Tag: writing

The Tanah: Lyrics–The Last of the Song-Spells Discovered So Far

[The following is the thirty-fifth 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, here is the eighth, here is the ninth, here is the tenth, here is the eleventh, here is the twelfth, here is the thirteenth, here is the fourteenth, here is the fifteenth, here is the sixteenth, here is the seventeenth, here is the eighteenth, here is the nineteenth, here is the twentieth, here is the twenty-first, here is the twenty-second, here is the twenty-third, here is the twenty-fourth, here is the twenty-fifth, here is the twenty-sixth, here is the twenty-seventh, here is the twenty-eighth, here is the twenty-ninth, here is the thirtieth, here is the thirty-first, here is the thirty-second, here is the thirty-third, and here is the thirty-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.]

Translator’s commentary

The next of these song-spells is supposed to enable shape-shifting: how the ancients believed that the mere singing of this lyric in its original, mystical language would result in any kind of physical transformation, let alone the desired one, is a total mystery to us translators. Apparently, total faith in the aid of the four Crims–Weleb, Nevil, Drofurb, and Priff–is crucial to achieving such transformations. More fool us of little faith, it seems.

Certain words in the spell were deemed to be unutterable by the elders, as such words were also crucial to cause the transformations so abominated by the elders. Again, in English translation, the lyric sounds dull and ineffective, where the magical power is in the alliterative, assonant, and rhythmic words of the original language, all lost in translation. A firm belief in the Crims, as mentioned above, is also crucial. Here’s the song.

[To be sung repeatedly, louder and louder, inserting the words of what is wished to be changed into at the end.]

O, Four Powers, rearrange my parts! /// \\\
Change my shape, colour, and likeness \\\ \\\
into a ____________! ///

Commentary: Naturally, there’s also a verse to have one transformed back to normal. This is it.

[To be sung repeatedly, louder and louder.]

O, Four Powers, reset my parts! /// \\\
Return my shape, colour, and likeness \\\ \\\
back as I was! ////

Commentary: Next is a song-spell for capturing souls in jars, to gain greater magical power from them. The elders abominated this spell most of all.

[To be sung repeatedly, louder and louder.]

Air Lord, move this soul \\ ///
from its case to that one! /// \\\

Commentary: The “Air Lord” is Weleb, Crim of the air, and as we said above about making shape-shifting possible through the mere singing of a verse, it seems that unwavering faith in Weleb and the other three Crims was enough to make the ancient tribe believe that singing the above verse would actually transfer a human soul from its body into a jar.

As of the publication of the current edition of the Tanah, these are the only spells known as “Lyrics” that have been excavated. Apart from these are fragments too slight to be translated and published as coherent spells to be read and understood, but enough to convince us that there are many more to be found, complete copies of those fragments to make the incoherent coherent.

As we’ve promised above, once more Lyrics have been found, as well as more texts of the Beginnings, Migration, Laws, Preaching, Proverbs, and Amores (these last to be examined in the following pages), they will all be translated and published in future editions of the Tanah.

The Tanah: Lyrics–More Spells

[The following is the thirty-fourth 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, here is the eighth, here is the ninth, here is the tenth, here is the eleventh, here is the twelfth, here is the thirteenth, here is the fourteenth, here is the fifteenth, here is the sixteenth, here is the seventeenth, here is the eighteenth, here is the nineteenth, here is the twentieth, here is the twenty-first, here is the twenty-second, here is the twenty-third, here is the twenty-fourth, here is the twenty-fifth, here is the twenty-sixth, here is the twenty-seventh, here is the twenty-eighth, here is the twenty-ninth, here is the thirtieth, here is the thirty-first, here is the thirty-second, and here is the thirty-third–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.]

Translator’s note: please remember that all of this collection of spells is incomplete. As excavations of the area continue, more will be found and published in future editions. The current set is only what has been found for the moment.

[Sing the following verse repeatedly, louder and louder, with increasing intensity. Pluck individual strings on a zither, each plucking for each line.]

May I take, ///
and escape. \\\
May I keep ///
what I steal. \\\

[Sing the following verse repeatedly, in as low a bass voice as possible, with the soft hitting of a gong.]

Take your life, \\\
take your soul. \\\
Take your breath, \\\
leave you low. \\\

[Sing the following verse repeatedly, with accompanying flute.]

Make my tales \\\
seem as real ///
as if they \\\
had been seen. ///

[Sing the following verse repeatedly, with loud drums.]

Ai, Lord of Fire, ////
god of lust ///
and desire, //
come from hell ///
to the earth, ///
give me what ///
in my heart burns. ////

Commentary: The following two spells are not particularly ‘wicked’ ones, yet they are included among the Lyrics all the same. The first is a verse of protection, often sung before one is about to eat a dish blessed by the spell. It is also sung while the singer, naked, has his or her hands on the plates on the dishes, to transfer the spell into the food, and give its power to the eaters.

[Sing the following repeatedly, with hands on the food to be blessed and to protect those who eat it. The singer must be naked.]

Keep our enemies far away. \\\\\
We eat what will keep us safe. \\\\\\\

Commentary: the second spell is of protection put on necklaces.

[Sing the following repeatedly, with the necklaces to be blessed lying nearby. The singer must be naked.]

Keep the necklace wearers safe. ///\\
May no enemy give them strife. ///\\\

Commentary: in keeping with the malevolent nature of so many of these lyrics, though, one spell has been devised here to make the wearers of the protective necklaces want to take them off, rendering them vulnerable to their enemies again, as we’ll see.

May the necklace itch, itch, itch. /\/\/\
May the wearer twitch, twitch, twitch. /\/\/\
May the wearer take it off, /\/\/\
and at his protection scoff. /\/\/
The wearer being naked now, /\/\/
I can make him kneel and cow. /\/\/\/

[Sing the following repeatedly, with flute and drum accompaniment to guarantee success.]

May boils grow all over your skin! ////\\\
May no one love you ever again! ////\\\

The Tanah: Lyrics–The First Four Spells

[The following is the thirty-third 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, here is the eighth, here is the ninth, here is the tenth, here is the eleventh, here is the twelfth, here is the thirteenth, here is the fourteenth, here is the fifteenth, here is the sixteenth, here is the seventeenth, here is the eighteenth, here is the nineteenth, here is the twentieth, here is the twenty-first, here is the twenty-second, here is the twenty-third, here is the twenty-fourth, here is the twenty-fifth, here is the twenty-sixth, here is the twenty-seventh, here is the twenty-eighth, here is the twenty-ninth, here is the thirtieth, here is the thirty-first, and here is the thirty-second–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.]

