Tag: writing

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.”

The Tanah–The Laws, Book 2, Chapter 6

[The following is the twenty-sixth 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, and here is the twenty-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.]

One of the purposes of war, usually the main one, if not the exclusive one, is to steal the land from those invaded and to enrich one’s own nation at the expense of the invaded. Such a truism leads us to a discussion of the next sin.

Magic should never be used in aid of stealing, or to gain excessive wealth at the expense of others.

There are so many different ways to steal, apart from the obvious, direct forms of thievery that we usually punish the poor for committing. Yet it is the less obvious forms of thievery that are so rarely punished by lawmakers, since it is often those very lawmakers who are guilty of those indirect forms of stealing!

Even without the punishments of the state for those less-known thieves, there will be a way that those thieves will one day be punished. That punishment will come from the law of sow and reap that is the Echo Effect.

There is thievery through grand or petty larceny, there is thievery through the spoils of war, and there is thievery through the accumulation of wealth by making poor workers produce that wealth and not remunerating them in proportion to the value that they create. Not paying them enough is stealing.

The effects of this subtle kind of stealing are obvious. One need only see the stark contrast between the thieves, who live in opulence and luxury, and those stolen from, who live in filth, want, and wretchedness. A day is no longer for the wealthy than it is for the poor. The wealthy cannot be working much harder than the poor are to deserve such wealth…if the wealthy are even working as hard as the poor, or if they are even working at all.

Using magic spells that take the energy and effort of the working poor to multiply the wealth of these thieves is an especially grievous sin, making not only rich and poor individuals, but making also rich and poor families, who pass on their excess or lack from the parents’ generations to their children’s. This inheritance of abundance or want is never earned through proportionate work.

The inheritance of abundance or want is also spread throughout the world like an infectious disease. We Luminosians, enslaved by the Zoyans and yearning for liberation, must heed the warning never to take what is not ours, especially not with the aid of magic. The eighth of the Ten Errors is clear on this point. The temptation to commit this sin must be resisted. In our enslavement by the Zoyans, we have felt the sting of being punished for committing the sin. When liberated one day, we must not let ourselves be tempted to steal again, be it through direct acts of larceny, through stealing from workers, or through stealing others’ lands.

If after our liberation, we don’t heed these warnings, the Echo Effect will bring us the misfortune of being stolen from and made poor. We must not think we will be safe from such misfortunes if we ever sin again!

The Tanah–The Laws, Book 2, Chapter 5

[The following is the twenty-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, and here is the twenty-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.]

There is one particularly wicked way to control others, and to be cruel to others at the same time. This way is through the taking away of another people’s land by use of military force, and this brings us to a discussion of the next sin.

Magic should never be used in aid of starting wars.

Now, using magic in aid of defending one’s land against invading armies, or in aid of resistance against an occupying power, is a perfectly worthy aim. We elders do not recommend, however, that we Luminosians, currently under the yoke of the Zoyans, should use magic in resistance against them. Indeed, we should not resist the Zoyans at all, for it is the Echo Effect, the law of sow and reap, that justly put us in bondage to them as punishment for our having invaded the city of Zaga and oppressed and killed their people. The Echo Effect will one day free us of the Zoyans, once our penance is complete; we must have faith in the eventual arrival of the judgement of the Echo Effect.

It is indeed providential that the name of the people who oppress us, the Zoyans, should be so similar to the name of the people we Luminosians once oppressed, the Zagans. In this similarity of names, the Echo Effect seems to be teaching us something of the law of sow and reap. What we do to others will one day come back to us, like our voices echoing back to us.

We had succeeded in using magic in aid of liberating ourselves from the Tenebrosians, as related in “Migrations,” because our bondage to those people was not a reaping of any evil we had sown. Our invasion of the city of Zaga, however, had a success that would not last because it was evil. We therefore should not use magic in aid of liberating ourselves from the Zoyans; nor should we–once we are finally liberated from the Zoyans, through the Echo Effect–ever contemplate invading, making war with, and oppressing another people, especially not with the aid of magic.

War is political murder, and murder is one of the Ten Errors as related in “Beginnings.” One must never kill or harm another, except when absolutely necessary, as in self-defence or the defence of others.

