wyke is convinced the murder is real, he frantically goes about searching for the four objects: a stocking, a shoe, a false eyelash, and a bracelet. After finding and disposing of the four things, Tindle reveals that no cops have arrived as he’s led Wyke to believe. It turns out that Têa and Joyce were happy to help Tindle get even with Wyke, for Wyke has often played games of humiliation on them, too. Wyke personifies the ruling class that humiliates the marginalized with phony set-ups, targeting marginalized people like women.

Téa, for example, is so marginalized that it takes quite some time, since knowing of her ‘murder,’ for Wyke to express any pity for her, a callousness that Tindle notes. Women like her, Marguerite, and Joyce are never seen and never heard…silenced, in effect. They are represented only in the words the two men use to refer to them.

Similarly, people of colour are marginalized in the presentation of this story, even to the point of them being marginalized, as Tindle imagines they must be (and probably correctly so, given Wyke’s obvious racism), in Wyke’s novels. Tindle assumes that blacks don’t “play much of a part in the books [Wyke] write[s]…Except for the odd, eyeball-rolling darkie, to take his place alongside the swarthy Yid, the oily Levantine, and others.” The point is that Shaffer’s marginalizing of workers, women, and people of colour by not presenting any of them physically on the stage or screen is to indicate how slightly they have been regarded in real life.

To get back to the ending, where Wyke realizes that the danger of the cops finding the four pieces of evidence is all faked, Tindle hits him with one final bit of humiliation…and this time, it’s all too real. He tells Wyke that Téa, having actually met Tindle in the house while Wyke was away, has told Tindle that Wyke is impotent and hasn’t done it with her for over a year.

This narcissistic injury is too much for Wyke to bear. He cannot risk Tindle circulating this tidbit of gossip, not even just to Marguerite. Now the pistol must have only real bullets. Tindle’s murder cannot be faked this time. The firing of a real bullet into him is symbolic of Wyke’s phallus working properly.

Tindle insists, though, that since he’s told the police about the faked burglary story after Wyke’s faked shooting of him, and…maybe…the police will stop by the house, Wyke won’t be able to use the burglary story to justify shooting Tindle. Since Tindle’s been lying the whole time, Wyke nonetheless figures he doesn’t need to believe him this time, so as Tindle is walking toward the front door with Marguerite’s fur coat (a further theft from Wyke), he gets shot in the back.

Shortly afterwards, the police do show up, as promised, by the front door. Wyke is truly screwed now, and just as Tindle’s fake murder has turned real, so is the fake danger of Wyke being arrested now real. As Tindle is dying, he activates all the automata in the room, particularly Jolly Jack Tar, notable for his hearty guffaw as demonstrated a number of times throughout the film, and now laughing with Tindle at Wyke.

If only that gun could have been, with a blank, as impotent as Wyke’s biological gun is. then he could tell the cops, “it was just a bloody game.”

The movie ends with a shot of the theatre and a quick drop of the curtains, giving off a Brechtian alienation effect to remind us that Sleuth is just a bloody play. It’s as unreal as any of the games Wyke and Tindle have played on each other.

The emphasis on the unreality of the story is to suggest that who Wyke and Tindle represent–gentry vs petite bourgeoisie, conservative vs liberal, or the opposing mainstream political parties representing these two factions, whichever–are more play-acting in their vying for power than they are really competing. We always focus on these two groups, while ignoring the politically marginalized people represented by their absence on the screen or stage.

The political tap-dance the two groups do is a distraction from the people we should be concerned about–workers like the gardener, cleaning lady, and secretary; women like Marguerite, Téa, and Joyce; and people of colour like blacks, Levantines, or in any case anyone not of Anglo-Saxon stock, like Jews…or Italians, for that matter.

We see these two mainstream groups battling it out in debates on TV, keeping the spectrum of the otherwise lively debates strictly circumscribed, so as to ensure that certain touchy issues–like poverty, income inequality, endless war, student debt, homelessness, genocide, government surveillance, etc.–are kept out of the debates, since their inclusion might threaten the capitalist/imperialist structure that the ruling class wants kept intact.

Accordingly, the two sides’ debates are all just theatre, all fakery and deception, all “just a bloody game,” like the ones Wyke and Tindle play on each other. For if the debates were real, they’d actually be relevant to the common people. And we can’t have that, can we?

The Tanah–Beginnings, Chapter Eight

[The following is the ninth of many posts–here is the first, here is the second, here is the third, here is the fourth, here is the fifth, here is the sixth, here is the seventh, and here is the eighth–about a fictitious discovery of ancient manuscripts of a religious text of narratives and magic spells. Its purpose for my readers and me is to provide a cosmology and mythography on which I am basing much, if not most, of my fiction–short stories and novels. If anyone is interested in reading this fiction, he or she can use these blog posts as references to explain the nature of the magic and universe in my fiction.]

Though Rawmios found success as a teacher and performer, he was still haunted by the painful memories of his wicked family. It was obvious to him, from his reputation all over Nawaitos as a gifted teacher, that his mother’s description of him–as feeble-minded–was a perfidious lie. It was a big lie, an absurd lie.

Rawmios came to realize that much of what we know isn’t really the truth, but just a human construction that claims to represent reality (for what do we really know about anything?). Therefore, if the human representation is harmful, and has been proven invalid, then it must be replaced with a better, healthier construction that is closer to reality. Rawmios had to take all of the lies his family told him about himself, and wipe the slate clean.

He would take all of the family’s cruel misrepresentations of him and replace them with their honourable opposites. Since he had been deprived of these virtues, he now had the right to claim them as his own. If he had possessed all of the vices the family claimed he had, he had acquired those vices only by power of suggestion. Now he would use power of suggestion to acquire the opposite virtues.

Therefore, since his mother said he was feeble-minded, now he could believe himself to be gifted in intelligence. Since his father taught him to believe unquestioningly all of Lorenzos’s teachings, and to be intolerant of any heretical changes to them, now Rawmios would be free to change any of those teachings that were clearly wrong-headed. Since his brothers called him vile names, he would claim the sweetest of names for himself now. If he was once called selfish and absorbed in himself, now he was selfless and concerned more with others than with himself. If his sister called him weak and cowardly, he would now be brave and strong.

Fashioning a new identity for oneself is never easy, so Rawmios reinvented himself with the powerful aid of meditation. He would not stop meditating until he had fully remade himself.

During meditation, one is always assailed with distractions; so was Rawmios. The distractions came at him like an army of demons, assaulting him with his old painful memories. Rawmios was determined to conquer them all, and he did. He did so by looking at the demons, right in the eyes, and saying these words: “You demons are all liars.” At the sound of these words, the demons all fell.

The demons regrouped, and started a fresh assault. But this time, their weapon wasn’t pain: it was pleasure. They would distract Rawmios with images of naked women in lewd poses, with thoughts of Rawmios’ music and poetry–what he had yet to finish, and would eagerly finish–and with thoughts of how pleasurable it would be to tell his family, “You are liars.”

Rawmios was determined to reconquer the demons, and he did. He did so by looking at the demons, right in the eyes, and saying these words: “The pleasure of a clean slate is greater than the pleasure of naked, lewd women, greater than finishing my music and poetry, and greater than cursing my family.” At the sound of these words, the demons all fell.

Again the demons regrouped, and they started another assault. This final time, their weapon was neither pain nor pleasure: it was to alert Rawmios of his responsibilities. They reminded him of his work as a teacher, and of how his students lacked him. They reminded him of his responsibility to his wife, who lacked him. They reminded him of the listeners of his music and poetry, and of how his listeners lacked him.

Rawmios was determined to defeat the demons, and he did. He did so by looking the demons straight in the eyes, and saying these words: “My students won’t lack me for long, my wife won’t lack me for long, and my listeners won’t lack me for long. Patience is indispensable. When I return to them all, I will give my students a far greater teaching than ever before; I will give my wife a love far greater than ever before; and I will give my listeners music and poetry far greater than ever before. So well will I benefit them all that my brief absence will be quickly forgotten–so quickly forgotten that my absence will seem never to have been. You demons are all liars: be gone with you!” At the sound of these words, the demons all withered and died.

Rawmios had finally wiped the slate clean. All of the bad conceptions of who he was had vanished, exposed for the lies that they all were. His pain was gone, and he had a new vision of his life.

In his vision, he saw a spark of light coming from that Higher Reason, which underlies all things. That light entered Lizas’ womb on the night that Reynholdos Sr. impregnated her. The light added a weight to her pregnancy, such that she’d describe it as if she was about “to give birth to an elephant.” So painful was this pregnancy, which she’d never wanted, that Lizas found herself hating the unborn child. Giving birth to him was particularly painful, but when she looked in his eyes, she loved him.

It became clear to Lizas very early how gifted her new son was, but she didn’t want Reynholdos Jr., Gionos, and Catyas to envy the boy. Though the boy showed aptitudes in music and storytelling, she ignored them. The dark seed of an idea grew in her mind, one of mastering the boy by making him seem the opposite of what he was. When this unnatural urge took root in her mind, the mother in her died to the boy, replaced with a smiling witch.

Though the family was wealthy, Lizas didn’t want Nitramius, as he was called then, to be any better than a common worker. She delighted in how powerful she felt, an unextraordinary woman dominating an exceptional child. She misled Reynholdos Sr., telling him the boy seemed half-witted. They had doctors examine the boy. The doctors told Lizas of the talent they saw in him, and she lied to her husband, telling him the doctors said the opposite. She was afraid of her boy achieving greatness, while the children she preferred were seen as mediocre. He was educated with less intelligent classmates, and not allowed to go outside the city in which the family lived. Nitramius was lonely and miserable.

Four times, though, he secretly left the city and found people who recognized his abilities. The first time, he sang before some people, and they loved his voice. The second time, he gave some poems to be published in a book, and they were loved by many. The third time, he acted in a short play, and he was praised. The fourth time, however, a man gave him a needed criticism: “Nitramius, you do not commit yourself to your art. You want to do everything, yet you achieve almost nothing. You need to learn how to focus, instead of dreaming.” This was very true.

He knew he needed to leave home to achieve his ambitions, but with so little confidence in himself, he was afraid to. Needing to improve his image as an artist, he bought the black silk jacket. What happened soon after has already been told, and this was the end of Rawmios’ vision.

Now that the slate was clean, he knew his mission in life, to use his talents to help others, not just to glorify himself. Rawmios had to teach others, who have also been hurt with demonic lies, how to remake themselves. Those taught to hate themselves had to remake themselves, as Rawmios had, so they could now love themselves.

In his vision, Rawmios also came to realize much in the ouroboros, the Ten Errors, and the Cycle of Decay–much that hadn’t been seen before. He saw Three Unities: the Unity of Space–that a Higher Reason permeates everything, that all is one; the Unity of Time–the only real time is now, for past and future are human constructions; and the Unity of Action–all actions and concepts exist with their opposites close by, and these opposites’ relation to each other are that of a circular continuum, like the serpent biting its tail. Head and tail are opposites, thus showing the relationship.

This last idea was the most exciting one for Rawmios, for now he could justify the remaking of bad self-images into good ones, for the sake of his followers. This was how he could help humanity. He left his place of meditation, and he went into the city to teach any who would listen.

Commentary

All spiritual growth comes from realizing the lies and illusions we have about ourselves and the outside world. In Christianity, the Devil would have us believe, in our lust, greed, pride, and anger, that we’re animals–unworthy of having God’s love. In Hinduism, we’re deceived into not seeing the atman that links us with Brahman. In Buddhism, we don’t see our Buddha-nature, because of illusory maya, and because of the lie of having a self.

Rawmios’ vision of a divine spark of light in himself, giving him all of his talents, is not egotism in him. It is another mythical expression of this same joy, found in all religions, when we sense our closeness to the Divine. The cruelty of the abusive family, lying to the boy about his capacities, giving him a pejorative name, and restricting his movement all symbolize how all of us, born into an illusory material world, fail to see the unities underneath all the differences perceived by the senses. Seeing these unities, we all find our spark of light, our inner greatness.

In reading this story, one must wonder if, again, there was a common mythical root from which it and the legendary life of the Buddha came. The poem below again expresses, in visual form, the erasing of illusions that cause sadness, to be replaced by truths that bring happiness.

Eyes^^^^^^^^^shut,
………….we do………….
…….not see what…….
…ails……………….us….

Erased,^^^^^^^^^^^

…………………………..ills
…..can be replaced…..

Souls^^^^^^^^^with
open^^^^^^^^^eyes
……………go to………….
what………………….lies
…….in lands joyous….

Bulldozer

A
man
is driving
a bulldozer
right at me.