Translator’s Introduction

And at long last, we come to the wicked spells of the Tanah.

When one considers just how heinous the intentions are of many, if not most, or all, of these spells, and how much the ancient elders abominated them and fought to keep people from using them, it is amazing that so many of the texts have survived, rather than all of them destroyed.

But here they are, as incomplete as they may be.

These Lyrics are verses set to music, for it is the nature of the music–the melodic contours of the singing (as expressed in an upward or downward slash for each word, beside each line of verse), the instrumental accompaniment–that makes an important contribution to the efficacy of the spells (the poetic power of whose words is rendered rather dull, unfortunately, in English translation). Little of the musical arrangements has survived, though, in terms of how the music is precisely to be performed: there’s no notation even of the sung melodies of the verses, except for the above-mentioned slashes, as mentioned above, which only suggest a tune; and there are only vague indications of what instrumental backing is recommended…if that.

These are spells for selfish ends. They fulfill individual desires, or those of the tribe, and they often have outright malevolent purposes. Examples include the summoning of such demons as Ai, the demon of lust as introduced in Part Two of The Preaching, or the capturing of souls in jars, for the purpose of gaining greater magical power from them.

Elsewhere, there are songs meant to help in the conquering and subjugation of foreign peoples, cruelty to enemies, controlling people, gaining wealth, stealing, and more.

For sexual exploitation, wait for the book of spells known as Amores.

[Sing the following verse repeatedly, louder and louder, with accompanying flute and drum.]

Your land is our land. \\\\
Your home is our home. \\\\
Your wealth is our wealth. \\\\
Your food is our food. \\\\
Your men are our slaves. \\\\

[Sing the following verse repeatedly, louder and louder, with increasing intensity, until the singing sounds like screaming, with the dissonant plucking of adjacent strings on a zither, and harder and harder pounding on drums.]

May you hurt, ///
may you groan, ///
may you cry, ///
may you bleed, ///
may you die! ///

[Sing the following verse repeatedly, louder and louder, in a breathy voice, with no instrumental backing.]

I take you, //\
I have you, //\
I use you, //\
I own you. //\

[Sing the following verse repeatedly, louder and louder, with increasing intensity, and with the tapping of more and more cymbals.]

My gold and silver grow. /////
My gold and silver double. /////
My gold and silver triple. /////
My gold and silver, endless. /////

Comment: Each upward slash represents a rise in pitch, and each downward slash represents a lowering in pitch, each slash being for each word to the left.

The Tanah: Proverbs

[The following is the thirty-second 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, here is the eighth, here is the ninth, here is the tenth, here is the eleventh, here is the twelfth, here is the thirteenth, here is the fourteenth, here is the fifteenth, here is the sixteenth, here is the seventeenth, here is the eighteenth, here is the nineteenth, here is the twentieth, here is the twenty-first, here is the twenty-second, here is the twenty-third, here is the twenty-fourth, here is the twenty-fifth, here is the twenty-sixth, here is the twenty-seventh, here is the twenty-eighth, here is the twenty-ninth, here is the thirtieth, and here is the thirty-first–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.]

Translator’s Introduction

This set of pithy maxims was not thought to be requiring a magical ritual, involving the use of the four elements personified by the Crims. The words were thought to be magically effective in themselves: the original language uses such musical elements as metre, alliteration, assonance, consonance, and rhyme felt sufficient to influence the feelings of those in the tribe and to deter them from using magic in aid of sinning, by curbing unhealthy emotions.

They are to be chanted repeatedly, louder and louder, and with more and more emotional intensity.

  1. Pride is the father of shame.
    Humility is the mother of honour.
  2. Anger is a moment of madness.
    Calm keeps sanity everlasting.
  3. Envy is admiration and hate embracing.
    Its lack looks on without malevolence.
  4. Greed never grasps enough.
    Giving never gets empty-handed.
  5. One getting fat while many starve
    reverses how food should be shared.
  6. Lust loves the flesh and hates the heart.
    Lovemaking gives life, never taking.
  7. Despair hates all the outside world,
    because it hates all that’s inside.

Commentary

It’s fascinating how this ancient tribe, through these proverbs, seems to have anticipated the deadly sins of the Church.

The Tanah–The Preaching: The Remaining Spells for Preventing Sin

[The following is the thirty-first 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, here is the eighth, here is the ninth, here is the tenth, here is the eleventh, here is the twelfth, here is the thirteenth, here is the fourteenth, here is the fifteenth, here is the sixteenth, here is the seventeenth, here is the eighteenth, here is the nineteenth, here is the twentieth, here is the twenty-first, here is the twenty-second, here is the twenty-third, here is the twenty-fourth, here is the twenty-fifth, here is the twenty-sixth, here is the twenty-seventh, here is the twenty-eighth, here is the twenty-ninth, and here is the thirtieth–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.]

The following are the remaining spells for preventing sin–their instructions and verses.

[Find an expansive, flat area of land. Perform a ritual with one group of people at one side, and another group of people at the other side. As the verse is chanted, the first group will march together to the other side, as if to take it from the second group of people; then the second group will do the same, marching to the first side while grabbing the arms of the people in the first group, as if to take their land and enslave them. This will all be done while repeating the following verse, louder and louder, and with more and more emotional intensity.]

What you from (others) take(,) others
>>>………………………………………..<<<

Commentary: The verse is to be read thus: “What you take from others, others take from you.” The syntax in the original language allows a smooth reading back and forth.

[Collect coins of gold, silver, and copper, and pile them in a hole in the ground; do this ritual on a windy day. Surround the pile with dirt, leaves, and kindling. As the verse is chanted, burn the leaves and kindling, then put out the fire with water, and bury the coins in the dirt. Chant the following verse repeatedly and in a growing volume and emotional intensity.]

Weleb, Crim of air, blow away my greed!
Nevil, Crim of fire, torch my greed!
Priff, Crim of water, drown my greed!
Drofurb, Crim of earth, bury my greed!