No people has the right to take land away from another people. If one people has done so, in order to mitigate the punishment of the Echo Effect, they should restore the land they stole to its original inhabitants as soon as they realize the gravity of their sin; for if they do not do so, terrible will be their loss one day!

We Luminosians, enslaved by the Zoyans, are a lesson in history, not only to the children of our posterity, but also to the peoples of all nations of the earth. If ever you invade other lands and kill their people, you will one day have your land, stolen as it is, stolen from you, and you will be killed, too! The use of magic in aid of such sins only strengthens and intensifies the sin, resulting in a harsher punishment for you!

The Tanah–The Laws, Book 2, Chapter 4

[The following is the twenty-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, and here is the twenty-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.]

There are many ways to be cruel to others, and to use magic in aid of being cruel to others; but there is one form of cruelty that deserves special attention, and so we will focus on that here.

Magic should never be used in aid of controlling others.

We have seen in Chapter Two how magic can be, and mustn’t be, used in aid of seducing others. We gave the example from the writing called “The Migrations” how a Luminosian boy used magic to seduce a girl living next to his home, and how after using her to satisfy his lust, he beat her to death when she, realizing after his magic’s power had worn off, was horrified at what he had done to her.

We repeat the same warnings again and again because they are never heeded, and we will continue to make the same warnings until they are finally heeded! Just before the writing of this chapter, another young Luminosian, among us slaves here in Zoya, used magic to help him seduce a Zoyan woman. He was discovered with her in bed, her slave, and then taken away to be put to death. Some never learn.

Seducing others is a form of controlling others. It must be stopped among us Luminosians if we are to have any hope of liberation from our Zoyan masters. They used magic to help them control and enslave us. We must not think, as some Luminosians do, that using magic to control the Zoyans and enslave them will be our revenge on them, as that boy did.

The law of sow and reap that is the Echo Effect does not come about through man’s attempts at manipulating it. The Echo Effect works of its own accord, as a direct consequence of man’s actions. The Zoyans will one day receive the Echo Effect from their own control and enslaving of us; we Luminosians, too, will receive the Echo Effect from our own control and enslaving of others!

There are those who rule a country who may use magic to control, seduce, enslave, and lie to others in order to strengthen their power. Upon the day of our liberation from Zoya, we Luminosians must resist the temptation, when founding a new nation for ourselves, to use magic to be tyrannical rulers. If we tyrannize others with the aid of magic, the Echo Effect will ensure that we one day will be tyrannized again, as we are now under the Zoyans.

Magic must never be used in aid of telling lies to others, to create false proof of lies. Heads of state may create such false events to bolster their power, or people in communities, families, places of work, or schools may do so to harm others. Such sinning must be condemned and stopped if our people are to survive, be free again, and grow. If we allow liars to use magic to make their falsehoods seem more vivid, and their illusions seem more true, then one day, the lies will come back to us all in the most convincing of illusions. The Echo Effect will make disproving those illusions impossible!

The Tanah–The Laws, Book 2, Chapter 3

[The following is the twenty-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, and here is the twenty-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.]

There is the sinful use of magic in aid of indecent pleasure, and there is also the sinful use of magic in aid of inflicting undeserved pain on others. This leads us to a discussion of the second sin on the list from the first chapter.

Magic should never be used in aid of cruelty to others.

Such cruelty is not to be limited to cruelty to one’s fellow man, but also cruelty to animals, the needless destruction of plant life, or that of any form of life in our world. Killing of any kind must have justification and be necessary.

Cruelty exists in many forms, and magic can and has been used in aid of these forms. They include beatings, intimidation of the weaker and smaller, torture, murder, sexual violation for the purpose of causing another pain, the spread of lies and slanders, and many others.

The Luminosians, on the taking of Zaga and in their rule of it, were guilty of all of these cruelties, as well as the use of magic in their aid.

When Zagans tried to resist the Luminosian theft of their land, we used magic to aid us in beating them. The magic spells we used gave us greater force in our fists and the clubs we used to hit them with.

Against Zagan resistance, we also used magic in aid of intimidation. Our magic spells made us appear larger, fiercer, and more frightening to the Zagans, making them recoil and retreat.

We Luminosians would capture Zagan resistors and subject them to torture. We would use magic spells to sharpen and intensify the pain we inflicted on them, to deter the rest of them from resisting us.