I’m lying here paralyzed on the ground.

He
is
getting
closer and closer
The big metal wheel
is crushing all under it.

I lie here helpless and cannot do anything.

It is
almost
upon me.
the crunching big wheel
is almost touching my bones.
It keeps on rolling and rolling.

I cannot move. I can only see my imminent death.

It has
rolled
over the trees and
our homes and corpses.
Now I can feel it crushing me.
I am now leaving this evil world.
I am the dead. I am the blood. I am the bones. I am Gaza.

Analysis of ‘Larks’ Tongues in Aspic,’ ‘Starless and Bible Black,’ and ‘Red’

I: Introduction

As I did with my analysis of Discipline, Beat, and Three of a Perfect Pair, I’m doing another trio of King Crimson albums here. And just as the 1980s lineup of leader/guitarist Robert Fripp, guitarist/singer/lyricist Adrian Belew, Stick-man/bassist/back-up singer Tony Levin, and drummer Bill Bruford was one of the very best versions of King Crimson (and I’m far from being alone in this opinion), so was this early 1970s era’s lineup, including core members Fripp, Bruford, and bassist/singer John Wetton one of the very best versions of the mighty Crims (and again, I’m far from being alone in that opinion).

This early 70s era of King Crimson was far more stable than that of the first four albums (which include, of course, In the Court of the Crimson King and In the Wake of Poseidon), which typically saw around half of the band members replaced from studio album to studio album. Instead, from late 1972 to about the beginning of the fall of 1974 (when Fripp broke up the band), this version of King Crimson could be described as ‘the incredible shrinking band,’ initially existing as a quintet consisting of Fripp, Wetton, Bruford, David Cross (violin, viola, Mellotron, Hohner Pianet, and occasional flute), and Jamie Muir (percussion and random noise-makers); for Muir would quit after the recording of Larks’ Tongues in Aspic in early 1973 to join a Buddhist monastery, and Cross would be fired in mid-1974, after the release of Starless and Bible Black and its ensuing tour.

Instead of Peter Sinfield, who wrote King Crimson’s lyrics for the first four albums, and was gone by the time of the band’s first live album, Earthbound, the lyrics of these three albums were largely written by Richard Palmer-James, a guitarist and singer on Supertramp‘s debut album.

Though, as I said above, this era’s lineup was more stable than those of the first four King Crimson albums, I suspect that Fripp was greatly affected emotionally by that ongoing revolving door of personnel changes, perhaps even a bit traumatized by all the stress of having to deal with it. I suspect that he was expecting, early on, that this new band would also fall apart in short order, since there’s a sense in the song, “Starless,” from Red and played in gigs with Cross earlier, that the song’s topic of an ending friendship is a kind of metaphor for a premonition of the band’s imminent break-up.

This sense of loss and impermanence, feared by Fripp perhaps even as early as the release of LTIA (with Muir’s quitting so soon after the album’s completion, and thus confirming, to some extent, Fripp’s fears), is something that I see as relatable to certain Buddhist ideas. In fact, just as I saw a triadic theme of the Hegelian dialectic in the three 1980s King Crimson albums, so do I see a triadic theme in LTIA, S&BB, and Red, a theme centred on the Buddhist concept of the three poisons: rāga, or attachment (LTIA), dveșa, or aversion (S&BB), and moha, or delusion (Red).

II: Larks’ Tongues in Aspic

Apart from the mellower “Book of Saturday,” “Exiles,” and the softer sections of “Larks’ Tongues in Aspic, Part One,” we can hear on this album a departure from the daintier, woodwind-oriented, and more structured music of the first four albums…though live albums from the first era, including Earthbound, did demonstrate a significant amount of improvisation. Still, this next era of King Crimson will have decidedly more improvisation, particularly of a European, free improvisational style. The music also grew noticeably darker in tone.

The title for the first and last instrumentals of the album, as well as the name of the album itself, was thought of by Muir, whose eccentric choices in percussion noises (including chimes, bells, musical saw, shakers, rattles, and such found objects as sheet metal) are evident in both of those tracks. Fripp found the title apt, saying that it is “something precious which is stuck, but visible…precious, [and] encased in form.” Bruford once claimed that Part One’s soft middle section, with Cross’s violin and Muir’s zither, is the “lark’s tongue” in the middle of the “aspic” that is the wildness of the rest of the music.

As for my personal thoughts on any possible meaning for the title of these two instrumentals and the album, I discussed in my analysis of Part III in Three of a Perfect Pair (link above) that the delicacy depicted in the title brings to mind the killing of animals for food, turning a part of the birds’ bodies into a commodity (ancient Romans, especially the wealthy, ate larks’ tongues as a delicacy and as a symbol of extravagance). This idea ties in with a recurring theme in a number of King Crimson songs, that of capitalist consumerism and materialism. This idea also ties in with the dominant theme, as I see it, of this album–rāga, or desire, lust, attachment.

In connection with this notion of lust or desire, we can see in the cover of Larks’ Tongues in Aspic, with the blue crescent moon united with the sun, an idea that would later find its variation on the cover of Three of a Perfect Pair: the (sexual) union of the male and female principles–the feminine moon and masculine sun, and the phallus and yoni of the later album cover.

Larks’ Tongues in Aspic, Part One

The opening instrumental begins with Muir playing a tune on a mbira, or African thumb piano. The music is very soft here, but it will get much louder later. Behind the mbira, you can hear other percussion instruments–glockenspiel, rattling metal, etc.–and Cross playing two As, an E, and an F-sharp high on the violin, over and over again, in 6/8. The metal shaking gets louder and predominant as the glockenspiel, violin, and eventually the mbira all fade out, leaving only the shaking of metal in the end.

The next section begins with a C minor staccato violin ostinato of simultaneous two-note intervals (sometimes minor thirds, sometimes octaves, etc.) in 5/4 time. These intervals tend to rise chromatically in threes while Fripp is playing eerie chromatic descensions on his guitar, put through distortion.

The tension builds, with a snare drum roll by Bruford, then I have to turn the volume down, because the music gets really loud here. Fripp and Wetton are playing a six-note riff mainly in 7/4, sounding like an early example of prog metal.

Then the music goes back to the staccato violin part in 5/4, though live versions of “Larks’ One” tend to have Fripp play this part here, as he does in the coda, with Cross playing the violin part he plays in the coda. Hearing this latter violin part, with the eerie chromatic descension on Wetton’s distorted wah-wah bass, now makes a lot more harmonic sense.

Another drum roll leads into the ‘prog-metal’ riff again. Next comes a passage with Fripp playing dissonant, quick arpeggios abounding in tritones and shifting in and out of tonality. He originally wrote this part with the Islands lineup of Boz Burrell on bass and vocals, Ian Wallace on drums, and Mel Collins on saxes and flute, recorded as “A Peacemaking Stint Unrolls.” In Larks’, however, the guitar part is backed with the band playing in 7/4, with eighth notes subdividing the metre as 3+3+4+4.

The next passage is a frenetic one with Muir bashing away on all kinds of percussion instruments, Wetton playing more distorted, wah-wah bass, and Fripp playing his trademark screaming phrases, his chords growing dissonant by the end of the passage.

After this mayhem comes the aforementioned subdued centre of the instrumental, the “lark’s tongue” in the “aspic,” also called the “water section” by Muir, with him on zither (or autoharp, if you prefer) and Cross on violin. Towards the end of this section, it almost sounds Asian, Japanese. Then we come to the coda.

This final section is a variation on the 5/4 part leading up to the snare drum roll. This part invariably has Fripp playing what was originally Cross’s staccato violin part, but there isn’t the eerie chromatic descension on the bass.

Instead of that eerie part, indeed, replacing it, is recorded voices–first, a discussion of someone convicted of murder who is to be hanged, this death sentence mentioned right at the drum roll; then, we hear Bruford, Cross, and Muir reciting magazine passages, their words unintelligible, while we hear the band playing something peaceful in G major.

Fripp is playing chord arpeggios, Wetton is playing more wah-wah bass, Cross is playing a violin melody of G, G-flat, and D, then B-flat, A, and D (an octave lower than the first D), and the glockenspiel can be heard finishing off the instrumental.

I’ve mentioned that rāga, or desire, lust, and attachment, is the dominant theme of this album. Now, the discussion of a convicted murderer condemned to death is, of course, rather an example of dveșa, or aversion, hate–the opposite of rāga.

What one must remember, though, is that opposites are properly understood in a dialectical sense, that there is a unity of opposites. One cannot properly have a sense of the one extreme without a sense of the opposite extreme. One cannot know attachment without knowing aversion.

Book of Saturday

This song is a soft love ballad. (I previously mentioned that “Heartbeat,” off of the Beat album [link above], is extraordinarily for King Crimson a simple pop love song; now, the uniqueness of my description of that song is not contradicted by my statement here, since “Book of Saturday” has its proper share of prog elements, including shifts from 4/4 to 5/4 time.) It begins with Fripp playing an electric guitar chord progression in the key of A minor, a progression including a harmonic in B.

In the lyric, we can see the theme of desire, or attachment, clearly in how Wetton sings of the push and pull of attraction and repulsion towards the girl of the love relationship. Part of him wants to leave her, but he can’t, because part of him wants to stay, as is evident in the first verse. Love can be an addiction.

I doubt that the interpretation I’m about to make was Palmer-James’s intention, but I find it fitting to think that the sexual relationship depicted in this song is the same one of the pimp and underage prostitute in “Easy Money” (see below). The “lay[ing of] cards upon the table” and “the jumble of lies [they] told” suggests how sex is just a game to them (the game they’re “forgetting”). Furthermore, her “people, the boys in the band,” suggest that she’s had experience as one of those “Ladies of the Road,” like Lori Maddox. His swearing he likes her people reeks of a cuckold pimp’s jealousy.

Fripp does a solo that’s played backwards, perhaps a musical representation of going back in time to “reminiscences gone astray,” and “the shuddering breath of yesterday.” Cross then does a violin solo that I’ve never heard repeated in any of the live performances of this song (I suspect that he was getting nervous playing live, so he became more reticent); instead, Fripp would play some pretty chord substitutions to fill in the space.

I think that “the crewmen…[of the] banana boat ride” are all the johns who have had her at night (it should be obvious what part of the crewmen’s anatomy the bananas are that she rides on…daylight come and he wants [them] go home). Her response to his waking-up and getting rid of them is a lively one, as if wising to gave them all another ride in her “limousine.”

The “succor of the needy” sounds like a pun on “sucker,” “the needy” being all those johns, who are also “the cavalry of despair,” riding her like a horse, though the despair is all his, the cuckold pimp who has been tossed aside, while they “take a stand in the lady’s [pubic] hair.” That she’s making “sweet sixteen” reminds us of the girl in “Easy Money” who he never knew was “a minor.”

She makes his life “a book of bluesy Saturdays,” which makes me think of the Hebrew Bible, read on Saturday synagogue services, a day that he must keep holy. He has to be good and abstain from sin or work, while she’s free to be as sinful as she likes. He’d like to leave her and escape his humiliation, but he can’t, not only because she’s so beautiful and exciting (part of her attraction, of course, is that being underage, she’s forbidden fruit), but also because she’s a source of income (easy money) allowing him to sit around idly at home, not needing to find a real job.

Exiles

This song opens with a theme on the Mellotron (cellos tapes) in E; this theme was originally from something the original King Crimson played live, “Mantra,” a tune played on Fripp’s guitar.

This then changes to a violin melody by Cross over a chord progression of C major, B minor, and A minor; he then plays the same melodic contour, but higher, and over a progression of D major and C major (twice), then B minor and A minor again.

The lyric is an autobiographical one for Palmer-James, in which he feels sad about having to leave his home country of England to perform with Supertramp in continental Europe. This having to leave (“But Lord, I had to go”) made him and his bandmates “exiles,” as it were.

This sadness over leaving England is yet another example of attachment causing suffering, hence rāga is one of Buddhism’s three poisons. The palms of Palmer-James’s hands are “damp with expectancy” because of that expectant wish to leave “this far-away land” and return home.

Since this new version of King Crimson is going to get heavier over these two years of its existence, we will hear Fripp play a lot less acoustic guitar than before, which he does only on this song and on “Fallen Angel,” from Red. His playing here is typically beautiful and full of arpeggios. We also hear Cross play a little flute, and in the middle of the song, Wetton is sitting at a piano.

Leaving England with Supertramp to play gigs in Munich, Palmer-James had “to face the call of fame, or,” if success eluded him there, to “make a drunkard’s name for [himself].” His “home was a place by the sand,” that is, he grew up in Bournemouth.