Commentary: It should go without saying that, as the wind blows on the coins, Weleb’s line is chanted repeatedly; as the leaves and kindling are burned, Nevil’s line is chanted repeatedly; as the fire is put out with the water, Priff’s line is chanted repeatedly, and as the coins are buried, Drofurb’s line is chanted repeatedly.

[Prepare a bag of coins to be ‘stolen,’ in this ritual of mock-robbery. Participants in the ritual will run around, each ‘stealing’ the bag while having it ‘stolen’ from him soon after. This running around and ‘stealing’ will continue, again and again, as the following verse is repeatedly chanted.]

When you from (others) steal(,) then others
>>>………………………………………………….<<<

Commentary: As with the verse above meant to prevent the stealing of others’ land, this verse, meant to prevent the stealing of others’ wealth or possessions, is to be read in a similar back-and-forth manner, to represent the karmic nature of the Echo Effect: “When you from others steal, others then steal from you.” Again, the syntax of the original language allows for a smoothness of reciting that cannot be properly reproduced in English.

[This ritual is to be done by one man alone. He is to stand in a flat, open field on a windy day. A circular ditch is to be dug, surrounding him. Leaves and kindling are to be left surrounding him, too. As he chants the verse over and over, he is to light the leaves and kindling on fire, then put it all out with water, then go in the ditch and crawl around in it, rolling in the dirt until his whole body is filthy.]

Weleb, if I think of myself alone, may I be alone!
Nevil, if I think of myself alone, may I be alone!
Priff, if I think of myself alone, may I be alone!
Drofurb, if I think of myself alone, may I be alone!

Commentary: Again, each act in the ritual is to correspond with the Crim repeatedly invoked, so Weleb is addressed during the blowing wind, Nevil during the burning, etc.

[Prepare a weighing scale, piles of dirt, small amounts of water, leaves and kindling, and do this ritual on a windy day. First, put unequal amounts of dirt in the two bowls of the scale so they’re uneven; then as the line addressing Drofurb is chanted, move some dirt from the heavier bowl to the lighter bowl to reverse the unevenness. As the line addressing Priff is chanted, have unequal amounts of water in the bowls, then move some water from the heavier bowl to the lighter one, again, to reverse the unevenness. Do the same with the leaves and kindling, lighting them on fire while addressing Nevil with his line. Finally, let the wind blow against the scale while chanting the line for Weleb.]

Drofurb, may my unfairness come back to me!
Priff, may my unfairness come back to me!
Nevil, may my unfairness come back to me!
Weleb, may my unfairness come back to me!

Commentary: As with the rituals meant to prevent the stealing of land or money, and to prevent selfishness, this ritual, to prevent unfairness, dramatizes how the Echo Effect punishes our sin, and so it is meant to instill in the tribe the importance of knowing never to bring bad karma on oneself.

The Tanah–The Preaching: Four Spells for Preventing Sin

[The following is the thirtieth 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, here is the eighth, here is the ninth, here is the tenth, here is the eleventh, here is the twelfth, here is the thirteenth, here is the fourteenth, here is the fifteenth, here is the sixteenth, here is the seventeenth, here is the eighteenth, here is the nineteenth, here is the twentieth, here is the twenty-first, here is the twenty-second, here is the twenty-third, here is the twenty-fourth, here is the twenty-fifth, here is the twenty-sixth, here is the twenty-seventh, here is the twenty-eighth, and here is the twenty-ninth–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.]

Four Spells: their instructions and verses

[Light a fire, surrounded by rocks, on a windy day. If it is winter at the time of preparing this spell, have snow or blocks of ice to put out the fire; otherwise, use water to do so. Chant the following verse over and over, louder and louder, with increasing…then decreasing…emotion, to the four Crims of air, fire, earth, and water/rocks.]

Lust,
the
son
who grew out of fire,
must
shrink
back.

Commentary: Ai (pronounced like “eye”) is the son of Nevil, the Crim of fire. Ai is the demon of lust, who tempts us to practice fornication. Ai also drives people to act aggressively and to intervene unwelcomely in others’ affairs. This spell is meant to drive him away.

[Take two sticks of long but brittle wood and strike them together repeatedly until one breaks. Then break the other in two. Chant the following repeatedly as the sticks are struck together.]

He
who
will
is thus to hurt himself and be
[by]
other
men

Commentary: The cross shape of the verse represents the two sticks being struck together. It is recited thus: “He who will hurt other men is thus to hurt himself and be hurt by other men.” The breaking of the sticks, by sympathetic magic, is meant to represent cruelty killing cruelty and being killed by it, an enactment of the Echo Effect.

[Make a life-sized effigy of a man. Tie a rope around its waist with one end, and around the waist of a living man with the other. Pull the effigy far enough the opposite way of the man so he is pulled with the effigy. After doing this for some time, let go of the effigy and let the man pull it back to the starting place. Then burn it, douse it with water, and bury it. Do all of this while repeatedly chanting the following lines to the Crims.]

What you pull one way

will pull you the other way.

Nevil, Priff, and Drofurb: stop the pulling!

Commentary: This ritual is meant to prevent the controlling of people.

[Have two men in the tribe dramatize a fight with wooden swords on a windy day. After a while of clashing swords, one man pretends to stab the other; then the fallen one reaches up to stab his killer. Both men lie on the ground, pretending to be dead. Then the swords are to be burned, doused with water, and buried. This is all done while chanting the following, over and over, to the four Crims.]

The
man cuts, stabs, and kills
who

is
cut, stabbed, and killed. to
be

Commentary: These verses are to be read thus: “The man who cuts, stabs, and kills is to be cut, stabbed, and killed.” It’s a plea to the Crims to ensure the karmic retribution of the Echo Effect on all of those who would wage war.

The Tanah–The Preaching, Translator’s Introduction, and First Spell

[The following is the twenty-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, here is the eighth, here is the ninth, here is the tenth, here is the eleventh, here is the twelfth, here is the thirteenth, here is the fourteenth, here is the fifteenth, here is the sixteenth, here is the seventeenth, here is the eighteenth, here is the nineteenth, here is the twentieth, here is the twenty-first, here is the twenty-second, here is the twenty-third, here is the twenty-fourth, here is the twenty-fifth, here is the twenty-sixth, here is the twenty-seventh, and here is the twenty-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.]