Other Zagans, who tried more aggressive forms of resistance, what we called ‘terror,’ were murdered by us. We Luminosians used magic spells to murder many more Zagans than ordinary weapons could, and our spells made the deaths far more painful and slow than ordinary weapons could. This sin of ours was the true terror.

While in the previous chapter, we discussed uses of magic in the aid of using women, girls, and even animals for the sake of filthy, lewd pleasures for oneself, there is also the use of magic for such filthy and lewd use of these objects of supposed love that is meant to inflict pain. This sin was often committed by Luminosians against Zagan women and girls, as part of our intimidation and subjugation of all Zagans.

We also used magic spells to help spread lies and slanders against Zagans, calling them ‘uncivilized,’ ‘barbarian,’ ‘animals,’ and the like, in order to justify our cruelty to them. The magic spells were used on our own people, so Luminosians would never doubt the lies about the Zagans. Only a few of us had the wisdom not to allow ourselves to fall under the spells of the wicked among us.

In time, all these evils came back to us in kind! The Zoyans use their own magic to aid them in beating, intimidating, torturing, murdering, raping, and slandering us. The Echo Effect returned our sins to us. Those sins will also be returned to the Zoyans one day, freeing us finally. When that day comes, we must remember never to use magic for evil again!

The Tanah–The Laws, Book 2, Chapter 2

[The following is the twenty-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, and here is the twenty-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.]

Once we have listed the sinful uses of magic, as we have just done previously, we can give examples of them, as well as details as to what specifically makes these uses of magic so sinful. We shall start with the first sin on the list.

Magic should never be used in aid of lewdness, the enjoyment of erotic pleasure at others’ expense.

Sex is for procreation and the raising of a family, and is to be enjoyed in those confines. It is not to be enjoyed when corrupting or taking advantage of others, and therefore using magic for such corrupting or exploitive purposes is especially sinful.

Magic must never be used to seduce others to enjoy them when they, if not under the influence of magic, would never consent to it. Such a use is violation, ravishing. The Unity of Action is manifest in this sinful use of magic, since the love of the object of one’s passion quickly turns into hate upon seeing the object not wishing to be used thus. It is written, in “The Migrations,” how a young Luminosian burned in passion for a girl, his neighbour in Zaga, the place we Luminosians shamefully stole from the people who’d lived there before. The boy used magic to have her, and when the magic’s power wore off, she realized what he’d done and screamed. Then his love turned into hate, and he beat her to death.

Magic must never be used to seduce and take to bed any member of one’s family. Again, the Unity of Action turns love into hate here, for the proper love of family, in acting so shamefully, destroys that love and makes parents and children, brothers and sisters, uncles and nieces, and even distant cousins, hate each other.

Magic must never be used in aid of adultery, be it a married woman with another man, or a married man with another woman. Both are equally wrong. These again, through the Unity of Action, which makes all opposing things as one, turn love into hate: hate of the paramour who tempted the lust of the married one, and hatred of the spouse one was disloyal to, as well as the hatred of the betrayed spouse.

Magic must never be used in aid of engaging in lewd, filthy acts with animals. Such behaviour is bestial, disgusting, and perverse. It makes oneself as filthy as the animal one has violated and polluted. Again, love of animals is corrupted into hate of them, and hate of oneself for acting so shamefully.

All of these hateful uses of magic were indulged in by the Luminosians during our time of the theft of Zaga, these sinful uses as well as others far too foul and disgusting to be named. In our captivity by the Zoyans, the innocent have been punished as well as the guilty, for not even one Luminosian has ever been truly innocent. We never punished the guilty, not even the elders who gave such vociferous warning against their sin. Thus, the Echo Effect punished us all–man and child.

For these reasons, we Luminosians now in captivity must be strict in our punishment of any among us guilty of using magic in aid of lewdness and the corrupting or exploiting of objects of base passions. If the lewd one suffers the pain of disease, this will be punishment enough for him: give him no medical treatment. If no disease results, The following will be the punishments.

Adulterers will be divorced and shunned from society. Mild or moderate transgressions will be punished with incarceration for a year. Those who are filthy with animals or family members will have their genitals mutilated or cut off. Rapists will be publicly executed.

It is far better that one offender be punished than the entire community for his sins.