Would his friends ever understand the kind of sadness he feels at having to leave his home country? To know the “rain…of an afternoon out of town,” the feeling of alienation from the town one grew up in?

Easy Money

In this song beginning Side Two of the album, we can hear the beginnings of Crimson’s move in a heavier direction. The song starts with a blistering riff by Fripp in E minor, backed by Cross on the Mellotron (string section tapes), and Muir’s sloshing his hands in buckets of mud to augment Wetton’s and Bruford’s rhythm section.

After hearing Wetton sing nonsense syllables with overdubbed vocal harmonies, the music quietens, and he starts singing the lyric, which is about a pimp making “easy money” off of his desirable, but…underage…prostitute. (It would seem that, because of his exploitative wickedness, the pain he expresses in “Book of Saturday” (as I see it, anyway) is a result of karma biting him in the arse.

Fripp arranged the music for the verses, which are in 7/8 and in E minor (though Bruford plays a cross-rhythm in 4/4), then after three bars of that, it switches to 4/4 and to A major. Wetton arranged the music for the “Easy money” refrain, which is a progression of C major, B major, C major, and A major.

Potential johns see the girls curves as she “twinkle[s] by” “on the street,” and they like what they see. The next verse, as it appears on the studio album, must be the result of the record company being nervous about the risqué verse (“Well, I argued with the judge,” etc.) usually heard in live performances of the song. When King Crimson played “Easy Money” on The Midnight Special, it wasn’t at all surprising that Wetton sang the clean verse (“And I thought my heart would break,” etc.) instead.

Whereas the clean verse seems to be Palmer-James sheepishly backing off from the smut and saying the girl is just helping her man make winning bets at the races, the risqué verse is surely the authentic one, making explicit what is merely implied in the other verses.

The judge insists on hitting the pimp with a charge of statutory rape, for no one ever told him the girl was “a minor.” That Wetton chirps of “licking fudge” makes me see a possible ulterior meaning in “lark’s tongue in…ass?” (Forgive me, Dear Reader–I couldn’t resist.) In any case, we can see here more of the theme of rāga, desire.

The clean verse, however, included a line put on the album’s inner sleeve, but never sung: “but you always make money.” It’s regrettable that we never heard Wetton sing this line, particularly in between “And they never told me once you were a minor” and the “Easy money” chorus, for the unsung line would have clarified the progression of events in the story that the lyric is telling.

“Easy money,” as understood in the way I’m describing it, isn’t just money easily made by the pimp in his capitalistic exploitation and commodification of the girl; it’s also that she is easy, eagerly servicing man after man, thus leading to his cuckolding. So we can see how “Book of Saturday” gives us his future, where he gets what he deserves. Note also Muir’s use of the musical saw at the first singing of the chorus, giving the men a ‘boing’ response to the girl.

She’s “strutting out at every race” of men running after her. I suspect that the glass being thrown around the place is a euphemism for a phallus: I’m reminded of when Steven Tyler would later sing of a groupie drinking from his glass backstage.

“Sit[ting] around the family throne” implies the large sum of money the pimp and prostitute have been able to take home. They can rest and relax for two weeks, without (her) needing to work, for with all that cash, they can “appease the Almighty” dollar…or in the case of those living in the UK, the Almighty Pound Sterling.

After Fripp does a solo, Wetton comes back with the nonsense syllables and a return to the first verse. Then he sings of the money being put in a jar, and driving her around to find more johns. This pimp exploiter is “getting fat on [her] lucky star.”

The Talking Drum

This instrumental begins with Muir playing a talking drum, hence the name of the track. I sense an intriguing connotation in the title, though, which also ties in with the previous track. “Talking” implies a human being, while a drum is a thing used by another human being. To play a human being like an instrument is to manipulate and exploit him or her, as the pimp has done with the prostitute. The selfish use of people as things again ties in with rāga, desire.

After hearing Muir’s talking drum playing, the rest of the band fades in with Wetton’s bass playing a riff based on a tritone (the ‘diabolus in musica‘) of A and E-flat, Bruford playing a straight 4/4 beat, and Cross playing a viola. Melodically, the viola, bass, and later, Fripp’s guitar lines are based on the octatonic scale, though notes outside the scale are also used.

The hypnotic improvisation rises in volume to a climax, with Bruford hitting the crash cymbal on every beat. It ends with Cross playing high screeches with his bow, and this segues into…

Larks’ Tongues in Aspic, Part Two

Unlike Part One, which is credited to the entire band and thus gives more or less equal attention to all five members, Part Two was written by Fripp and is therefore a guitar-riff-based instrumental. He begins it with a stack of perfect fourths–C-F-A-sharp–strummed with some scratching of the dubbed-out strings to create a rhythm in 5/4. Wetton roots the stack with a bass line of F, G, G, F, G, G, F, G, F, G.

This rhythm guitar part, in G, is a slower variation on the staccato C minor violin motif heard in Part One. Similarly, Fripp’s guitar arpeggios of G, D, G-sharp (an octave above)–these three notes played twice, then D-flat, G, then the development of that melodic motif shortly thereafter, are slower variations in 4/4 of that fast-picked, dissonant passage I described above, which originally appeared as part of “A Peacemaking Stint Unrolls.”

Typically, the 5/4 rhythm guitar part shortens in its last bar to 4/4 before switching to the 4/4 arpeggio motif. After switching back and forth between these two motifs and their variations, the music softens with Fripp playing F and A together, then D, these three guitar notes being the fifth, flat seventh, and ninth to the tonic of G in Wetton’s bass, and the three repeated twice before the F and A go up to G and B before repeating the whole motif and later doing variations on it higher up the frets. It’s mostly in 5/4 time, with only the first bar in 11/8. Towards the end of the instrumental, when this passage is heard a third time, after Cross’s dissonant violin solo, even that first bar is in 5/4.

The opening 5/4 rhythm guitar part is heard again, with Wetton and Bruford adding a tight 5/16 behind Fripp, Wetton playing the notes of a diminished triad, C-sharp, G, A-sharp, G, A-sharp three times, then ending with another C-sharp. The rest of the band comes in, with Muir hitting a piece of sheet metal. This passage is essentially a shortened version of the opening part, followed by a return to the softer passage, with one bar of 11/8 and the rest in 5/4, as I described above.

This softer passage crescendos into a climax in G-sharp, then going up a tritone to D (five bars of 4/8 and one in 5/8), then back to G with Fripp playing the tonic, fifth, and octave of G to G-sharp, G-sharp back to G, F to G, G to G-sharp, G-sharp to G, and F, then repeating the cycle (after a break with Wetton and Bruford, which I’ll describe in a moment), which is in two bars of 6/8, then one in 4/8. In between Fripp’s playing of this, we hear Wetton playing F down to G, to the rhythm of Fripp’s opening G chord of fourths; Bruford is backing Wetton on the snare and bass drums.

The whole band joins Fripp in playing the G, G-sharp, and F riff, and Cross does a scorching violin solo over this. They come back to the softer passage, but without the 11/8 bar as I said above, and Cross is ending his solo with a high glissando. The passage crescendos again to the ending, in which Fripp plays chords, in his trademark screaming style, of descending inversions in D major, with G major as a subdominant added to the resolution.

Larks’ tongues in aspic are a delicacy, a dish that is a commodity sold for the pleasure of eating, as is the teenage prostitute for the pleasure of “licking fudge,” or the talking drum, its ‘talking’ having connotations of life. Living things, metaphorical or literal, are used for consumption and for profit, for “easy money.” The use of such things is the result of desire, rāga, that one of Buddhism’s Three Poisons given symbolic expression in the fires of the sun on the album’s cover, a fire reflected also on its blue moon.

III: Starless and Bible Black

Where the dominant theme, as I see it, of Larks’ Tongues in Aspic was of the fire of desire, as captured mainly in the sun of the light of day, as seen on the album cover, as for Starless and Bible Black, the dominant theme is dveșa, aversion, hate, an idea symbolized by the darkest of night. This night is so dark that it’s starless and as black as a Bible cover. The title comes from a description of the night sky at the beginning of Dylan Thomas‘s radio drama, Under Milk Wood.

Added to this theme of endless darkness is a quote, on the back of the album cover, from Tom Phillips‘s book, A Humument: “this night wounds time.” Ironically, the cover design for S&BB is a light beige background, with only somewhat darker lettering for the title and inner sleeve. Recall in this connection that day and night, light and dark, the Good Book and black evil are all dialectical opposites, as are rāga and dveșa.

The pressures of touring and coping with the sudden departure of Muir to join a Buddhist monastery (Did he feel the danger of the Three Poisons of rāga, dveșa, and moha as already explored somewhat in LTIA?), a coping that included Bruford’s absorption of an equally extensive and creative collection of percussion instruments, King Crimson had very little in original music to record for their next studio album. They did, however, have a lot of live improvisations on tape, so these became the bulk of S&BB.

“The Great Deceiver” and “Lament” were recorded entirely in the studio. Most of “The Night Watch” was recorded in the studio, except for the opening, which was recorded live at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, where “Trio,” “Starless and Bible Black,” and “Fracture” were played and recorded (The entire Concertgebouw performance was released in 1997 as The Night Watch.

The improvisation “We’ll Let You Know” was recorded live in Glasgow. A more complete version of it, coming right after a performance of “Easy Money,” can be found on Disc 2 of The Great Deceiver box set.

“The Mincer” was originally a live improvisation recorded at the Volkhaus in Zurich. Wetton’s vocals were later overdubbed in the studio. An extended version of the improvisation, called “The Law of Maximum Distress” (parts 1 and 2, excluding “The Mincer”), was released on Disc 4 of The Great Deceiver box set. A smooth version, with both parts merged together as a repairing of the original tape problem breaking the continuity of the performance, can be heard here.

The Great Deceiver

The song begins with an energetic rock riff in A and 4/4. It’s safe to assume that Wetton arranged most of the music on the song (he even added some guitar to the track), since it’s credited with his name before Fripp’s on the back cover, instead of the usual “Fripp, Wetton, Palmer-James.”

During this beginning, we can hear Cross’s violin doubling Wetton’s bass line: we never hear the violin during live performances of the song–again, I suspect it’s because Cross was getting nervous and increasingly alienated from the other three during gigs, a problem that ultimately led to his dismissal. Elsewhere in the background, we can hear Bruford shaking maracas.

Just before Wetton sings the first verse, he plays A, G, C (twice), and G-flat on the bass in a section in 6/8. According to Fripp, “Health food faggot” is not a derogatory reference to a gay man. Palmer-James was talking about “the health food version of a meatball”; he only later realized that the word can be a homophobic slur.

The song is actually about the Devil (“Once had a friend with a cloven foot”), someone to whom we should naturally feel an aversion. The one “in a chequered suit” is a harlequin, an archetypal trickster, and another great deceiver to be avoided.

This great deceiver is a personification of capitalist consumerism, a clash between the sacred and the profane that is also expressed, when you think about it, in “Bible black” and “cigarettes, ice cream, figurines of the Virgin Mary.” The deceitful use of religion to make money is a thing so hateful that it even made Jesus angry and violent (Matthew 21:12-13). A false Christ is clearly another devil (2 Corinthians 11:3-4).

The “gin-shop slag” with the “shoe-shine boy” whom “she raised…up,” “called him son,” and “canonized the ground that he walked upon” sounds like a Satanic parody of the Madonna and Child. These lines thus tie in with the chorus line of “cigarettes, ice cream, figurines of the Virgin Mary,” this last line being, incidentally, the one time Fripp ever contributed to a King Crimson lyric. Juxtaposing “Cadillacs, blue jeans,” as well as, later, “Dixieland playing on the ferry,” and “camel hair, Brylcreem, drop a glass full of antique sherry” with Fripp’s lyric all just reinforces the theme of consumerism contaminating the would-be sacred.

Fripp’s lyric was inspired by a visit to the Vatican, where he saw souvenirs being sold, rather like Jesus’ confrontation with the money-changers at the Temple in Jerusalem. The issue is a turning of religion (“figurines of the Virgin Mary”) into yet another commodity (“cigarettes, ice cream, Cadillacs, blue jeans,” etc.). The commodification of the Virgin Mary is tantamount to transforming her into a whore (the “gin-shop slag”). In this connection, we’re also reminded of the commodification of the teen hooker in “Easy Money” (“throw a glass around the place,” and “drop a glass full of antique sherry”).

We get our first reference to the night theme in the next verse: “In the night, he’s a star in the Milky Way,” perhaps a Satanic parody of the star the Magi followed to find the baby Jesus. The star is in the Milky Way because, like Macbeth, the great deceiver would seem to be “too full o’ the milk of human kindness.” Under cover of darkness, he would seem all good; but “he’s a man of the world by the light of day,” when we can see his true colours, as god of this world (2 Corinthians 4:4).