Translator’s Introduction

And now, after all of those mythical narratives and moral injunctions, we finally come to some spells. This book is called “The Preaching,” since it concerns itself as much with the danger of using spells for evil or selfish purposes as in the previous books; but in this book, the difference is in the wish to use magic itself to prevent the use of evil or self-serving magic.

What follows is a series of verses, each coupled with instructions on how to perform the spell. These include the materials to be used–usually the air, earth, fire, and water that correspond to the four Crims, or Weleb, Drofurb, Nevil, and Priff, to whom the magic practitioners prayed to resist the temptation to do evil with magic–as well as how to use the materials for these good purposes.

Once the materials are prepared and used properly, the verses are to be chanted repeatedly, many, many times, with increasing volume, speed, and emotional intensity. Something that cannot be rendered with justice in English is the original language’s deliberate repetitions of sounds–assonance, consonance, alliteration, and even some rhyming, as well as the pounding rhythmic cadences. In these sound repetitions was the believed power and effectiveness of the magic, for it was believed that the whole universe consisted of eternal undulations, and so through sympathetic magic, an imitation of those undulations–“the rhythms of everything”–one could influence what happens in the world.

Each magical incantation attempts to prevent the committing of each of the sins listed in Chapter One of The Laws, Book 2. So we will find verses meant to stop the use of magic in aid of fornication, cruelty to others, controlling others, starting wars, taking others’ land, gaining excessive wealth, stealing, selfishness, and treating others unfairly. The verses also have a visual presentation, as did those at the end of each chapter in Beginnings, though our rendering of them inevitably will fail to preserve that visual element perfectly.

Here is the first spell of the book; others will follow in later installments. Note the shape of the verses, which represents a symbol this ancient civilization used to represent unity in plurality.

[Collect rain in a large basin. On a windy day, set a fire with clumps of dirt surrounding it. Use some of the water to put out some of the fire. Let the wind blow out some of the fire. Any remaining fire is to be smothered in the clumps of dirt. Do all of the above while chanting the following verses, over and over, louder and louder, with more and more emotion.]

All
is
the
the Void is all

Rain
falls
into
the ocean is rain

The
many
make
the One, from which many come

Water
drowns
the
water, by fire, is made air

Commentary: This is an introductory, generalized spell meant to promote oneness in the community before dealing with the specific sins. For ‘rain,’ and ‘many,’ read the Pluries. For ‘the Void,’ ‘ocean,’ and ‘the One,’ read Cao. For ‘water,’ ‘fire,’ and ‘air,’ read Priff, Nevil, and Weleb, respectively.

As for the first, second, and fourth verses, they are meant to be read as “All is the Void; the Void is all,” “Rain falls into the ocean; the ocean is rain,” and “Water drowns the fire; water, by fire, is made air.” These four verses are all meant to represent the back-and-forth movement of everything, the undulations of the universe that unify all plurality. The remaining verses will appear in subsequent installments, as mentioned above.

The Tanah–The Laws, Book 2, Chapter 8

[The following is the twenty-eighth 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, here is the eighth, here is the ninth, here is the tenth, here is the eleventh, here is the twelfth, here is the thirteenth, here is the fourteenth, here is the fifteenth, here is the sixteenth, here is the seventeenth, here is the eighteenth, here is the nineteenth, here is the twentieth, here is the twenty-first, here is the twenty-second, here is the twenty-third, here is the twenty-fourth, here is the twenty-fifth, here is the twenty-sixth, and here is the twenty-seventh–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.]

The basic principle underlying the avoidance of all sins, put in another way from that of the preceding chapter, can be summed up in this final law:

Magic should never be used in aid of treating other people unfairly.

The basis of fairness is found in what was discussed in the first chapter of Beginnings–the principle of Cao, a never-ending ocean that is the entire world. The waves of Cao make everything equal–the Unity of Action.

That equality, however, is not rigid and unchanging, like a straight line. All things in Cao are fluid and moving, and therefore fairness is also dynamic.

To ensure a fluid fairness, one must look where the crests of good fortune, and the troughs of ill fortune, are, then reverse them. After such a reversal, reverse them again, and again, and again.

So if those in the crests of good fortune have plenty, while those in the troughs of ill fortune have little, that plenty must be moved to those with little; then when those formerly lacking are sated with much, their abundance must be moved to those newly lacking.

The waves of good and ill fortune must be always moving to share the abundance with those who lack. The good and wise will always be vigilant in seeking out who has little, and therefore who needs to have crests move to new troughs. The wicked, however, refuse to do this sharing of crests.

The wicked will try to justify keeping the crests of wealth to themselves, imagining their fortune to be the natural way of things, when it most certainly is not! Thus, they will leave those in troughs of poverty to remain in a state of want. In this way, the wicked would have the waves of Cao freeze, with their own crests a permanent advantage, and the troughs of the poor a permanent disadvantage. The wicked will also use magic in aid of their greed.

Depriving the poor of food, drink, housing, medicine, or clothing is already wicked. Using magic to aid in this deprivation is far worse. Refusing to aid the vagrant foreigner entering one’s nation is already wicked. Using magic to worsen his plight is a far greater sin.

Trying to freeze the flow of the waves of Cao is as impossible as it is to stop the alternating of day and night, of halting the light of Dis and the darkness of Noct. The heat of Nevil’s fire, the heat and desire of Hador, must not be used to cause the coldness of Calt to deny the poor of warmth.

When the rich and powerful try to keep their crests of wealth to themselves, using magic to aid them in their greed, they can be assured that the Echo Effect, the law of sow and reap, will keep the waves of Cao moving, to bring a deep trough of sorrow to punish them for their sin!

When the fortunate try to keep the light of Dis, and the heat of Hador’s desire, to themselves, they can be assured that the Echo Effect will bring them Calt’s coldness and Noct’s darkness!

[The text breaks off here.]

The Tanah–The Laws, Book 2, Chapter 7

[The following is the twenty-seventh 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, here is the eighth, here is the ninth, here is the tenth, here is the eleventh, here is the twelfth, here is the thirteenth, here is the fourteenth, here is the fifteenth, here is the sixteenth, here is the seventeenth, here is the eighteenth, here is the nineteenth, here is the twentieth, here is the twenty-first, here is the twenty-second, here is the twenty-third, here is the twenty-fourth, here is the twenty-fifth, and here is the twenty-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.]

