New Observations about In the Court of the Crimson King

I think that this essay is proving to be a great opportunity for me to exercise my current knowledge of prog as well as to develop new observations. Yesterday, I wrote that I told my professor that if he's going to listen to In the Court of the Crimson King, he should listen to the first track while studying the cover artwork. I explained that the artwork is basically an illustration of the first track. Let me put it this way: If the first track had a face, the cover art would be its face. I remember the story Greg Lake told when I saw him back in 2012 about the day he and the rest of the original King Crimson members saw the album cover for the first time. Greg described it like this: When they saw the image, they knew that they were staring directly into the face of the Schizoid Man. That's a powerful idea to me.

I even gave the album a complete listen last night on my turntable to make sure that it was a good album to write about in my essay. My opinion about it has not changed: It's too important to not write about, or at least mention. Now that I think of it, I can't name a book, article, or documentary about prog that doesn't mention that album at least once. To do so would be to skip a landmark moment in prog history. It would be like not talking about Dark Side of the Moon or Fragile. That's just my opinion.

Anyway, while I was listening to "21st Century Schizoid Man," I started to think something I hadn't thought of before. Whenever I describe the artwork, I always say something along the lines of it being the face of fear and terror. The lyrics to the song never made much sense to me and they still don't really today. However, I began to think the following: When we are afraid of something or terrified of something, more often than not, we don't think clearly when we speak. When I look at the lyrics to "Schizoid Man" I start to think it sounds like they were written by someone (or at least from the perspective of someone) who was afraid and not thinking clearly. Now, that's not to say that I think the lyrics are poor in quality. I think they're very interesting, mainly because they don't seem to make much sense. I think about them almost the same way I think about Yes lyrics. They are kind of like their own language. It's a language that not many can understand. The words may not make much sense, but they fit well with the music.