The false, superficial charm of the great deceiver’s “golden smile and a proposition” shows us the con game of religion’s promise of happiness, blessedness, and edification through the “sweet sedition” of “the breath of God.”

“Sing hymns” and “get high” off of the opium of the people. Be fruitful and multiply, or “make love” and the great deceiver will “bring his perfume to your bed,” a perfume that “smells of sweet sedition.” Note in this connection how one of the subliminal commands in They Live was to marry and reproduce. Since They Live was also a critique of capitalism, we can see in this verse of “The Great Deceiver” a connection between blind faith in and obedience to God on the one hand, and on the other, the channeling of sexual energy into the making of yet another petite bourgeois family.

The devil of capitalist consumerism and commercialism will “charm your life ’til the cold wind blows,” that is, when the hard times come (as we’ve experienced all through the schizoid 21st century so far, and more than probably, will continue to do), and all our hopes and dreams will be sold off (as has been especially the apparent in the 2020s).

Lament

The song begins with a dreamy passage in F-sharp major, with Fripp playing rootless chords with a major 7th, a flat 7th, a major 6th, and back to the flat and major 7ths. After hearing these chords repeated with Wetton’s singing of the lyric’s first two lines, the same progression goes up to G-sharp major, which is heard for the next two lines of the lyric, then the same in A major, then in B major, then back to A major, then to the dominant, and back to F-sharp major and a repeat of the whole ascending cycle.

The rest of the song is essentially variations on this harmonic progression, starting with a passage in 6/4, with Wetton playing some slapping bass, and Bruford hitting percussion instruments, such as temple blocks and cowbells; then the music gets loud and hard.

Lyrically, Wetton is singing about the dreams of a teen who is learning to play the guitar, fantasizing about becoming a big rock star. Hence, the dreamy quality of the music, with the added Mellotron (strings tapes) and the saccharine violin lines (sometimes also played on the bass and guitar, too). The harmonic ascent from F-sharp major to G-sharp major, then to A and B as discussed above, reinforces the sense of a kid’s fantasy of rising in status to stardom.

Next, as I said, is the 6/4 passage with the slapping bass and the percussion. Fripp is playing a variation on the chord sequence, with pull-offs as a variation on the up-and-down movements from major 7th to flat 7th to major 6th and back. This section suggests the passage of time, from the kid’s adolescence to his young adulthood. Fripp ends the section with the gentle strum of a B major chord, then after two pull-offs, he hits a loud E 7th chord.

Now the music gets loud and heavy, suggesting that reality has punched the young man hard in the face. No, he won’t be a great rock star: he’ll be struggling, starving, and poor. Now, the ascending chord progression, in all irony, no longer represents the dream of rising to stardom, but rather the reality of escalating financial difficulties. One would naturally feel a great aversion to, a hatred of (dveșa) such a situation.

The young, would-be rock-and-roller is on the phone, asking the man on the other end to lend him some money. The loan will come with interest of ten percent, “maybe thirty, even thirty-five.” To gain sympathy and perhaps clemency from the loan shark, the kid is willing to lie about his (actually dead) father having a stroke.

The next instrumental section has Bruford playing a drum rhythm to go with Wetton’s bass part, which is a faster variation of the slapping part from before. Fripp and Cross (the latter on Hohner pianet with distortion) are playing descending and ascending chromatic octaves, going from F (leading tone) down to B (perfect fourth), then back up to and passing the F to an F-sharp (tonic), then back down to the B again. These chromatic ups and downs (representative of the kid’s fortunes) go through the typical paralleled harmonic ascension as already described.

The final verse is a reflection of the young man and a bandmate on how they tried and failed to make it in the music business: “I took my chance and you took yours; you crewed my ship, we missed the tide.” Now all they have left to comfort themselves is listening to other bands make music, and to discuss how good those bands are.

The song ends with a 7/8 riff with Fripp, Wetton, and Cross (again, on Hohner pianet with distortion) playing F-sharp, C, E, and F-sharp (an octave higher) four times, then transposing that melodic line up by a whole tone, also to be played four times, then all up again by a whole tone, played four times again.

We’ll Let You Know

As I said above, this improv was played live at a gig in Glasgow (at the Apollo Theatre), and it begins after a performance of “Easy Money.” Because “Easy Money” ends in A major, that’s the key this improvisation will be in, and since that song ended with Cross on the violin, he begins with it still in his hands, though the few notes he bows (which include a few half-hearted C-sharps and D-sharps) seem to indicate the absence of his Muse for the moment, so he puts his violin down and goes over to the Hohner pianet. Fripp hits pairs of A harmonics, as if he were tuning his guitar.

The music really starts to liven up when Wetton does some slapping bass. Bruford is hitting some syncopations on the drums and percussion (temple blocks, cowbells, gongs), contributing to what must have been a Crimson first–toying with funk.

Indeed, when Bruford lays down a beat on the drums, he and Wetton are leading the show, with Fripp bending a lot of high blue notes and, sadly, Cross drifting into the background, with his electric piano being mostly drowned out by the other three. One senses that he is feeling an aversion to his growing alienation from the other three here.

You see, Cross was originally important as a textural element in the band, especially as contrasted with Muir’s percussion and random noisemakers on the other side. But after Muir’s departure, Cross seemed to have lost his original context in the band (On pages two and three of the booklet that came with The Great Deceiver box set, Fripp observed these realities, too.). Accordingly, Cross grew frustrated with his growing marginalization in a Crimson that was getting louder and heavier.

None of this is to say, however, that his contributions no longer mattered. Even in this improv, Cross–at one point in the middle of it, as the other three are really starting to take off–hits a bluesy perfect-to-augmented fourth (D to D-sharp) high on the Hohner pianet, right at a fortuitously-timed moment when the other three leave a brief, silent gap for him. Wait for my discussion of “Trio,” when Cross really shines on the violin.

The funkiness soon winds down after some fast drumming on the snare, and the music plods about awkwardly for a moment, then in the recording studio afterwards, they decided, in all eccentricity, to cut the tape and end the recording when Wetton hits an A-sharp on his wah-wah bass.

The Night Watch

As I said above, the opening of this song is from a live performance of it at the Concertgebouw, but the band’s Mellotron broke down during the performance, so from the point of Wetton’s beginning to sing, the rest of the song was recorded in the studio.

Lyrically, the song is about Rembrandt‘s painting, Militia Company of District II under the Command of Captain Frans Bannick Cocq, but popularly called The Night Watch (in Dutch, De Nachtwacht), from 1642. Actually, though, this latter title is a misnomer, since the painting does not depict a nocturnal scene. For much of its existence, the painting was coated with a dark varnish, giving the mistaken impression that it’s showing a night scene. This mistaken impression is reflected in Palmer-James’s lyric in such lines as “That golden light, all grimy now,” and “upon the canvas, dark with age.”

Now, such is the historical, physical explanation of the darkness of the painting and its popular name. As far as the lyric’s musing over the picture and its meaning in a literary sense, though, we’re free to interpret it as we wish.

The common name of the painting and its darkness tie in with the night theme of the album. Just as the great deceiver is a star in the night, but a man of the world in the light of day, so is the night watch really “a squad of troopers standing fast” by the light of day. And just as “The Great Deceiver” dealt with Catholic capitalist consumerism, so does “The Night Watch” deal with Calvinist capitalist consumerism.

The “Spanish wars” referred to in the song were the Eighty Years’ War between the Dutch Republic and the Spanish Empire, which went on from the mid-to-late 1560s to 1648. The causes of the war were, among other things, the Reformation and excessive taxation. The reaction against Catholicism was the Dutch Reformed Church, which was Calvinist.

One important aspect of Calvinism is how the Protestant work ethic contributed to the growth of modern capitalism, in that Calvinists believed that their material success was proof of God’s grace and their inclusion among the Elect, or their assurance of salvation in the context of predestination.

So, when Wetton begins by singing “Shine, shine, the light of good works shine” (Matthew 5:14-16), Palmer-James is alluding to this Calvinist notion of doing the good works of the Protestant ethic, which result in the kind of prosperity described in Max Weber‘s book. These Dutch Calvinists were early capitalists, these “creditors and councillors…the merchant men.”

These “merchant men” in turn can be linked, at least in part, to the Dutch East India Company, who were one of the very first multinational corporations, and were also responsible for almost absolute monopoly, colonialism, exploitation, violence, environmental destruction (including deforestation), excessive bureaucracy, and slavery.

It’s interesting how the notion of a militia guarding a district of a Dutch city masks the colonialism and exploitation of, surely, at least some of these “merchant men,” when it’s actually the homes of the indigenous people being colonized and exploited that could have used a militia of their own to protect them from the Dutch colonizers. Imperialists and colonialists often rationalize their aggression against other peoples by claiming they’re acting only in self-defence and the betterment of their own people.

The watch may have been “depicted in their prime,” that is, as a reflection of what seemed the auspicious beginnings of Protestant capitalism, as a breath of comparatively fresh air, in contrast to the previous tyranny of feudal Catholicism; but “that golden light” that did “shine [as] the light of good works” is “all grimy now.” Historically, the painting became dark from the varnish, but we’ll give Palmer-James poetic licence in calling “the canvas dark with age,” since over time, the improvement of capitalism over feudalism would grow empty from being just another form of class conflict and oppression.

Palmer-James’s lyric gives us the painting from three perspectives: those of the subjects of the picture, of Rembrandt, and of a modern viewer of the painting, this last being the most relatable to us listeners of the song, and thus the perspective I’m by far most interested in using to give an interpretation of the picture’s, and lyric’s, meaning.

Of course, these ascending upper middle-class Dutch, representative of any bourgeoisie anywhere in the world–including, for example, the US after declaring independence from British rule, or contemporary China after shaking off the yoke of Western imperialism–are all preoccupied with “Dutch respectability.” The newly-gained wealth of these bourgeois allows them to pay for such luxuries as “guitar lessons for the wife.”

The bourgeoisie are always concerned with their social status–music lessons, foreign language lessons, etc.–to make them appear ‘cultured’…all the while enabling the kinds of colonialist, imperialist savagery that goes on overseas. ‘The blunderbuss and halberd-shaft” represent these forms of aggression that are masked by a pretense of protecting one’s own town against perceived threats from outside.

After all the Spanish wars, these Dutch bourgeoisie can now sit back, relax, and reflect on their accomplishments, enjoying “quiet reigns behind [their] doors.” To translate this experience into that of our modern world, such quiet contemplation is the privilege of the rich First World’s relaxation, as opposed to the ongoing toil, poverty, and misery of the Third World that the colonialists and imperialists cause to this day.

Still, religion can be used as a mask to hide this exploitation and abuse, like the Calvinism of the 17th century Dutch, who pretended to embody good Christian virtues. “So the pride of little men, the burghers good and true,” is a case of golden light darkened with age, the age of the consequences of all that colonialism and imperialism. One should think of this in connection with what Wetton would later sing: “gold through my eyes, but my eyes, turned within, only see–starless and Bible black.”

Trio

This live improvisation, from the Concertgebouw show, was made up of Cross, Wetton, and Fripp on Mellotron (flute tapes), while Bruford sat with his drumsticks across his chest, waiting for an appropriate moment to join in, but feeling that such a moment never came. Even though Bruford added not a single note or beat to the other three’s performance, he was given a writing credit all the same, since his silence showed “admirable restraint,” as stated in the liner notes to the compilation, A Young Person’s Guide to King Crimson.

They’re playing in C major, so Fripp, finding the keyboards to be a secondary instrument to his guitar, need only worry about playing the white keys. Nonetheless, the playing of all three is transcendently beautiful–not one note is superfluous or misplaced. This is a music of great serenity and spiritual bliss. Apart from its referring to the three players, “Trio” could represent the spirituality associated with the Trinity.

Now, no grasp of dveșa–aversion, hate–is possible without a grasp of its dialectical opposite, rāga–desire, which here could be heard as, for example, Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring. Still, as discussed in “The Great Deceiver” and “The Night Watch,” this Bible is a black Bible.

The Mincer

Because, as I said above, this track was part of a much longer live improvisation recorded in the Volkshaus in Zurich and later named “The Law of Maximum Distress,” it fades in here with an eerie atmosphere brought about by a high ascending glissando on Cross’s violin, Bruford’s tapping of the tom-toms, and Fripp’s dissonant Mellotron (strings tapes). Cross then puts down the violin and goes over to the Hohner pianet, which he plays through distortion.