The basic principle underlying the avoidance of all of the sins previously discussed is one that can sum them all up in one law.

Magic should never be used in aid of only oneself.

Use of magic with oneself as the one and only concern is what leads to all of the other sins. This is why the teaching of the Three Unities, as passed down to us from Rawmios, is so important. These unities of space, time, and action teach us our place in the world, as well as how to live well in it.

As for avoiding selfish purposes in using magic, one must focus on the unity of space, for it teaches us that we are not separate from each other, as our sense perception deludes us into believing. We are all one: everywhere is here. The suffering of one causes suffering for others, and the joy of one causes joy for others. When we can fully understand how the self is in the other, and the other is in the self, we will know the unity of space, we will have compassion for each other, and be selfless in our use of magic.

The selfish use of magic, though, leads to the Ten Errors, which deny the unity of all things. Selfishness leads to mad thinking, being dazed by images, the scurrilous use of language, all work and no rest, family fighting, murder, adultery, theft, lying, and greed.

Selfish uses of magic, as noted above, also lead to the sins warned against in the previous chapters.

Using magic in aid of all the forms of fornication makes a mockery of the unity of humanity. We are to be unified in spirit, not in body (except through marriage).

Using magic to be cruel to other people, or to animals, denies the unity connecting all of life. Kindness to each other, and to animals, restores and strengthens that unity.

Using magic to control others denies our unity with others and reinforces our illusion of separateness. Relinquishing control of others allows for the full freedom of everyone.

Using magic to start wars, or to take the land of other peoples, denies the unity of all of humanity. We must always be mindful of our common humanity, all around the world, and never regard one nation as greater than any other.

Using magic to gain excessive wealth, or to steal, denies the unity maintained between honest livelihoods and obtaining our necessities with the use of money, as elucidated among the Ten Errors. It also denies the unity of humanity between the rich and the poor, creating even greater division between men by making the rich overly luxurious and the poor wretched.

These abuses of magic, only for one’s own gain and at the expense of all other people, not only cause pain and suffering for many, but also ensure division between men, egoism, and isolation. The Echo Effect, moreover, will ensure that the pain, division, and isolation will come back to punish the sinner. Do not think they won’t come back to plague the guilty!

Analysis of ‘Islands’

I: Introduction

Islands is the fourth album by King Crimson, released in 1971. Leader/guitarist Robert Fripp replaced two musicians from the previous album, Lizard, for this one: bassist/singer Gordon Haskell for Boz Burrell, whom Fripp had taught to play bass (Boz had a little guitar-playing experience prior to his joining Crimson), and drummer Andy McCulloch with Ian Wallace. Like Lizard, though, Islands continued with the jazz influence.

Though this lineup of musicians (later without lyricist/light-show man Peter Sinfield) continued long enough to do gigs (something the lineups of Lizard and In the Wake of Poseidon were not able to do), it was still part of that period in King Crimson’s history when there was great instability. For at the end of the touring to promote Islands, Fripp ended up replacing all of the musicians, with bassist/singer John Wetton, drummer Bill Bruford, (who’d left the far more successful Yes to join), violinist David Cross, and percussionist Jamie Muir to record Larks’ Tongues in Aspic (they even found a new lyricist in Richard Palmer-James).

The instability of this period had left King Crimson at its weakest. Fripp and saxophonist/flautist Mel Collins play as well as ever. Boz had a good, expressive singing voice (better than Haskell’s, and almost as good as that of original bassist/singer Greg Lake), but Fripp’s having had to teach Boz how to play bass from scratch meant that he lacked the necessary precision. Similarly, Wallace was a capable, aggressive drummer, but he was no Michael Giles, Bruford, McCulloch, or even Pat Mastelotto. As a result, the music of Islands is simpler and, to be perfectly blunt, mostly rather dull, except for the excellent “Sailor’s Tale,” “The Letters,” with its dark themes of jealousy and violence, and the naughty “Ladies of the Road.”

Tensions had been building between Fripp and Sinfield, the two having increasingly divergent views of the direction that the band should have gone in. Sinfield said he “musically wanted to find a softer, Miles Davis-with-vocals sexy package.” In the end, of course, Fripp’s vision won out, and after Islands was made, Sinfield was out. That “package” that Sinfield wanted, however, seems to be what ended up on the album, and accordingly, he has called the album his Islands; Fripp denies this with some justification, though, since he–and not Sinfield–is credited with writing all of the music, and of course, Sinfield didn’t sing or play any instruments on the album…apart from some tinkering with the VCS3 on “Sailor’s Tale” and “The Letters.”

Here is a link to all the music on the album (with bonus tracks), and here is a link to the lyrics.

The cover shows a depiction of the Trifid Nebula in Sagittarius. Why an album with the title Islands (showing neither the name of the band nor that of the album on the original cover used in the UK and most other countries) would have a cover picture of stars in space seems highly odd. Perhaps the point is that the stars are rather like islands in how ‘lonely’ they seem out there.

I make this interpretation because I can see loneliness, alienation, and isolation as major themes in Sinfield’s lyrics, as well as there being a dialectical tension between being alone and being with other people. Note, in this connection, how isolate is etymologically linked with island.

II: Formentera Lady

Formentera is, fittingly for the album, part of the Balearic Island chain off the southern coast of Spain in the Mediterranean Sea. So, the “lady” of Formentera could be an actual lover Sinfield had there, or she could be a personification of the island itself. I’ll accept both interpretations, while leaning more towards the former of the two.

The song begins with a double bass, played by South African jazz musician Harry Miller, playing what will be the melody of the verses sung by Boz. This melody, in E minor, starts with a double descension of four notes, the second descension starting a whole tone lower and ending a major third lower. The first time Miller plays it, it’s with parallel perfect fifths below the melody; the second time, he plays single notes sul ponticello. The third time, he goes back to the fifths.

Then, Collins comes in with flute trills, and flurries of piano notes by Keith Tippett (whose jazzy playing was previously heard on Lizard and ITWOP) follow. We also hear chimes from Wallace.

