There are two songs in my music library that are well-known but always lead to questions when I play them. Not coincidently, both songs reference mountains. A mountain, both timeless and unmoving, should not suddenly appear or disappear. And yet, in both songs mountains do something actively, throwing the listener out of kilter.<\/p>\n
The first song is \u201cRoundabout\u201d by Yes. With the lyric, \u201cIn and around the lake\/mountains come out of the sky\/and they stand there.\u201d The second is Donovan\u2019s \u201cThere Is a Mountain,\u201d with the stanza \u201cFirst there is a mountain\/then there is no mountain\/then there is.\u201d Both songs play with the permanence of mountains. But if we were to take them literally, they actually make sense.<\/p>\n
In \u201cRoundabout,\u201d one can imagine a lake covered in mist, obscuring long-distance vision. As the mist clears, distant mountains seem to come out of the sky. Obviously, then, the mountains do nothing but stand there. It\u2019s what mountains do best. It\u2019s an evocative line, but one of the most straight forward from Yes, a [prog rock][prog] band with some of the most obscure lyrics in a radio-friendly format. In fact, the whole of \u201cRoundabout\u201d can be seen as a journey, but the time and distance of the journey aren\u2019t quite able to be gleaned, with lyrics, \u201cOne mile over we\u2019ll be there and we\u2019ll see you\/Ten true summers we\u2019ll be there and laughing too\/Twenty four before my love you\u2019ll see\/I\u2019ll be there with you.”<\/p>\n
One mile probably wouldn\u2019t take anyone ten years to travel, nor does ten years take place within 24 hours. Still, we can be sure that the song is about a journey, no matter the distortion of time and space. Contrast to other mentions of mountains in Yes\u2019s songbook (they sing a lot about mountains), like \u201cSiberian Khatru,\u201d where they sing, \u201cSing, bird of prey\/Beauty begins at the foot of you\/Do you believe the manner?\/Gold stainless nail,\/Torn through the distance of man\/As they regard the summit.\u201d Here we have an eagle, let\u2019s say, with golden talons, somewhere in the sky while people are looking at a mountain\u2019s peak? What \u201cmanner\u201d does the eagle maybe believe? Most Yes lyrics tend towards the inscrutable. But with \u201cRoundabout\u201d the mountains are clearly doing what mountains do, standing there. They may be a metaphor for something else, but they needn\u2019t be. The literal is enough, despite hiding in a mind-twisting lyric.<\/p>\n
Donovan\u2019s \u201cThere Is a Mountain,\u201d is further twisting, wrapped in a koan, \u201cFirst there is a mountain\/then there is no mountain\/then there is.\u201d Can we take this literally? Actually, yes. There is no mention of time, and one can posit that the mountain is visible in the day, then at night the mountain disappears, only to be seen again tomorrow. Again, this plays with the permanence of mountains and our perception. If we do not see the mountain, is it there? I won\u2019t even touch on the philosophy behind object permanence, but I will say that the mountain does nothing when it is not seen. It does not affect Donovan when he cannot see it, so the mountain might as well be not there.<\/p>\n
This is Donovan\u2019s mild, [folksy psychedelia][folk]. How can a mountain not be there after it was just there and then suddenly reappear? It\u2019s possible Donovan just blinked. There. Gone. There again. More crucial than the disappearing mountain is Donovan\u2019s relation to it. It may cause the listener to wonder what drugs Donovan was taking when he wrote it, but it\u2019s not out of the realm of reality.<\/p>\n
The song does present an imponderable, though. Suddenly, Donovan calls out for a Juanita. It\u2019s never made clear why. He sings about the mountain, a snail, and a caterpillar turning into a butterfly, which are all observable and likely. But, then, he seems to have lost Juanita and felt it necessary to tell us in the middle of the song. I do hope she\u2019s okay.<\/p>\n
In any case, it is pleasing that these particular lines in these two songs, from over 45 years ago, still catch listeners off guard. What now amounts to background, \u201coldies\u201d music still births an ear worm that bores into the rational part of the brain and causes one to question just what happened to those mountains.<\/p>\n
[prog]: https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Progressive_rock
\n[folk]: https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Psychedelic_folk<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There are two songs in my music library that are well-known but always lead to questions when I play them. Not coincidently, both songs reference mountains. A mountain, both timeless and unmoving, should not suddenly appear or disappear. And yet, in both songs mountains do something actively, throwing the listener out of kilter. The first […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_import_markdown_pro_load_document_selector":0,"_import_markdown_pro_submit_text_textarea":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[88,70,87,86],"class_list":["post-548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-essays","tag-mountains","tag-music","tag-prog","tag-psychedelia"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nj3d-8Q","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/macphoenix.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/macphoenix.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/macphoenix.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/macphoenix.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/macphoenix.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=548"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/macphoenix.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":973,"href":"https:\/\/macphoenix.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548\/revisions\/973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/macphoenix.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/macphoenix.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/macphoenix.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}