Commentary

Readers must remember that these are ancient texts, from about two millennia ago, and therefore they reflect the common prejudices and preconceptions of the time. Such prejudices include the, however only implied in the text, condemnation of homosexuality: “Sex is for procreation and the raising of a family, and is to be enjoyed in those confines”; also, “…these sinful uses as well as others far too foul and disgusting to be named” (i.e., ‘the love that dare not speak its name’). We scholars are only translating…not condoning…such prejudices.

Similarly, punishments are harsh, justified by a fear of collective punishment as a result of bad karma from The Echo Effect, as was believed to have happened to all of the Luminosians as a result of the occupation of Zaga and their lenience with sex offenders at the time. Again, we translators are only informing the reader of such draconian laws, not defending them.

Analysis of ‘Murder on the Orient Express’

Murder on the Orient Express is a murder mystery novel written by Agatha Christie and published in 1934. The novel’s original American name on publication that year was Murder in the Calais Coach, so as not to confuse it with Graham Greene‘s 1932 novel, Stamboul Train, which in the US was published as Orient Express.

HRF Keating included MOTOE in his list of the “100 Best Crime and Mystery Books.” Mystery Writers of America included the novel in The Top 100 Mystery Novels of All Time list in 1995. MOTOE was included in Entertainment Weekly‘s 2014 list of the Nine Great Christie Novels.

It has been adapted for radio, film, TV, the stage, comics, and video games. As for the two film adaptations, I’ll be focusing on the 1974 one as a comparison to the novel, and not the 2017 version, because first of all, I’ve seen the former version and not the latter, and second, the former is generally considered to be much better than the latter, in spite of the latter’s strong cast and good production values.

The 1974 adaptation’s ensemble cast includes Albert Finney (as Hercule Poirot), Martin Balsam, George Coulouris, Richard Widmark, Sean Connery, Lauren Bacall, Anthony Perkins, John Gielgud, Michael York, Jean-Pierre Cassell, Jacqueline Bisset, Wendy Hiller, Vanessa Redgrave, Rachel Roberts, Colin Blakely, Denis Quilley, and Ingrid Bergman (who won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her portrayal of Greta Ohlsson in 1974).

Here is a link to quotes from the 1974 adaptation.

Now, the crucial element of MOTOE, the motive for murder being the case of the kidnapping and killing of the little girl, Daisy Armstrong, was inspired by a real-life kidnapping and murder case, that of the son of Charles Lindbergh, back in 1932. There are a number of other parallels in Christie’s novel with the Lindbergh case, too: the parents were famous, the mother was pregnant, the child, a firstborn, was kidnapped for ransom directly from the crib, and the child was killed even after the ransom had been paid. The Lindbergh maid was suspected of complicity in the crime, and after a harsh police interrogation, she killed herself, just as in the novel.

Linked to the Armstrong case as prompting the murder of the suspect, who though responsible for the crime had escaped justice through corruption and legal technicalities (as well as his leaving the US), is the issue of whether or not vigilante justice is valid. In a world of corrupt courts and governments, where the wealthy can pay their way out of having to face justice for any crimes they commit, that very justice is still needful, and when the crime is so heinous–like the killing of a little girl–that it is unbearable, then even Poirot can see that vigilantism should be winked at.

Now, if you’ve never read the book or seen an adaptation of it, read no further to avoid spoilers. If you know the solution to the murder, though, read on.

The murder victim calls himself Samuel Ratchett, but his real name is Cassetti, and he’s an American gangster responsible for the kidnapping and murder of Daisy Armstrong. As is the case with any murder victim in a detective novel like MOTOE, he has an extremely unlikeable personality, so the reader is left wondering which of the suspects hates him just enough to want to murder him. As far as Poirot is concerned, he comes to dislike Ratchett right upon his first meeting with him, and thus refuses to be employed to protect him (Christie, pages 19-31).

As for the guilty in the average murder mystery, we may assume there to be one, maybe two, killer(s). In the case of MOTOE, though, all of the passengers on the train in the coach which includes the area including and between compartments four and sixteen, starting with that of Pierre Michel (Cassell) and ending with that of Edward Henry Masterman (Beddoes in the film–Gielgud) and Antonio Foscarelli (Quilley), that is, except for the Countess Helena Andrenyi (Bisset, though in the film, we see her and her husband, the Count Rudolph Andrenyi [York], hold the knife and stab together) and, of course, Poirot, are collectively guilty of the murder.