Finally, Boz comes in singing the first verse, in which Sinfield describes what he sees on the island of Formentera: houses, the shore-line, and the vegetation there, as well as a “stony road.” Sinfield seems to be reminiscing about a time when he visited the island while on vacation, remembering the woman he loved while there.

The first two lines of the verses are in E minor, while the second two lines of each are in A minor, and the choruses will be in A major. In his solitude, Sinfield is “musing over man.”

When we hear the choruses, Boz plays a simple motif of two A notes again an again on the bass as he sings of Sinfield’s happiness with his lover. Wallace’s hi-hat and bass drum are heard in the background, with Collins on the flute playing the vocal melody before Boz sings it.

In the third verse, after more descriptions of life on Formentera (the activity of some of the people in particular), Sinfield makes an allusion to Homer‘s Odyssey. He compares himself to Odysseus and his lover to Circe, on whose island he and his men were lured, and many of them were turned into pigs by her magic.

The implication of this classical allusion is that his lady is rather like those ladies of the road, those groupies who tempted the lust of the musicians in King Crimson, turning them into the pigs who oink their lewd thoughts about the groupies on the first track of Side Two–in this sense a parallel of this first track on Side One. Now, however, Sinfield’s Circe is gone, but “still her perfume lingers, still her spell.”

He cannot forget how lovely she was. Without her now, he feels lonely, isolated, and alienated from her. Perhaps this is because when he’d had her, he’d been similarly porcine with her in his lust, making her no longer like him. Now he regrets his lewd acts with her.

Note that in the second chorus, the Formentera lady is a “dark lover,” like “dark Circe,” thus confirming my identification of the one with the other. The sexual union between her and Sinfield/Odysseus, followed by the separation of the two, is an example of the theme I mentioned earlier of the dialectical tension between being alone, like an island, and being with others.

After this second chorus is an instrumental outro that takes up just about all of the second half of the song. Wallace adds more percussion instruments, such as claves and a triangle. Collins solos on the flute, and soon after, on the sax. Fripp plays an acoustic guitar. Miller plucks the strings on his double bass.

Soprano Paulina Lucas vocalizes through most of this, representing the Formentera lady “sing[ing her] song for [us].” Her voice tends to hover from a high A or A-sharp, then descends chromatically to E or thereabouts; this descension is the near-reverse of Fripp’s guitar solo on “Ladies of the Road,” in which a more-or-less chromatic ascent of notes suggests a woman’s sighs during sex leading to orgasm. Perhaps the Formentera lady’s descending sighs are meant to suggest her gradual disappointment with her Odysseus.

We also hear strings play a melody of E, G-G, then E, G-A. We’ll hear this theme again early on in “Sailor’s Tale,” but on electric guitar and sax. The repeating of this theme suggests that the upcoming instrumental is a sequel to “Formentera Lady,” a continuation of the story of Sinfield/Odysseus wandering on the sea after leaving his Circe.

III: Sailor’s Tale

The instrumental begins, as Lucas’s voice fades out, with Wallace tapping the ride cymbal. The rhythm is a horizontal hemiola of alternating 6/8 and 3/4. Since such a rhythm is something of a cliché in Spanish and Latin American music, it is also a fitting way to continue the musical story of “Formentera Lady,” as is the aforementioned theme on the strings from then, and now played by Fripp and Collins. Also, the key of A in the chorus and instrumental outro of the previous track is kept in this one, though it’s in A minor now.

Wallace adds the bass drum and snare to the rhythm on the ride cymbal, and Boz plays A, C, A (an octave higher)-G-E in the upper-middle register of the bass, the up-and-down melodic contour suggesting the movement of the waves at sea. Then Fripp and Collins come in with that theme from the previous track. The switch from A major in “Formentera Lady” to A minor in “Sailor’s Tale” (with a brief change to A major before Collins’s frantic soprano sax solo) suggests the shift in Sinfield’s fortunes of being happy with his lover to being sad and alone without her (the notion of ‘happy’ major and ‘sad’ minor is of course an oversimplification, but the association is fitting given the themes of this album). Fripp is playing sustained electric guitar leads behind Collins’s solo.

In this music, one can visualize the change in Sinfield’s fortunes, from happy to sad, as represented by Odysseus the sailor and his crew being tossed about on the waves of the sea after leaving Circe’s island, ever thwarted by Poseidon. One can imagine the ultimate, horrific fate of the crew when they encounter Scylla, and soon after the giant whirlpool, Charybdis, killing a number of Odysseus’ men.

The middle section of the instrumental has the time signature changed to 4/4, with a slower and less frenetic pace, but a nonetheless ominous one. Boz plays A, C, D-E, G (and variations thereon) on the bass. The passage features Fripp playing splintery, angular, dissonant, and screaming chords on his Gibson, whose tone reminds us of that of a banjo. This would seem apt given the fact that Fripp’s trademark cross-picking technique shares a lot in common with banjo players’.

Pretty soon, we’ll hear Fripp’s Mellotron (string tapes) playing the sustained notes of an A minor 7th chord in the background, behind his relentless screaming phrases on the guitar. Collins will play a flute theme in dissonant counterpoint to the already tense atmosphere. One senses that the sailor (be he Odysseus, or whoever else) is not long for this world. He’ll die alone.

The music returns to that of the original, horizontal hemiola rhythm, with Fripp strumming a high-pitched, screaming A minor chord. The Mellotron comes in full force here, with string tapes and a low A note from the brass tapes. There’s a brief change to D minor, then back to A minor, and back to D minor, but this time much more dissonant and chaotic.

Finally, we hear only Fripp’s splintery, dissonant chords being strummed from up high, then descending until they reach a D minor chord, and a D major one. We sense that the sailor has perhaps fallen into the gaping mouth of Charybdis. The music ends with an eerie shift back and forth in parallel fourths in low A and D to A-sharp and D-sharp on the Mellotron (brass tapes).

IV: The Letters

The melody for the verses that Boz sings is derived from the vocal part for the Giles, Giles, and Fripp song “Why Don’t You Just Drop In,” from The Brondesbury Tapes compilation. The original lineup of King Crimson performed the G, G, and F song live, titled simply “Drop In“; it can be heard on the live album, Epitaph.

