Yes, Angkor Wat

Play this at my funeral: To return to the centre.

Ps: the next youTube video was Selling England by the Pound

Yes music for the day: Foot Prints

 A bit of self-indulgence here (OK, more self-indulgence).

As some of you know, the British "progressive" rock band Yes is one of my favorites.  I started listening to them in 1970.  For various reasons, I didn't follow them after 1973, and they fell out of favor with the taste-makers, so I had little encouragement to go back to them.  A few years back somebody gave me a near-complete collection of Yes and to my surprise I found that what I liked about Yes, the soaring instrumental music, was well represented  in most of the later albums.  Listening to the music through earbuds, I find myself in the best songs sinking down through layers of astonishing interwoven beauty.

I attach a  YouTube piece Footprints. Up until 2:20 both the music and lyrics are rather sappy.  But I find the rest astonishingly good, especially the music but even most of the lyrics.  The sections that begin at 2;20 3:30  4:50 7:40 ;will show you what I mean.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3lngl3P6cs

Time and a word

And the word is "Yes."

I've talked about the divine nature of music here. How about evidence of time travel?

In 1971 the British band Yes put out "The Yes Album" one of the best they ever did (and they've got more than a double handful of truly excellent albums). In the song Yours is No Disgrace was the mysterious phrase "Send an instant comment to me..." What they meant by it, I don't know, but just by living a half-century, more or less, the phrase has become not at all remarkable.

One of my favorite late-Yes songs (1997) is "Open Your Eyes," which has the all-too-relevant lines:

We cast the world, we set the stage

For what could be the darkest age

By itself, evidence of nothing. But it does go one to describe:

Short exchanges

From perfect strangers

We'll never know

Evidence of nothing except maybe an uncanny resonance in the imaginations of the band members.

Time to face reality

Yes, Budapest, 1998

More Yes lyrics for the new year

Sad preacher nailed upon the coloured door of time

Insane teacher be there reminded of the rhyme

There'll be no mutant enemy we shall certify

Political ends as sad remains will die

Reach out as forward tastes begin to enter you.

I listened hard but could not see

Life tempo change out and inside me

The preacher trained in all to lose his name

The teacher travels, asking to be shown the same

In the end we'll agree, we'll accept, we'll immortalize

That the truth of man maturing in his eyes

All complete in the sight of seeds of life with you.

Some lyrics from Yes for the new year

Speak to me of summer
Long winters longer
 than time can remember
Setting up of other roads
To travel on in old accustomed ways

I still remember the talks by the water
The proud sons and daughters
That knew the knowledge of the land
And spoke to me in sweet accustomed ways

Close to the Edge

I was in Colorado recently and more than once, for obvious reasons, this song by Yes popped into my head.

Thank you, Yes for joy and pleasure over the decades. PS. From a comment on YouTube: "I was a little girl when this album came out but my siblings were 9 and 11 years older than me and this music cranked on their stereos, along with all the other earth-shattering music of the time. It was like being in the company of angels hearing these artists..."

For the proud daughters

Speak to me of summer,
Long winters longer
Than time can remember,
Setting up of other roads,
Travel on in old accustomed ways.
I still remember the talks by the water,
The proud sons and daughters
That knew the knowledge of the land,
And spoke to me in sweet accustomed ways.