Ratchett is thus stabbed twelve times, with varying degrees of strength or weakness. Each stab is from one of the suspects, so there are twelve of them, making up a kind of vigilante jury…and a “trial by jury is a sound system” (page 134), according to Col. John Arbuthnot (Connery), which is something Poirot emphasizes later as being “composed of twelve people” (page 266).

So, their twelve-man jury is meant to give a kind of juridical legitimacy to their revenge, since the actual law has failed them. They aren’t merely murdering a man–they’re passing a death sentence onto him, as he had onto the sweet little three-year-old girl.

Note also that it isn’t just she who died. Recall the suicide maid accused of complicity in Ratchett’s crime. There are also Daisy’s father and mother: she, Sonia, gave birth prematurely to a still-born child and died herself as a result of the labour; he, Col. Armstrong, shot himself out of grief. So the revenge of the ‘jury’ wasn’t just for the death of the little girl, but for a total of five deaths, all just to sate Cassetti’s greed.

Let us now consider who the ‘jurors’ are, what their relationships are–by blood or not–with Daisy and the other four, and therefore what their exact motives are. Mrs. Caroline Hubbard (Bacall) is revealed to be the American actress Linda Arden, and the maternal grandmother of Daisy, and so also Sonia Armstrong’s mother. Mary Debenham (Redgrave), mistress of Arbuthnot, is an English governess and thus formerly that of Daisy; as for Arbuthnot, Col. Armstrong was his best friend. Princess Natalia Dragomiroff (Hiller) is Sonia Armstrong’s godmother. Hector MacQueen (Perkins) is Ratchett’s secretary and translator, a job he got to get close to Cassetti; MacQueen’s father was the Armstrongs’ lawyer, and MacQueen also had feelings for Sonia. Count Andrenyi takes the place of the Countess in the murder, she being Sonia’s sister. Foscarelli was the Armstrongs’ chauffeur.

There are still a few more. Greta Ohlsson (Bergman) is a Swedish missionary who was Daisy’s nurse. Masterman became Rathett’s valet to get close to him; he was Col. Armstrong’s batman in the war and his valet in New York. Hildegarde Schmidt (Roberts) is Princess Dragomiroff’s German maid; she was formerly the Armstrongs’ cook. Cyrus Hardman (Blakely) is an American former policeman who was in love with the French maid who killed herself after being falsely accused of aiding and abetting Cassetti. Michel is the Orient Express train conductor and father of the suicide maid.

When we see who these characters are, we can then understand that the five deaths are not just a statistic. These people deeply grieved over the losses of those they loved. And when they saw the corrupt court wink at Cassetti for the pain and suffering he caused them, just through his having paid off the authorities, can you even begin to imagine the rage that swelled in the hearts of that dozen or so people? There was no way that they would let Cassetti get away with what he did.

Now, Ohlsson in her religiosity would naturally have found it almost impossible to reconcile her Christian beliefs with her participation in a murder; she surely gave Ratchett one of the weakest of the stabs. In the novel, when reminded by Poirot of the Armstrong case, she gets all emotional, saying that the killing of the little girl “tries one’s faith.” (page 110) The commandment, ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ must have been ringing in her ears forever since she gave that stab; indeed, Bergman as Ohlsson quotes the commandment in the 1974 film.

Still, she may find some solace in that very same Bible she surely has with her all the time. She can read Ecclesiastes: “To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose after heaven.” (3:1) Then she can read a little past that: “a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to break down and a time to build.” (3:3) Yes, even in the Bible, it says there’s a time to kill.

There are times when the law fails us, when the government and the ruling classes whom these institutions work for (as opposed to working for the common people!) grow so rank in their filth and self-serving that the people must rise up and take the law into their own hands. The killers of Cassetti all come from different countries, classes, and backgrounds, ranging everywhere from a Russian princess to an Italian-American chauffeur/car salesman; such a diversity of walks of life shows the universality of their passion to seek justice through unavoidably violent means.