Wetton’s bass anchors the improvising with a line of A, A pull-off to G, C-sharp, D, E, and variations on that. The spooky, dissonant music of Cross’s electric piano and Fripp’s Mellotron (the latter soon switching to guitar) is heard over those bass variations and those of Bruford’s rhythms of rim-shots, hi-hat, and bass drum, for several minutes before we hear Wetton’s vocal overdubs.

Wetton seems to be singing about a home invader or killer, like someone out of a slasher film. In other words, the mincer (one who cuts into tiny pieces) is someone to whom we can only feel the greatest aversion. One ought to be reminded that the Devil, or great deceiver, was “a murderer from the beginning” (John 8:44).

The night motif returns with the ironic “good night, honey.” Killers like this one often “come better looking” than he is (that is, they’re often deceptively charming), but the mincer is as insane as they get. The abrupt cutting-off of the tape just makes it all the more frightening.

Starless and Bible Black

Rather than hearing them in this live improvisation from the Concertgebouw, the words of the title are heard in the song “Starless,” from Red (see below). One could find some thematic links here between both tracks: a starless night, the “Bible black” of religion corrupted by bourgeois consumerism (in its Catholic and Protestant forms) and colonialism, as we already explored in “The Great Deceiver” and “The Night Watch,” and finally, the ending of friendships.

This ending of friendships is a move from love to hate (dveșa), and the rāga, attachment to one’s friends leads to an aversion to the breaking-up with them. Nonetheless, impermanence is a reality in the world, as well as a central tenet in Buddhism. The delusion (moha) that all we see and hear around us has a permanent reality, which leads to rāga and dveșa, will be the dominant theme of Red.

For King Crimson, the impermanence of the band and the ending of friendships among the bandmates was already being keenly felt, as Cross was withdrawing from the other three and, as I said above, feeling more and more frustration over his contributions to the music being drowned out by the others’ loudness. For Fripp, sensing the immanent collapse of this band must have been a disconcerting reminder of the ongoing instability of 1970 to 1972.

As these improvs generally do, this one begins softly and slowly, building to a climax. We hear Fripp’s sustained guitar leads, Cross on the Hohner pianet, Bruford playing a glockenspiel, and Wetton’s bass lines centering on the tonic.

Soon, Cross’s pianet will be played through distortion, Bruford will be shaking a tambourine, Fripp will be getting feedback from his guitar, and Wetton will be doing a slapping bass line of G hammering on to A. Then Cross will switch to playing dissonant Mellotron lines (string tapes), and Bruford will be hitting temple blocks and cowbells. The music sustains this eeriness, an eeriness we’ll later hear in 13/8 in this track’s sequel song, “Starless.” Losing everything, including the loss of friends, is scary.

Bruford will soon switch to the drum kit and improvise some great licks. Wetton is playing variations on a line that anchors the music around him: G, hammer-on to A, C, E, and back to G and A. Fripp is bending high blue notes through distorted guitar.

After the climax, the music softens a bit, and Cross switches the Mellotron from the strings setting to flute tapes. He plays some dense chords, including a stack of fourths at one point.

Finally, he picks up the violin and has a moment where, for a change, he’s the centre of attention. His violin licks ending off the track seem like an omen for his departure from the band later in the year of S&BB‘s release. He’ll have a similar moment to shine on “Providence,” but on “Starless,” a song he’s credited with cowriting and one he played live with King Crimson, he won’t be heard on the studio version.

Fracture

Like “Larks’ Tongues in Aspic, Part Two” and the title track from Red (see below), “Fracture” is a guitar-based instrumental credited only to Fripp. It is called “Fracture” because, according to Fripp, it is a kind of étude, a study meant to help a musician to tackle a certain technical challenge, which is immediately apparent about three minutes into the piece, a moto perpetuo section that goes on uninterrupted for about another three minutes and ten seconds.

Fracture is like the break between the possible and the impossible, between joy and torture, and between what is challenging and what is despairingly frustrating. A guitarist named Anthony Garone, from the Make Weird Music channel on YouTube, took up the challenge to learn this “impossible” guitar part, and wrote of the difficulty of playing it in his book, Failure to Fracture. Few guitarists would have the guts to take on the challenge of playing the moto perpetuo section: most would feel only an aversion to the formidable task.

Fripp’s guitar technique is particular to him, with cross-picking as his specialty, a playing style associated with banjo playing in bluegrass. His playing is also influenced far more by avant-garde jazz and European classical music than by blues-based rock. The middle section of “Fracture” is far from the only piece that showcases Fripp’s playing in moto perpetuo. When we think of guitar virtuosi in rock, we usually think of shredders like Steve Vai or Yngwie Malmsteen, who play lightning-speed ‘sprints,’ as it were. Fripp, while not playing quite as fast, instead is more like a ‘marathon’ runner, continuing to play fast for a long time, as he does not only on “Fracture,” but also during the dissonant arpeggio sections in “Larks’ Tongues” one (as described above) and three (on Three of a Perfect Pair), and on “Frame by Frame” (on Discipline). Vai has an apt word to describe Fripp’s technical virtuosity: “relentlessness.”

Melodically and harmonically, “Fracture” is based on the whole-tone scale, with some quasi-Lydian mode variations (i.e., the sharpened fourth and perfect fifth of the mode). It begins with a fade-in of Fripp playing arpeggios from whole-tone scale notes. The recording is from a live performance at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam.

In spite of the tonal ambiguity of the whole-tone scale, the music has essentially an A major, or A augmented, tonal centre. After the arpeggiated fade-in described above, we come to the main theme, in which the rest of the band comes in, with Cross playing a viola, often using a wah-wah pedal. We hear a theme of A, F-G-B and back to A to be repeated, then the theme is transposed to C-sharp, A-B-D-sharp-C-sharp, then transposed to G, C-sharp-D-sharp-A-G, then it returns to the A-to-A contour.

All of this music, from the opening arpeggios to the augmented-triad-based melodic contours described in the previous paragraph, is heard a second time, then we come to the moto perpetuo section. Those rapid-fire sixteenth notes are about ten per second, by Fripp’s estimation. He never takes a break from them, not even once, for a little over three minutes! It’s one of the hardest passages he ever wrote for himself to play; it pushes his abilities to the limit.

Most of the passage is in 4/4, though some of it is in 5/4, during which you can hear Bruford adding glockenspiel and xylophone. There’s another part of the passage with a bar of 6/4, then of 5/4, then of 7/4, which features viola lines from Cross.

Then it returns to the main riff of the A to A, C-sharp to C-sharp, and G to G contours as I described them above. Then there’s a soft lull in the music before the loud climax.

One interesting section of the climax is when Wetton and Bruford are playing a polymetre against Fripp and Cross. The former pair are playing alternating bars in 7/4 and 8/4 to the latter pair’s three-bar sets of 5/4, all adding up to a fifteen-beat cycle. After that, all four members are playing in 5/4 after a couple of bars in 4/4.

The building climax ends with Bruford banging a gong and some feedback from Fripp’s guitar.

IV: Red

Now, the band has become a ‘trio’ (with a number of guest musicians, at least one on each of the five tracks, if you include Cross’s violin on “Providence” as ‘session work,’ that is), judging by the front cover photo of the album, with Wetton smiling, Bruford seemingly daydreaming, and Fripp looking intensely serious behind his spectacles.

This album, with the photo on the back cover showing one of the meters on the studio’s mixing desk going over to the red, indicating distortion, was a move in an even heavier direction. Indeed, the British music magazine Q rated Red as one of the fifty “heaviest albums of all time.” Kurt Cobain of Nirvana considered the album to be a major influence on him.

The choice of session musicians on Red seems like an omen for King Crimson’s imminent demise, for having not only former members like Ian McDonald (alto sax) and Mel Collins (soprano sax), but also Robin Miller (oboe) and Mark Charig (cornet)–these latter two having been session musicians on Lizard and Islands–suggests that Red was meant to sum up everything that King Crimson had been up to that point.

The red that indicates distortion can also symbolize the idea of distortion of perceptions of reality, or delusion, illusion–moha, the dominant theme of this album, as I’ll soon demonstrate through my interpretation of the lyrics of the three tracks with vocals on the album: “Fallen Angel,” “One More Red Nightmare,” and “Starless.” There’s a sense in all three songs that things aren’t what they seem to be.

But first, let’s look at the title track.

Red

The album has been called the first prog metal album (though perhaps Rush‘s Fly by Night is another early contender for that title), and such a judgement seems justified already from hearing the beginning of this instrumental, another guitar-based one written by Fripp. Apart from the heaviness with which it explodes, we also have two bars of 5/8, one of 6/8, and one of 4/4. These time changes are repeated twice before going into the main 4/4 riff in E.

During this opening, Fripp plays ascending leads that go from being octatonic-scale-oriented to resolving in C, then to E (the first and third times), and resolving in D major (the second time). While the first resolution to E has Fripp’s lead going up to a perfect fifth (B), the second resolution to E has his lead going up to the E’s tritone (B-flat).

The main riff in E has Fripp playing a yo-yoing pair of barred major thirds on the third and first frets of the G and B strings on his guitar, so A-sharp and D, then G-sharp and C. The barre then goes up to the fourth fret (B and D-sharp), then down to the third and first fret barres as already described, then the riff is resolved to E.

This riff is played twice, then transposed up a step, or up two frets, to F-sharp, then back down to E. Then the riff is transposed up three frets to G, played twice, and back down to E again.

Next comes a passage in 7/8, with Wetton anchoring the tonality in B-flat, a tritone from Fripp’s playing of parallel major thirds of E and G-sharp, and E-flat and G. This resolves to E major in 4/4, with Wetton playing some high notes in G-sharp and A, then E-flat and E. These 7/8 and 4/4 parts are repeated.

Next, they’re playing in B, with Fripp playing partially open-string chords, first with a suspension fourth, then one with just roots and fifths. Then they go up to D, and Wetton’s bass goes down to C, and they return to the main riff in E, which is a shortened version of what was heard before (i.e., without the transposition to G).

After a repeat of the alternating 7/8 and 4/4 section I described above, there’s a return to the key of B, but instead of going up to D, this time they go down to A, then to F-sharp and E.

There’s a new passage in 7/8 time, which rises in a crescendo to the middle section, an eerie one starting in G-sharp Dorian with a theme played by an uncredited cellist. It modulates back to E, then to B. This theme is repeated with minor variations, then the music goes back to the main riff in E.

We go through another sequence with the main riff, then the instrumental ends with the octatonic-oriented, ascending leads in 5/8, 6/8, and 4/4 that the piece began with. That pounding rhythm section of Wetton and Bruford drove Fripp to play as loudly so he could keep up with the two of them. Playing an instrument stereotypically associated with ‘nerds,’ Cross unfortunately couldn’t keep up with the other three’s ‘metal’ intensity. As a heavy trio now, King Crimson had nothing holding them back on Red.

Fallen Angel

The song begins in E minor with, alongside a lead from Fripp, that uncredited cellist. Then it goes to the relative major with Wetton singing over a progression of G major, C major, B minor, E minor, C major, B minor, and A minor. Fripp is doing overdubs of electric guitar leads and acoustic guitar arpeggios. Miller’s oboe will also be heard, as well as some Mellotron string tapes in the background.

Wetton sings of a young man’s love for his little brother, such a sweet, innocent little boy from his birth. Years later, the boy will join his big brother in a street gang in New York City. He’ll be killed in a fight with another gang, stabbed with a switchblade. The older brother wishes it was he who died instead.

He imagines his dead younger brother as a “fallen angel”…but if he was an angel, how did he allow himself to be involved in “knife fights and danger”? Surely, this brotherly love is blinding him from the reality that his kid brother wasn’t as sweet and innocent as he thinks him to be.

The boy fell to the ground, dead, but he also fell as Satan and the other rebel angels fell from heaven. The boy’s involvement in gang violence was a fall from grace, a case of the impermanence of innocence. So in the song’s narrative, we have the moha, illusion, of innocence and its apparent permanence masking the reality of guilt and impermanence. Fraternal love is a red distortion of the reality of the younger brother’s participation in crime and gang violence.

Now, why is there this crime and gang violence, causing one to “risk a life to make a dime”? The usual culprit–poverty, caused in turn by the mode of production that allowed for the ascendance of the “burghers good and true” sung of in “The Night Watch,” among others. Some get rich while many others get poor: “lifetimes spent on the streets of a city make us the people we are.”

All it takes is “one tenth of a moment” for the stab of a knife to change one from living to dead–such is the fragility of life’s impermanence. A protective young man would wish to tell his younger brother to “get back to the car” and avoid getting killed in a fight with switchblades.