This second version sounds even more similar to “The Letters” in how the verses are sung with less consistent instrumental backing than on the first version (Ian McDonald‘s sax, with Giles’s drums later, in “Drop In”; and just Fripp playing soft electric guitar in the background in “The Letters“), and with a similar middle section with sax playing low pairs of notes. The G, G, and F version, in contrast, has a full, conventional instrumental background of guitar, bass, and drums, with harmonized vocals by both Peter Giles (also on bass) and his brother, drummer Michael.

“The Letters” begins softly and sadly, unlike the pop-oriented G, G, and F version, and unlike the jazzy King Crimson “Drop In.” As I said above, Fripp plays softly, in F-sharp minor. When Boz sings, it’s as though there’s no accompaniment at all; he seems all alone, alienated, and stranded on an island after his boat crashed from the sea storm in “Sailor’s Tale.”

Boz doesn’t sing about the pain of sailor Sinfield/Odysseus, though. Rather, “The Letters” is about a man’s wife and his mistress. The latter writes to the former, gloating about how she seduced him and made him cheat on his wife, who’s now insane with jealousy, of course.

Neither of Odysseus’ mistresses, Circe or Calypso, ever wrote letters to Penelope, boasting of having taken her husband to bed; but given her determination to be faithful to him after so many suitors tried to replace him as king of Ithaca, one could imagine Penelope’s rage had Circe or Calypso ever sent her such letters. Comparing the lyric of “The Letters” to such a possible mythical scenario can be evocative of how hot the rage of the betrayed wife must be.

We see in this adultery the dialectical tension between human connection and alienation, how the liaison between man and mistress alienates husband from wife, making her feel as stranded on an island as Odysseus would be after enduring a storm at sea. Could Sinfield have found himself in a jealous conflict between a wife or girlfriend on the one hand, and a groupie/Formentera lady on the other? Is such a conflict the basis of having the first track, “The Letters,” and “Ladies of the Road” on Islands?

The middle, instrumental section is, as I said above, similar to that of “Drop In,” with baritone and tenor saxes playing pairs of low notes in F-sharp. Fripp is playing sustained guitar leads over the saxes. In addition to the F-sharp pairs of notes, we also hear the saxes play a similar motif to that one on the strings in “Formentera Lady” and on the guitar and sax early on in “Sailor’s Tale.” The motif is F-sharp, A, and B, similar to the E, G, and A of the previous two tracks.

The music dies down, and we hear some soft (tenor?) sax playing, building up to a louder climax before the next verse. There’s brief silence before Boz belts out, “Impaled on nails of ice!” The jealous wife writes a reply letter to her husband’s mistress, telling her she’s murdered him and is about to kill herself. While Boz is singing this verse, we can hear Wallace banging about on the drums and cymbals, Collins on the flute, and Fripp’s guitar and Boz’s bass.

For the last four lines, in which Boz sings of the murder/suicide, they start with Wallace tapping on the ride cymbal a bit, then Boz’s voice is all alone. Adultery, jealousy, and killing lead to loneliness.

V: Ladies of the Road

So many rock bands out there have at least one or two naughty songs, celebrations of male lust and objectification of women. One can think of Led Zeppelin’s “Sick Again,” “Motherly Love,” by the Mothers of Invention, or Ted Nugent’s “Jailbait” as noteworthy examples. Even a band as ordinarily intellectual as King Crimson are no exception, as Sinfield’s lecherous lyric here demonstrates.

Yes, this song is naughtier than that second verse of “Easy Money,” the version usually played live. The title of this song makes it pretty obvious what it’s about. “Ladies of the Road” is the kind of song that may limit the number of female fans a band may have. As I myself have been guilty of, we men have to remember that women don’t exactly appreciate it when we write of our sexual feelings for them.

Still, as alienating to women as this song surely is, it is for this very reason that the song fits thematically with the others on Islands. In “Ladies of the Road,” we have another example of the dialectical tension between human connection (sex, in this case) and alienation (the result of treating women in the scurrilous way the song does).

The verses describe sexual encounters with various groupies in increasingly explicit terms. These girls include a hippie, an Asian (stereotypically presumed to be Chinese, and whose ungrammatical English is mocked: “Please, me no surrender”), and a stoner from San Francisco. The last verse frankly describes acts of fellatio and cunnilingus.

The chorus compares the girls to stolen apples, implying the rough, possessive, and sexualizing treatment they’ve been subjected to by the rockers. Nonetheless, these girls “are versed in the truth,” that is, they know what they’re getting into. They have sexual agency: they aren’t wide-eyed, innocent virgins merely being ruined by these lascivious men, and they know the men’s true nature far better than the men know the girls. Perhaps this admission mitigates the song’s sexism, if only a little bit.

The song is in E, with a blues-like feel, though without the standard 12-bar chord progression. Instead, the chords are seventh-chord oriented, in E, A, C, and B for the verses; during the guitar and sax solos, it’s generally in E, and for the twice-heard chorus, there’s a chromatic descension of C-sharp minor, C augmented, E major 2nd inversion, B-flat half-diminished, and A major 7th to G sharp to A major 7th.

At first, Boz sings it with just Fripp’s chordal backing and blues licks on the guitar, and with Wallace shaking a tambourine. In the middle of the second verse, Wallace starts stomping on the bass drum, and Boz starts playing the bass.

Collins does a deliberately grating tenor sax solo after the second verse. I remember hating the harshness of the solo when I first heard it (on The Young Person’s Guide to King Crimson double LP compilation, back in my teens); it didn’t take me long, though, to understand the meaning of the grating sound. I recall a quote from Frank Zappa: “On a saxophone you can play sleaze.” That’s exactly what Collins is doing here. Like Fripp’s guitar solo to come (pardon the expression), Collins’s sax sounds like the squealing voice of a groupie approaching orgasm, which in turn is represented by Fripp’s distorted guitar immediately following Collins’s solo.

During the sax solo, we fortuitously also hear that motif of the fifth, flat seventh, and upper root note, the motif heard in all three songs on Side One that I mentioned before, though here it’s B (6 times, like the sax in the middle section of “The Letters,” though 8 times there), D (flattened a bit), and E. The motif is later buried during the verses in Boz’s bass line, just where the chord goes up from E to A, hence E, G, and A.

