Inner Garden (1 & 2) - King Crimson

[nzahorodny09]

Inner Garden (1&2)

*
autumn has come to rest
in her garden
come to paint the trees with emptiness
and no pardon
so many things have come undone
like the leaves on the ground
and suddenly she begins to cry
but she doesn't know why
heavy are the words that fall through the air
to burden her shoulders
caught up in the trees
her soliloguy,
"don't leave me alone"

**

Rome now comes to sit
in her garden
mingling the breeze with memories
of a time when
there was a room in pale yellow hues
her room with a view
where love made a bed of happiness
in muslin and lace
sweet is the voice from far away
that speaks sotto voce and
is lingering there in the golden air
to quiet the day.

( * Inner Garden I, ** Inner Garden II)

[nzahorodny09]

The song “Inner Garden” by King Crimson, mournful both in its melody and in its lyrical content, evokes within the listener emotions akin to the deep loss and isolation experienced by Mary Tyrone throughout Eugene O’Neil’s tragedy “Long Day’s Journey into Night”. Indeed, a number of the song’s fundamental compositional components serve as stitches in the dark shroud of despair that it weaves over its listeners. King Crimson intentionally performs the piece in a minor key, one traditionally associated with sorrow and lamentation, as a foundation upon which the mood and the meaning of the song may be further developed. Throughout the song, tempo also remains essential in maintaining this atmosphere, drawing the listener through the piece, not with an upbeat enthusiasm, but rather with a slow and ponderous step. Similarly, O’Neil attempts to express the true nature of the wretchedness that plagues the Tyrone family by focusing largely on a lengthy series of verbal conflicts, refusing to hasten the pace of his grueling, four and a half hour drama with any truly substantial action. Also much like O’Neil’s play, “Inner Garden” does not progress musically towards any ultimate resolution and therefore leaves the listener with nothing more than a lingering melancholia at the end. In addition to these elements of composition, however, the song’s lyrics prove extremely instrumental in establishing a connection with the sorrows of Mary Tyrone. Just as the song begins in “autumn”, so too does the play occur in the autumn of Mary Tyrone’s life, at the brink, in fact, of a winter whose first chills may be felt towards the conclusion of the play. As she gazes back into her past, she laments that “so many things have come undone”, “things” that include the death of her son as well as her failure to become a concert pianist. Once other family members discover her return to morphine, they do eventually confront her directly, “burdening” her conscience with “heavy words” that undoubtedly only exacerbate her emotional instability. Mary, echoing the words of “Inner Garden”, also expresses quite frequently a desperate desire not to be “left alone”. In the second stanza, memories of Rome represent feelings of nostalgia for a once glorious state, now sunken in ruin and decay. Thus Mary perceives her own life, divorced forever from the luxury, the “muslin and lace” provided her father’s open hand, and from the “bed of happiness” that she shared with James at the beginning of the marriage. It thereby becomes evident that “Inner Garden” by King Crimson is in large part a reflection of the despair that torments Mary Tryone in Eugene O’Neil’s tragic play.