The mellow music turns heavy, and with a switch from 4/4 to 6/4. Fripp starts playing distorted arpeggios in B minor. This switch from mainly acoustic guitar to distorted electric guitar, from mellow to heavy, musically represents the switch from a brother’s sentimental love, and its illusory idealizing of his “angel” kid brother, to the forced realization that this “angel” has fallen, from life and from grace. We also hear Charig doing a solo on the cornet.

The “West-side skyline crying” verse is mostly repeated, again a change from soft and acoustic to loud and electric, musically reflecting this switch from sweet illusion to harsh reality. A brother dying from a knife fight on the West Side implies the blue-collar neighbourhood of West Side Story, in which Bernardo, Maria’s brother and leader of the Puerto Rican gang, the Sharks, is stabbed by Tony in revenge for Bernardo’s stabbing of Riff. It’s doubtful, to say the least, that Wetton’s singing is meant to represent the voice of Anita, Bernardo’s kid sister, of course, but I don’t mean “Fallen Angel” to be a retelling of the fight-scene from the musical; rather, “West Side” is an allusion to it, to evoke similar feelings and a similar atmosphere.

“The snow white side streets” are “stained with his blood,” a stark contrast of the angelic purity of white with the violence of red. My West Side Story allusion above is to indicate that the Bernardo-like stab victim only seems an angel to his loving family, whereas his own violence shows him to be far from angelic. Rather, he was “wicked and wild.”

Growing up in poverty explains the gangs’ violence to each other, but it doesn’t justify it. Their anger should be directed at the ruling class instead. Then they’d be true angels…avenging angels, but true ones nonetheless. The song ends with that 6/4 part with Fripp’s distorted arpeggios and more cornet soloing from Charig.

One More Red Nightmare

The song begins with a dark riff in E and in 7/4 alternating with a pair of bars in 4/4, with notes of E, G-sharp, and A-sharp played three times, then a chord of tritones in E and A-sharp. This is all transposed up a tritone, then returns to E. Then it’s all transposed back up the tritone to A-sharp, then up another step to C, and we have the first verse. That melodic contour will also be heard with thirds in the guitar.

This is the one time a 1970s King Crimson song lyric was ever written by John Wetton, rather than by a lyricist from outside the musicians of the band. Instead of singing about an illusion of goodness masking evil, we have the reverse here: he’s dreaming of being on an airplane about to crash and kill everybody, but he wakes and realizes he’s on a Greyhound bus, perfectly safe. Moha goes both ways, with this “red nightmare” another distortion of reality.

The progression for the verses is C minor, G-sharp major, F-major, and back to C. As for that tritone-oriented riff in alternating 7/4 and 4/4 as I described above, Bruford doesn’t some great licks there. There’s one percussion instrument he uses on the album, and it’s featured on this track. I’d always assumed it was a piece of sheet metal, as was used by Muir from time to time on LTIA. Apparently, what it really was was a damaged cymbal left in the trash in the recording studio; Bruford took pity on it and fell in love with its “trashy sound.”

After the first two verses and refrain of Wetton singing the title of the song, it shifts to an E-minor section in 6/4. Fripp is playing arpeggios, and he’s overdubbed some guitar lines with the wah-wah pedal. Ian McDonald begins the first of two alto sax solos for this song, starting the first one off with a long trill of E and D.

Moha–or ignorance, delusion, illusion, confusion–comes from a failure to accept that impermanence is the only constant in the universe. One hopes that the good times will last forever, hence, rāga, or greed, desire, lust. One can’t imagine, on the other side of the coin, that the bad times will eventually be over, that ‘this too shall pass,’ hence, dveșa, or hate, aversion, hostility. So in the singer’s illusory dream, he thinks he’ll really die on the plane.

But then, “reality stirred [him]” and “the dream was now broken.” The song ends with a repeat of the 6/4 section and another alto sax solo by McDonald.

Providence

This live improv got its name simply from having been performed in Providence, Rhode Island, of course (a longer version can be heard on The Great Deceiver box set), but I’m intrigued with the connotations of the name of the city and improv, especially as juxtaposed with the spooky mood of the music played.

One of the oldest cities in New England, Providence was founded in 1636 by Roger Williams, a Reformed Baptist theologian, naming the area in honour of “God’s merciful Providence,” which he believed gave him and his followers a haven after having been exiled from the Massachusetts Bay Colony. This religious feeling ties in thematically with songs like “The Great Deceiver,” “Trio,” and “The Night Watch,” as I interpreted above. Protestant colonial settlement is linked with beginnings of capitalism, and the benefits gained therefrom are most impermanent.

“God’s merciful Providence” is surely a case of moha, or ignorant delusion, when one considers how selectively said-Providence is meted out. Those in the middle classes and upward, especially those in the First World, are provided for well enough in most cases; in the lower classes, and especially in the Third World, though, one isn’t provided for all that well, to put it mildly.

Thus the juxtaposition of the track’s title with its outright horror-movie-like music is most apt. The improv begins with Cross’s violin improvising sadly, and all alone. He wavers in and out of tonality, Wetton’s distorted bass is heard emerging from the background, Fripp plucks a note on his guitar, and Bruford hits a gong. The band seems to be finding its footing.

Fripp goes over to his Mellotron and uses the flute tapes to accompany Cross’s increasingly dissonant playing. Wetton’s distorted, feedback-swelling bass is adding to the tension, as is Bruford’s gong.

This music is such a demonic contrast to the symbolically Trinitarian serenity we heard in “Trio,” I’d say, dialectically so, for that serenity was a moha mask to cover the frightening reality of a world decidedly lacking in “God’s merciful Providence.”

As the horror builds, Bruford plays around with more percussion instruments, including the temple blocks and a xylophone. Eventually, Fripp leaves the Mellotron and goes back to his guitar.

The music starts to pick up the pace when Bruford gets behind the drum kit. The music reprises its heavy, Red nature, but not in the conventional, guitar-driven sense, for it’s Wetton’s aggressive bass and Bruford’s pounding on the drums–that “flying brick wall,” as Fripp described them–and not so much Fripp’s playing, that’s providing the heaviness.

After that heaviness reaches a climax, the music settles down a bit, and Cross resumes his dissonant violin playing, while Fripp can be heard in the background playing a rhythm part with his wah-wah pedal. Once the music has reached eight minutes, it is faded out, the last thing we hear being a repeated three-note phrase of descending violin notes.

Starless

This epic twelve-minute song sees the old King Crimson ending in a blaze of glory. It begins soft and sad and with vocals, is eerie and dark in the middle and building into an explosive climax, then fast and frenzied, and it ends with a loud, powerful but instrumental restating of the original, sad themes.

Since the band would soon break up after the completion of this album, the lyric’s subject matter, about the ending of a friendship, is most apt. Wetton wrote the sad opening, which had different lyrics and/or verses in a different order. The band originally didn’t like what Wetton had written, but after adding the later instrumental section, they played the whole song with Cross during their 1974 tour.

The song, in its embryonic, Wetton-composed form, was originally going to be called “Starless and Bible Black” and to be the title track of the previous album; but since the others didn’t like it at the time, disappointed Wetton shelved the song, and when in its completed form, the song was to be included on Red, its title was shortened to “Starless.”

It opens with sad Mellotron lines in sixths and backed with soft bass and drums. The bass is playing a D at first, and the harmonic progression is a D augmented chord and a D7, without the major third as a leading tone. It resolves to G minor, with a lead then played by Fripp–originally played by Cross on the violin, with a few changes of notes–over a progression of C minor, D minor, and G minor.

This is all repeated (the guitar line up an octave), then we go into the first verse. Mel Collins’s soprano sax can be heard improvising in the background.

As the sun is setting, Wetton sings of a “dazzling day,” with “gold through [his] eyes.” This beauty is an illusion, though, symbolizing the illusion of a permanent friendship; for when his eyes are “turned within,” they “only see” the friendless reality of a darkness so absolute, it’s “starless and Bible black.”

The love of that friendship would seem to be the kind of love preached in the Bible (e.g., in 1 Corinthians, chapter 13), but this is a love that does not bear or endure all things. This love does fail. It does not remain with faith and hope. It is of a black Bible. The original lyric had “gold through my eyes” changing to “steel grey,” but emotively speaking, it has about the same effect: a change from a pleasant illusion to a harsh reality.

At the word “black,” the progression goes from D to C, then to B-flat major, A minor, and to G minor. The second verse establishes the idea of a friendship going sour. The “charity” of the “old friend” may remind us, with bitter irony, of the three things that are supposed to abide forever, according to the King James translation: faith, hope, and charity. The “cruel, twisted smile” tells the singer that that ‘everlasting friendship’ “signals emptiness for [him].”

In the third verse, we hear that uncredited cellist in the background, playing a lamenting line as Wetton sings of a “silver sky” that “fades into grey,” which is “a grey hope that all yearns to be […] black.” In this line, we observe how a flawed friendship worsens until one actually wishes for hope to change into black despair, since continued hope is only sure to disappoint.

The rest of the song is instrumental, and with no disrespect intended to Wetton, by far the best part of the song. Wetton plays a dark bass line in 13/8: C, G-flat, G-natural, these three notes again, E-flat, and the cycle repeats. Fripp, as if taunting his fans with, “No, art-rock nerds, I’m not going to display my guitar virtuosity for you. Suck it up!” plays his ‘one-note solo’ here, starting on G.

Then, Wetton’s bass line changes to F, down to A, and up chromatically from there to B-flat, B-natural, and C, and to G-sharp (with Fripp playing a G-flat) and back to F to repeat the cycle. Then it will return to the cycle starting on C as described above (with Fripp playing G-natural). Finally, we’ll come up to G, and 13/8 will change to 4/4 for a brief while, then we’ll return to 13/8 and the bass line starting on C, to repeat all of this again and again.

This section will build to, as I described above, an explosive climax, with Wetton’s bass growing louder and heavier, Bruford adding percussion (including the clicking of temple blocks in a 4/4 cross-rhythm), and Fripp switching his “one-note solo” up to A, then A-sharp, B (by which time Bruford is playing an assertive beat on the drums), C, and finally D, which brings us to that climax, with Fripp leading us there by playing D-sharp, F, F-sharp, and G.

While he is bending high Gs and G-flats, Bruford is about to do some wild smashing about, and Wetton’s bass is at its ballsiest. In The New Rolling Stone Record Guide (published in 1983), the reviewer of Red says, “Bruford punctuates magificently.” These words perfectly describe his powerful bashing during this section, as well as his playing on “One More Red Nightmare.”

After this climactic section–which ends in a 4/4 swing time, with low, distorted G notes and Fripp playing squealing high notes–the 13/8 bass contour returns at double the speed, making the band race in 13/16 time. McDonald does a frantic alto sax solo, with the background music’s tonal centres going from C minor (tonic) to F minor (subdominant), back to the C tonic, then to G (dominant), thus sounding like King Crimson’s perverse parody of 12-bar blues again, something I discussed in my analyses of the band’s first two albums.

McDonald had expressed regret over leaving King Crimson with original drummer Michael Giles back in 1970, and was about to rejoin the band. His superb soloing here shows that had the band survived and done a tour to promote Red, he would have held his own just fine with Fripp, Wetton, and Bruford, and the new quartet would have been a formidable Crimson.

In between this and the next 13/16 section is a brief replaying of the melody sung by Wetton, but with Collins’s soprano sax and Miller’s oboe. In the background, Wetton is playing Cs on his bass, and Bruford is doing some fast tapping of the hi-hat. After Collins’s playing of the “starless and Bible black” melody, we go back to the frantic 13/16 part, but instead of hearing McDonald’s alto sax again, we hear Fripp playing screaming variations of his former high string bending of Gs and G-flats.

The song ends with a return to the opening theme, heard then as a guitar lead (or live, as a violin theme), but now played by Collins and Miller (live, it would have been a guitar lead). Instead of being soft and sad, though, it’s loud, heavy, and powerful, with our trio pounding away in D, then ending in G minor, with a high ninth from the soprano sax and oboe.

V: Conclusion

As I said above, a quartet of Fripp, McDonald, Wetton, and Bruford would have been an amazing band, but it wasn’t meant to be. Fripp abruptly broke up King Crimson, having gone through some kind of emotional crisis and wanting to take a year off (the capitalist consumerism of the record company’s wish for the band to produce hit singles must have added to the pressure of a musician who didn’t want to have to sacrifice his artistic integrity to the tyranny of profits). Parallel to Muir’s joining a Buddhist monastery, Fripp was yearning for some kind of spiritual enlightenment, and he believed he’d found it in the teachings of G.I. Gurdjieff through John G. Bennett.