As Mrs. Hubbard explains towards the end of the novel, “It wasn’t only that he was responsible for my daughter’s death and her child’s, and that of the other child who might have been alive and happy now. It was more than that. There had been other children before Daisy–there might be others in the future. Society has condemned him; we were only carrying out the sentence.” (page 273)

Very often, when an act of vigilante justice is acted out against any of these rich, powerful people, as in the case with Luigi Mangione against the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, there will be those liberals out there who condemn Mangione’s violence, but stay silent over the repeated violence of the denial of health insurance claims, which leads to many deaths or bankruptcies. When confronted with the Gaza genocide, these liberals will pipe in, “But do you condemn Hamas?”

The fact that the twelve killers are of all different social classes, from royalty to the working class, can be see to symbolize people from across the political spectrum: left, centre, and right. Such people in our real world–being enraged at the injustices of the corrupt health insurance industry, government in bed with corporations, and Zionism’s ongoing atrocities against the Palestinians–may have differing diagnoses of these problems, but their anger is the same. The anger and presumed political attitudes of the twelve killers can be considered to be similar.

As for Ratchett/Cassetti, he–as a rich mafia man paying off the courts so he can escape punishment for his crimes–can be seen to personify predatory capitalism, a representation I’ve made in many other blog posts.

Poirot proffers up two possible solutions to this murder case on the train. The first, contrived by the actual killers obviously to shield themselves from suspicion, is that a man boarded the train at Vinkovci, disguised himself as a conductor, and killed Cassetti as part of a mafia feud, then left the train before it went off again and got caught in the snowdrift that has kept the train from moving during this entire investigation.

Evidence of this simple first solution includes the discovery of a conductor’s uniform, with a missing button, in a large suitcase among the belongings of the princess’s lady-in-waiting, Hildegarde Schmidt (page 194). Elsewhere, there has been Mrs. Hubbard’s vociferous complaining of a man being in her compartment around the time of the murder, a complaining given with particular loquacity in Bacall’s performance.

Yet Poirot is able to piece together what really happened through various slips of the tongue from the suspects and certain inconsistencies in how the events of the night of the murder were presented to him–the far more complex solution that incriminates the twelve suspects. Examples of such slips include Schmidt’s freely-given boast that all of her ladies have praised her cooking, implying that she was the Armstrongs’ cook. Inconsistencies include the understanding that it was Cassetti calling out, on the night of the murder, something in French, a language he couldn’t speak a word of, hence his employment of MacQueen as his translator.

Still, in the end, after contemplating how, as Finney’s Poirot puts it, “a repulsive murderer has himself been repulsively, and perhaps deservedly, murdered,” as well as considering Mrs. Hubbard’s long speech at the end of the novel, explaining the twelve killers’ reasons, which include how “Cassetti’s money had managed to get him off” (page 272), the first solution is preferred.

This judgement is made by Monsieur Bouc (Bianchi in the film–Balsam), who is a director of the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits, and Dr. Stavros Constantine (Coulouris) at the very end of the novel (page 274), leaving Poirot to retire from the case. As we can see, compassion for the twelve is far more fitting than for Cassetti. It is their crime, and not his, that should be winked at. Those in power should be the ones brought down when guilty of a crime, not the powerless.

Agatha Christie, Murder on the Orient Express, London, HarperCollins, 1934

The Tanah–The Laws, Book 2, Chapter 1

[The following is the twenty-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, and here is the twentieth–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 best uses of magic, coupled with the old teachings as a guide, have been outlined in writings from before. Now, we must focus on the worst uses of magic, why they must be avoided, what the sins are behind the intentions of this worst use of magic, and the inevitable consequences of such a use of it.

These evil uses of magic have been described in some detail in previous writings, but we must warn again of these evils, and repeat the warnings many times, for so many people never heed us. We must enumerate these evils one by one and give specific instances of them, how they arise, and what results from each of them, hoping that at least some fools will think twice before using these evil spells.

A studious review of the Echo Effect, with its laws of sow and reap, as well as of the Ten Errors, the very sins that lead to the use of the evil spells, should be enough to deter any from being tempted into using the evil spells.

Magic should never be used in aid of lewdness, the enjoyment of erotic pleasure at others’ expense.

Magic should never be used in aid of cruelty to others.

Magic should never be used in aid of controlling, manipulating, or exploiting other people.

Magic should never be used in aid of starting wars.

Magic should never be used in aid of taking the land of other peoples.

Magic should never be used in aid of gaining excesses of wealth.

Magic should never be used in aid of stealing from others.

Magic should never be used in aid of oneself, to the exclusion of others’ needs.

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