During the second playing of the chorus, the flute sound we hear isn’t played by Collins: as it says on the credits for this track on the inner sleeve of The Young Person’s Guide to King Crimson, Fripp plays a Mellotron (flute tapes), while Collins only plays sax, and he and Wallace sing backing vocals. Note also how the music during the verses and solos is all the masculine stereotype of sexual aggression, while the music of the two choruses is all gentle and pretty, the feminine stereotype. Would it be any other way?

VI: Prelude: Song of the Gulls

The harmonic progression at the beginning of this classical-music-oriented instrumental is derived from another, of the same musical style, from The Cheerful Insanity of Giles, Giles and Fripp–namely, the slow middle section of Fripp’s “Suite No. 1.” The progression is one of tonic major, mediant, sub-dominant, and back to tonic: E major, G-sharp minor, A major, and back to E major.

The first three chords of this progression, incidentally, are also a slight variation on that E, G, A motif I keep bringing up, the only difference being the sharpening of the G. There is a group of session string players (also heard playing the E, G, G and E, G, A motif toward the end of “Formentera Lady”) who are playing arpeggiated pizzicato notes of the backing chords, while strings also play the E, G-sharp, A, F-sharp, and E melody arco, with Robin Miller‘s oboe playing a harmony line in thirds above it–G-sharp, B, C-sharp, A, and G-sharp. Note how the intervals of the first three notes in the oboe line parallel those of the E, G, A motif.

Rhythmically, the music is in a slow, waltz-like 3/4 time. There is a melancholy to this music, especially when it shifts to the relative minor, in C-sharp, and those pizzicato arpeggiated notes are now played arco.

This melancholy will become clearer when we come to the final, title track of the album, on which we hear Boz singing, “Gaunt granite climbs where gulls wheel and glide/Mourfully cry o’er my island.” The sadness of the song of the gulls is an expression of the loneliness one feels when left alienated and isolated, as if left on an island, for alienation and isolation are the central themes of Islands.

VII: Islands

The song begins with a soft piano chord by Tippett in C-sharp minor. Boz sings of Sinfield being “encircled by sea” on his island, where “waves sweep the sand” (i.e., pull the sand off the land and into the sea), implying a slow eating away of himself in his loneliness and isolation. Remember that this C-sharp minor is the same key as the shift to the melancholy relative minor in the previous track.

His “sunsets fade,” and he’ll “wait only for rain.” “Love erodes [his] high-weathered walls/Which fend off the tide…[on his] island.” Love and heartbreak are eating his heart away. The next verse includes the reference to the gulls that “mournfully cry o’er [his] islands.” The piano continues to back Boz’s voice, as does a bass flute played by Collins.

The melodic contour of Boz’s vocal part is to an extent the inverse of his vocal line for the verses of “Formentera Lady.” On that track, his voice did two descensions of four notes, recall, the second of these a whole tone lower; in “Islands,” it’s two ascensions of three notes, the second of these also a whole tone lower. It’s as though “Islands” is the opposite in mood to “Formentera Lady,” which happily reminisces about Sinfield’s lover. In “Islands,” he is just sad and alone without her on his island, like Odysseus on Calypso’s island of Ogygia, missing his Penelope.

The chord progression for the verses is C-sharp minor, G-sharp minor, F-sharp minor, and G-sharp minor. The chorus has a chord progression of E major to A major, going back and forth three times.

Above, I mentioned a pair of three-note vocal ascensions. These occur during the verses, on the G-sharp minor and F-sharp minor chords, and they can be heard as variations on the E, G, A motif, though here the notes are G-sharp, A, and B, then F-sharp, G-sharp, and A…or root, minor second, and minor third, rather than root, minor third, and perfect fourth.

So, what can this motif be said to represent? I’d say it represents a stepping up from the water onto the shore of an island, which in turn represents a moving away from human connection to loneliness, alienation, and isolation.

To go back to the lyric, Sinfield’s “dawn bride’s veil…dissolves in the sun, love’s web is spun.” Is the bride his Formentera lady, who left him, thus dissolving in the sun, or was she his wife or girlfriend, having left him after learning of his affair with the Formentera lady? In any case, “love’s web” drew him in like a fly and caught him, and now he’s alone. In this connection, who are the prowling cats, and who are the running mice–the rock band and groupies, respectively, or vice versa?

The chorus seems to give us a happy resolution for the lonely islander. Boz sings of “infinite peace” under the water, where “islands join hands ‘neath heaven’s sea.” I’d say this is his wish-fulfillment, a fantasy of rejoining the social world as a hallucinatory cure to his loneliness. “Heaven’s sea” is that infinite ocean of all-unifying Brahman, to link his Atman with the pantheistic Absolute (it can also represent human connection). To attain this state of nirvana, though, one mustn’t go around lusting after groupies. In any case, “islands join[ing] hands” is yet another example of the dialectical tension in this album between human connection and isolation.

After the first chorus and some soft piano, we hear Mark Charig‘s cornet over a pedal harmonium played by Fripp. After Boz sings the chorus again, the piano comes back with Miller’s oboe, then Boz sings the next verse.

The melancholy of lonely Sinfield comes back in this third verse, with such imagery as “Dark harbour quays like fingers of stone/Hungrily reach from my island.” He’d hungrily reach for and clutch at the “words, pearls, and gourds” of sailors (i.e., the love of human company), items of love “strewn on [his] shore,” if only they were real and not a product of his imagination. Instead, all that he has on his island will just “return to the sea.” He’ll even lose what little he has there, in his desolation.

That wish-fulfilling chorus is repeated, then the cornet returns with the pedal harmonium and piano accompaniment. Fripp will add Mellotron (strings tapes), while Wallace softly hits the cymbals. The song ends with a slow fade-out on the pedal harmonium.

VII: Once With the Oboe, Once Without It, and Then, We’ve Finished

I’ll bet Fripp had fun pretending to be a conductor, counting out the time and waving an imaginary baton for the orchestra to start playing.

People speak of an epidemic of male loneliness these days. It shouldn’t be trivialized, but what a lot of men need to understand (as I wish I had, during my own lonely and embittered youth), is that a reactionary, disrespectful attitude towards women and everyone/everything else won’t cure that loneliness. In our alienated world, a lot of women are lonely, too. One should punch up at the ruling class responsible for that loneliness, divisiveness, and alienation, not down at the “girls of the road.”