Now, Gurdjieff’s “Fourth Way” is not Buddhism, of course, but one can glean the influence of Buddhism and Hinduism in it. In any case, one can see how in Gurdjieff’s ideas, our living in a hypnotic “waking sleep” and needing to “wake up” can be likened to what I said about about moha, illusion. Through Gurdjieff’s notion of “intentional suffering,” one can free oneself of desire (rāga) and overcome one’s aversion (dveșa) to all that one finds unpleasant.

Seen from this angle, Fripp’s and Muir’s departure from King Crimson shows how LTIA, S&BB, and Red all thematically demonstrate Buddhism’s Three Poisons. Fripp and Muir tasted the toxins, got sick from them, and had to leave in an attempt to cure themselves.

The Tanah–Beginnings, Chapter Six

[The following is the seventh of many posts–here is the first, here is the second, here is the third, here is the fourth, here is the fifth, and here is the sixth–about a fictitious discovery of ancient manuscripts of a religious text of narratives and magic spells. Its purpose for my readers and me is to provide a cosmology and mythography on which I am basing much, if not most, of my fiction–short stories and novels. If anyone is interested in reading this fiction, he or she can use these blog posts as references to explain the nature of the magic and universe in my fiction.]

Medias, having devised the Ten Errors, was the first to comment on their meaning. These were his interpretations:

Mad Thinking is any kind of thinking that denies the fundamental unity of all things. By seeing only one side, we are blind to the other, and thus we sever things in half, denying unity. Seeing only one side of things leads to extremes, and extremes must be avoided. Mad thinking leads to, and is strengthened by, the next error.

Being dazed by images means being lulled or enticed by anything pleasing to the eyes, so much as that one ignores what is ugly or unpleasant and becomes attached to what is beautiful or pleasing. This, again, denies the middling unity of all things, divides everything into halves–pleasant and unpleasant–and fixating on the pleasant leads to hateful extremes. Impatience with the unpleasant leads to, and is strengthened by, the next error.

Scurrilous language is the use of words to be violent and hurtful to others. Communication’s unity ranges from this hateful extreme to its opposite–flattery. Moderate speech–praising and kind words when one deserves to hear them, and angry or critical ones when they are controlled–maintains unity. The scurrilous language of angry clients often leads to (as does that of angry employers) the next error.

All work and no rest is self-evidently extreme, denying the unity of all behaviour between this vice and its opposite, idleness. The need to work is a given reality; therefore, the need to avoid excessive work must be understood. The strain of too much work often leads to the next vice.

Family fighting denies the unity of proper family communication, whose unity ranges from this hateful extreme to its opposite, blind compliance. The differing individualism of people inevitably leads to family disagreements, but they must be settled in mutually satisfactory ways to maintain unity, and this precludes harsh words and contemptuous attitudes. Family fighting can build up a fury in some people that leads to the next error.

Murder denies the unity of all life, by trying to remove some of it. It is also self-evidently extreme. The contempt for life seen in murder can also arise in unhappy marriages, when contempt for one’s spouse leads to the next vice, which also sometimes causes murder.

Adultery denies the unity of the marriage bed, by climbing into someone else’s sheets. The other extreme, absolute immunity from temptation to adultery, is impossible in any husband or wife. The tendency to look at other men or women lewdly will happen, but touching them lewdly is a hateful extreme. This contempt for what belongs to others leads to, and is intensified by, the next vice.

Theft denies the unity that must be maintained between honestly making money and obtaining things with the use of it. Theft also comes from the addiction to pleasure caused by being dazed by images; furthermore, theft is self-evidently extreme. The dishonesty inherent in this vice leads to, and is strengthened by, the next error.

Lying denies the unity that must be maintained between having healthy relationships with others and obtaining what one wants by speaking truth. Lying often leads to, and is intensified by, the final error.

Greed is self-evidently extreme want, and it denies the unity between those who have much and those who have little. Being dazed by images often leads to this vice.

For many years, Medias and his family lived by these principles harmoniously. Another family settled in Nodos, and Medias’ youngest son, Puritos, befriended them. The young man was impressed with the virtue he saw in this family, who disagreed with the leniency they saw in Medias’ precepts. Puritos also started to disagree with Medias, thought their family tried to reason out the dispute amicably.

One day, Puritos went by Medias’ private hut, an erection much like a short tower in which the old man spent his hours of rest. Puritos could hear his father breathing heavily and belching in there. As Puritos listened, he remembered his mother complaining of how lonely she was in bed at night, since Medias often spent late nights in this small tower instead of lying beside her. Puritos also remembered the high moral standards of the father of the family who were their neighbours. Remembering Medias’ lenient ethics, Puritos began to suspect his father of lewdness.

Noticing that the door to the hut was locked, Puritos used all his strength to force it open. He saw his father naked and drunk. On a table inside was a bottle of wine, a goblet, and paintings of naked women. Puritos turned his head away in shock the second he unwittingly saw his father’s upraised phallus. The hut was already in a weakened condition, and the force with which Puritos opened the door caused the little tower to crumble to the ground, revealing Madias’ shame to his whole family.

Puritos’ brothers found a blanket with which to cover their father’s nakedness, and they put it on him carefully, not looking at his body. Medias hid the paintings from his family in time not to prove Puritos right in his accusations of his father. Therefore, the outrage of Puritos’ contempt for his father’s privacy was seen to outweigh the shame of Medias’ sin. Puritos was disowned by the family, but he was more than content to leave them, disgusted with his father’s lewdness and moral hypocrisy.

Puritos, his family, and the neighbours left Nodos forever (for the neighbours believed him), and they all journeyed further inland. They settled in the land of Spirus. There Puritos studied engineering and architecture in a local academy, and during this time he made amendments to the Ten Errors. He made their application much stricter, expanding the second Error to include being dazed by lewd pictures, and restricting the resting time of the fourth Error. The fifth Error would define family harmony as including loving, honest, and ethical parents, and meek, obedient children. The seventh Error would include gazing lasciviously at those other than one’s spouse as adultery; and the ninth Error would not excuse parents from lying to their children.

Puritos justified his changes by instructing his family and followers (for he was rapidly gaining fame as a philosopher in Spirus) that in our unified world, there is a Cycle of Decay, which at its extreme destroys all, replacing it with a new, fresh, pure beginning. If we are to survive, we must fight against this decay by being better than moderately good: hence his strict alterations of the Ten Errors.

Though his changes improved on Medias’ design somewhat, Puritos became too severe with them. He harshly punished his children whenever they were even slightly guilty of any of the Ten Errors; the Errors were also adopted as the supreme law of the land of Spirus, and criminals were similarly disciplined.

To have a symbol of the nation’s new ethical philosophy, Puritos had a tower built that would reach, and even surpass, the clouds; it would be the tallest building in the world, and if anyone, anywhere, tried to make a taller structure, an extension would be added to Puritos’ tower to ensure that it would always be the tallest building.

He started work on the tower immediately, and funds came from the government, which inordinately taxed the wealthy (in their opinion); for such taxation was part of a strict avoidance of the tenth Error, to avert greed. Merchants all over Spirus furiously opposed the building of this tower; to them, it was a waste of money that would be better used to keep the local economy healthy, in creating new jobs for Sprius’ population. Neither Puritos nor the government that backed him listened to the merchants: it was as though both sides spoke different languages, and neither could understand each other.

Puritos and his builders had been making a very impressive structure at first. The tower was almost touching the clouds, and the foundation was sturdy enough. Then word came of another tower being built in Vestis, to be taller than that of Puritos. Not to be bested, he had his workers accelerate their efforts, not at all concerned that their lack of rest was the fourth Error to be avoided. In their hurried work, their construction became increasingly careless, and finally Drofurb, Crim of the rock of the earth, caused the upper structure to collapse, damaging the lower tower and ultimately making the whole building fall to the ground. Puritos, his workers, and hundreds of people in the nearby area–including his family–were killed.

To worsen matters, the waste of money did cause harm to the local economy, as the merchants had predicted. From then on, the application of avoiding the Ten Errors would not be so strict, and offenders were shown more leniency.

Commentary

In this tale we yet again see what must be a branch from a common ancestor myth from which sprang such Biblical elements as the Decalogue, Ham’s seeing Noah’s naked drunkenness, and even a bit of the Tower of Babel (“it was as though both sides spoke different languages, and neither could understand the other” as the tower was built).

As for the meaning of the tale, we learn from it that moral laxity is a weak structure, soon to fall and bring shame to everyone. Excessive moral rigour, however, is also doomed to failure, as it is a product of overweening pride.

The higher the hubris, the harder the fall. Both Medias and Puritos were correct, each in his own way, about how to avoid the Ten Errors. A middle way between extremes is the best way, but a Cycle of Decay causes that middle way to move upwards, in opposition to the decline. One must, therefore, take care not to ascend on too steep a path, or else one may be blinded by the clouds, and not see the cliff one is about to fall off of.

The following is yet another concrete poem, this clumsy English rendering being the best possible one to present as much of the original’s multi-faceted meaning as can be shown.

When
ethics are
conceived with
little thought,
they’re like ramshackle huts:
they’re so ill-wrought

that when………
tempted, we blow on them like gales,
and we make ruins of men’s………..
long travails…………………………

When
pride
would
make
of
right
and
wrong
a
tower
reaching
too
high,

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>time,
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>stress,
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>and
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>strain
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>will
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>topple
>>>>>>>>>>>>>it;
>>>>>>>hubris
>>>>>will
>>>fall,
>and
die.

The Tanah–Beginnings, Chapter Five

[The following is the sixth of many posts–here is the first, here is the second, here is the third, here is the fourth, and here is the fifth–about a fictitious discovery of ancient manuscripts of a religious text of narratives and magic spells. Its purpose for my readers and me is to provide a cosmology and mythography on which I am basing much, if not most, of my fiction–short stories and novels. If anyone is interested in reading this fiction, he or she can use these blog posts as references to explain the nature of the magic and universe in my fiction.]

When Queen Vita, her son, Prince Invidios, and his brothers and sisters arrived in their boat on the shores of the port city of Logos in the land of Nodos, they saw a most astonishing thing. It was night-time, and many members of the population of the city were seen to be walking in their sleep. The banished former queen and her sons and daughters came closer to the local inhabitants of the town, and her family could hear the Logosians talking in their sleep, too.

The sleepwalkers were reasoning amongst themselves, why they should have the right to things they had been denied by their king, a most repressive ruler named Despotes. The foreign family felt a strong urge to meet this king and his family, since they were used to the company of royalty. Invidios had a second reason for wanting to meet King Despotes: having been exiled by a similarly tyrannical ruler, King Patros, he wanted to kill the Logosian king, and rule in his stead.

The exiled royals slept in a humble inn for the night, having difficulty adjusting to such meagre accommodations. In the morning, the innkeeper gave them directions to the king’s palace. On their way there, they spoke to some of the Logosians and learned why their king was so severe: an oracle predicted his murder “by one in his own land” (by this, it was interpreted to mean, murdered by one of his own people). The severe laws were meant to protect the king.

Vita and her family also learned that the people of this city had a special talent for reasoning: the king himself was born in Logos, and was considered peerless in his gift for philosophical argumentation (or sophistry, as many of the people of Nodos would prefer to say). All of the people of the land of Nodos were famed for their roving curiosity and searching thirst for knowledge. Vita’s family were most impressed with these Nodosian traits.

When they reached the palace, her family were warmly welcomed, for it was obvious to all, from the elegance of their clothing, that they were also royalty. King Despotes showed an uncharacteristic openness to Invidios and his family, for the king assumed that no foreigner was destined to kill him. A sumptuous feast was prepared for all the nobles, local and foreign, that night; Vita, Invidios, and their family enjoyed the first meal of the sort they had been accustomed to since their banishment from Vestis. As he enjoyed his food and wine, and gave dissembling smiles to the king in their conversations at the great dinner table, Invidios busily planned out the murder of Despotes in his mind, for killing had become easy for him.

On the way to the palace earlier that day, Invidios had met a local apothecary and bought a potent poison. During the carousing after dinner, he put drops of the poison into the wine glasses of all the royal family when their backs were turned. By the next morning, when it was discovered by all that the king and his heirs were dead, Invidios and his brothers staged a coup. Its success came from Invidios’ ability to justify his regicide in a rousing oration. He told the people of Nodos that, under his rule, they were now all free of the tyranny of the dead king!

Invidios, as the new king of Nodos, quickly began to replace the harsh old decrees with newer, lenient ones. He easily won the love of the people for this, and their new-found freedoms caused their sleepwalking to end. King Invidios wanted a world combining the license of the rule of his father, Agnos, with the cultural sophistication of Vestis. The Nodosians, with their love of wisdom and yearning for new freedoms, would eagerly embrace this blend of ideas.

The sexes were equal, father-kin was replaced with mother-kin, and multiple lovers were available to all. Being naked in public was permitted, and in such a hot climate as Nodos was in summer, many–particularly the young and physically attractive–enjoyed this freedom. The surviving nobles of Nodos lay with Invidios’ sisters, and their children grew gigantically tall and proud.

King Invidios enjoyed his new power, but not its burdens, for scores of people came to him complaining of various injustices they’d experienced. It was incumbent on the king to be the judge of numerous trials, and he grew weary of it. Becoming increasingly indolent, he decreed that a crime would no longer be deemed so if good reasons could be given for committing it. He called this principle “going beyond good and evil.” This would reduce his burdens, but corrupt his entire country. (It was during this time, six years since he’d become king of Nodos, that Vita died. She was given a lavish funeral.)

Among the offences first to be made legal by justifying argument were these: relieving oneself in public places, on the grass and roads (public toilets were insufficient, and making enough for all of Nodos would cause a rise in taxes); and starting fires, including burning trees and grass (for warmth during the bitterly cold winters).

From this absurd reasoning, justification for worse vices ensued: greed was commended if it drove commerce and improved the economy; lying was permitted, for Invidios was dishonest in showing friendship to Despotes, and for a Nodosian to lie was to honour his king and saviour from tyranny; adultery was permitted, for Invidios gave everyone sexual freedom the very day he became king; murder was permitted if the victim gravely offended his killer, or if the killing was motivated by envy (besides, to kill was to emulate Invidios’ killing of Despotes, and this act would thus honour the new king); stealing was allowed, if one was too poor to feed one’s family without doing so (besides, Invidios stole Despotes’ crown); employers were allowed never to give their workers a day of rest, for continuous business would improve the economy; sons and daughters were permitted to be unfilial to their parents, and vice versa, if they had been mistreated; scurrilous language was allowed if one had been sufficiently offended or wronged; being hypnotized by images was considered good, because it is aesthetically pleasing, especially after much hard work; finally, the beliefs of the mad were tolerated on the grounds that they were “alternative perspectives.”

The result of these new freedoms was, of course, social chaos. The streets and parks reeked of excrement; forest fires were rampant; property was destroyed or stolen; honesty was rare, in business or among marriages; the blood of the murdered flooded the land; family discord was common; workers felt like slaves; speech was rarely civil; greed was deemed good; and madmen were the new philosophers.

One Nodosian, named Medias, lived with his wife and their three sons, each of whom had his own wife and family. They lived on a high hill, away from the fetid filth and fiery wildness of passion of all the other Nodosians. This family of farmers was a wise one. They lived quietly, humbly and peacefully–happily isolated from the wickedness of their compatriots.

One night, Medias dreamt of a huge wave of water submerging all of Nodos. He knew this was a portentous dream from Priff, the water Crim, for in Medias’ wisdom, he knew of a Reason higher than that of King Invidios, a Reason that reacts to excess with opposing excess. He said to his family, “The flood will clean away the foul filth of our corrupt nation; it will quench Crim Nevil’s fire and wash away the blood of Nodos’ victims. It will also kill all the wicked. So that we, too, are not killed, we must build a boat large enough to hold all of us and our animals.”

“Should we not warn the rest of the people?” asked his wife.

“They will not listen,” Medias said. “They err as unconsciously as they did when they walked in their sleep under Despotes’ rule. The first king was too rigid; this king is too lax. We need a ruler who follows a middle path.”

When the Nodosians saw Medias and his family building their boat high on the hill, far from the water, they thought him mad. Still, his madness was tolerated as an alternative wisdom…and it was.

A huge tidal wave approached the port of Logos, and the people with all their reasoning ability could not save themselves, for in their licentiousness they wandered all their days in oblivion, as if still sleepwalking. They were the first to be submerged, and the rest of Nodos followed quickly after. Medias and his family had finished making the boat just in time, and they and their animals were all safe inside it when the water had reached the top of the hill.

As the boat floated on the water, Medias and his family looked out the windows to see the drowned men and women of Nodos, many of whose bodies moved under the water as if they were on the land, walking in their sleep. They even saw the bodies of King Invidios, his sisters, and their huge sons and daughters.

After several weeks, the water receded, and the boat lay conveniently close to the hill where their farm was. Even more fortunate for them was how their farm was never touched with the water. Medias thanked Priff in his prayers. As for the rest of Nodos, all the excrement and blood were washed away, the fires were quenched, and the wickedness of the land was gone. Now the family could start anew.

Medias started with some new moral precepts, neither lax nor severe. These ten things were to be avoided:

THE TEN ERRORS

  1. Mad thinking
  2. Being dazed by images
  3. Scurrilous language
  4. All work and no rest
  5. Family fighting
  6. Murder
  7. Adultery
  8. Theft
  9. Lying
  10. Greed

These were written down and remembered throughout the generations, their meaning and interpretation extensively commented on.

Commentary

The many absurdities in this story, as well as its obvious derivations (a mix of flood myth with Moses-like moral code), show it to be allegory, not history. Is the land of Nod–Nodos–a land of nodding off to sleep or of wandering–the fusion being sleepwalking? Do such a land’s people err without knowing what they do? Is this not the essence of a wicked society?

Its kings are wicked: indeed, all leaders are so when they are too severe or too permissive. The wicked often have reasons for what they do, but these reasons do not excuse them for their wrongs. With the excesses of a tyrant come a clamour for reform, for freedom. When the freedoms from the new ruler cause chaos, decadence, putrefaction, and the fires of unruly passion, purifying waters must wash the filth away. Only rule in moderation will be a lasting rule.

Note the shifts from extreme reason to extreme unreason. This is yet another manifestation of those waves that go from one extreme to the other, a recurring theme throughout the Tanah.

Below is yet another of those concrete poems, translated and rendered as best as we scholars could to approximate the desired visual effect while retaining the meaning as accurately as possible.

Heads
of state must not grip tightly
their
poor
people; or
they’ll nightly
voice……..their
hatred…………in
their…………..dreams,
and…………………march
on………………………..kings
in……………………………killing
teams.

Heads
of state must not hold lightly
laws
and
morals; or
else, nightly,
thoughts….that
should………remain
in…………………dreams
will……………………..crawl
and prey with……..brute extremes.

Heads
of state
must ponder rightly
middle…….rule;……….so
men………………can………….nightly
lie…………………….in………………..bed
with…………………pleasant………….dreams,
and………walk
with……………thoughts
that………………………have
calm………………………themes.

The Tanah–Beginnings, Chapter Four

[The following is the fifth of many posts–here is the first, here is the second, here is the third, and here is the fourth–about a fictitious discovery of ancient manuscripts of a religious text of narratives and magic spells. Its purpose for my readers and me is to provide a cosmology and mythography on which I am basing much, if not most, of my fiction–short stories and novels. If anyone is interested in reading this fiction, he or she can use these blog posts as references to explain the nature of the magic and universe in my fiction.]

Years went by, and King Patros’s son, Prixos, became a man. He would be the king’s rightful heir and successor…except other members of the royal family would have had things otherwise.

The king loved Prixos dearly, and indulged the youth to excess. When the family rode in their chariots across the island of Vestis to see their subjects, Patros and Prixos were always in the first chariot, while Queen Vita and her sons and daughters had to follow behind in their chariots. So had it been for twenty years, along with numerous other privileges that the king and his son could enjoy, all at the expense of Vita and her children.

One day, she complained of this to Invidios, her sullen first-born son. “Though I do not regret ending your father’s feckless rule, I can no longer endure the injustice of my new king’s sway. Before, I could roam about freely; now, I must be escorted everywhere either by the king or by his ten eunuch guards. Before, I could enjoy as many lovers as Agnos did with his thirty concubines; now, Patros’s eunuchs guard me against a pleasure he regularly enjoys, while Agnos’ concubines–once honoured for their love and devotion to the former king–are now disgraced as naked whores, to be enjoyed by any common man on the street for a small sum of money. Those women are never even given the money; their procurers take it all. Many of them have grown old and withered, and they are still not given the dignity of clothing. All of them would rather kill themselves than go on as they do, but none has a knife.

“As for the rest of us women–me and your sisters included–we live lives hardly less wretched than the former concubines. There is a wealth of learning in the libraries and universities, but our sex is discouraged from touching it. Though society is improved with such erudition, during Agnos’ rule the men were as ignorant as the women, and thus our sex at least had no reason to envy men. Now we do. We are disenfranchised and scorned.

“And what is the king’s reason? He asserts that it was I, and all the women of Gymnos (this island’s former name, recall), who debauched King Agnos. King Patros says that the female form, when unclothed, tempts men to lust and to look away from nobler pursuits; but it was Agnos’ decree that everyone, nude, should freely procreate. Though I never questioned the wisdom of his command, I did not inspire it, either.

“I swear to you, my son, King Patros has done us all wrong, including you and your brothers, by instituting father-kin throughout Vestis, thus denying you your natural right of succession. While I prefer the maturity of our society now to the infantile rule of your father (assuming he was your natural father), we must amend our society to embrace full equality for the sexes. The only way to ensure that will be for you to succeed Patros as king, not his son Prixos, whom I now disown for your sake. I am too old to bear the king any more sons, so if you kill Prixos, Patros will have no choice but to accept you as his heir. This will set a precedent in the law that will force all of Vestis to return to mother-kin, and women will have their rights restored. Will you kill the boy, Invidios?”

“Yes, Mother,” Invidios said. “With pleasure. I’ve always hated Prince Prixos. Not only is the treatment of Vestis’ women unjust, but also religion is practiced unfairly, and the latter is the doing of Prixos. He and his father (never mine!) have instituted the worship of a Sky-father god, to supplant our Earth-mother goddess! This god is to have animals sacrificed to him, emasculated as my wretched father was! The prince justifies this cruelty to animals by saying it signifies the death of a man’s animal nature in order to grow in the spirit. He has always scorned my cooking of vegetables as a sacrifice to please our Earth-mother goddess. When I explain how the cooking signifies the heating of the passions and instincts to inspire a man to action, the prince scoffs at me. I will no longer endure his arrogance! I will gladly kill him–for both of us, Mother.”

The next day, Invidios went with Prixos to sacrifice a goat at the top of a lonely hill. Though he told Prixos he was willing to embrace the new Sky-father god religion, Invidios found a thick branch, broken off a nearby tree, and waited for the prince to turn his back. He then beat the prince to death, and buried the body. “I killed a man to save your life,” he said to the goat before setting it free.

A farmer witnessed the murder, informed the king, and showed him where the body was. Denying her son’s guilt, Queen Vita demanded that King Patros acknowledge Invidios as his prince and successor to the throne. The king, knowing her tricks, refused this demand, and banished not only Invidios from Vestis, but his brothers and sisters as well. He even repudiated his queen, and announced his plan to marry a young princess from the land of Pudios, a neighbouring country of Gnosius, and part of its empire. She would bear him sons to succeed him.

The former queen and her sons and daughters, all disgraced, sailed on a boat away from the beloved island of their birth, never to return on pain of death. The boat eventually reached shore, and the family settled in the land of Nodos.

Over the years, King Patros, with his bashful new queen and his new sons by her, enacted new laws, even stricter than before, on women. Now they were forbidden any form of education, whereas before it had merely been discouraged. Women were warned to be silent in matters of politics, for fear of a repeat of the incident with Vita and Invidios.

Here we see the cycles of life once again: when the victims of injustice act too rashly, pushing for change without due organization and preparation, acting before the time is ripe, their own impulsiveness turns against them, and they suffer all the worse for it.

Commentary

One will note parallels between the Invidios and Prixos narrative and the Cain and Abel story. These two myths seem to have a common ancestor, one based on the foundation of a city, requiring a human sacrifice so the dead one’s spirit will be a protector of the new city. Another example of such a myth is that of Romulus and Remus, the former having killed the latter on the foundation of the city of Rome. One can also see in the Invidios and Prixos narrative, as in the Cain and Abel story, an allegory of the conflict between nomadic shepherds and settled farmers.

In any case, the story is trying to teach the moral of avoiding rashness in making changes of any revolutionary sort. If done too quickly, without sufficient planning and care, one may find one’s plans backfiring and resulting in a much worse oppression than before. Thus we see the wavelike movement from injustice to a far too sharp return to justice, then a swing right back to the original injustice, or an even worse kind.

Here’s another, admittedly awkward, translation of one of the ancient poems, again with the visual effect, preserved as best as my team of researchers could do:

Throwing

sticks

too hard

only makes them

return harder.

A soft

toss

suffices.