Walk It Back | Song Six | R.E.M.

Atonement, said the mythologist Joseph Campbell, means "at-one-ment." It means being at one with oneself, abandoning the fakery and falsehoods that turn the whole of a person into parts. More important than the dissolution of transgression is returning to the seamlessness of oneself and the One—as in the Big One, the Unknown but Familiar but Distant but Present but Ever-Knowing One. You know, that One.

This evening a remnant of the children of Abraham will retrace a harrowing descent from Oneness to Noneness, and then slowly reach back again for At-one-ment. It's Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, a cycle of timeless time, people trying to be like angels, turning themselves inside out to get to the place from which they just might have come.

Walk it back, says R.E.M. Imagine the song as a conversation between some-one and that One.

What, what would you have had me say instead of what I said?
Where, where would I go?
How could I follow that except to do what I did?

Walk it back, says some-one. Walk it back, says that One. Take it back, they both say. Just reach back this one last time. One time, they say. Take it back. Walk it back. What else would you have them say? What else would you have them to do? Walk it back.

Song of Ascent VI

Walk It Back | R.E.M.

All of the Songs of Ascent

Five | 9-5 | The Kinks

Four | After Hours | Rickie Lee Jones

Three | Time | Pink Floyd

Two | Time | Cat Stevens

One | Into the Mystic | Van Morrison

9 to 5 | Song Five | The Kinks

Bruce Springsteen is generally granted the crown of the king rocker of the working man. But consider Ray Davies for this honor, too. The brain behind the Kinks—a band that some say gives even the Beatles a run for their money when it comes to the alchemy of melding melodies and stories together to imprint indelible rock songs on the world—is watching the clock of the working man from the desk across from yours, a smirk on his face and a tear in his eye.

Davies does not give voice to the lunch bucket, factory horn crowd that Springsteen sings. The Kinks, especially in high-concept (maybe too high concept) records like Soap Opera, are the voice of rock and roll's Kafka. He sings for the pain and glory of pencil-pushing boredom, for the commuter, for the cog in the corporate wheel who measures out his or her days not in coffee spoons, but in the slow, perfectly symmetrical march minute by minute and hour by hour 'til the end of the day. These are journeys that end not out in the street with junkyard angels born to run, but in a pub with one flat pint too many or a darkly lit parlor watching the TV news while eating yet another serving of shepherd's pie.

In these Songs of Ascent, tracing time from mystic seas where anything is possible to time on the ground where people are found, Ray Davies—whose most recent solo album is entitled Working Man's Cafe—holds the hours with immense empathy for the resignation of the person in the cubicle, spirit fused to the tick-tock tick-tock of someone else's clock. Ray Davies is the guy on the other side of your desk writing the novel at night, just like Kafka, and refusing to show a soul, until one day just after the 5 o'clock bell, he shows it to you and you don't ever feel quite as lonely as you once did again.

Song of Ascent V

9 to 5 | The Kinks

All of the Songs of Ascent

Four | After Hours | Rickie Lee Jones

Three | Time | Pink Floyd

Two | Time | Cat Stevens

One | Into the Mystic | Van Morrison

After Hours | Song Four | Rickie Lee Jones

It's closing time, 
and she's standing on the corner
beneath a street lamp
all alone.
"Say goodnight, America," 
she says,
"The gang has all gone home."

Song of Ascent IV

After Hours | Rickie Lee Jones

All of the Songs of Ascent

Three | Time | Pink Floyd

Two | Time | Cat Stevens

One | Into the Mystic | Van Morrison

Time | Song Three | Pink Floyd

Waste the hours
kicking around
and waiting.  

Tired,
you are young and life is long 
and there is time to kill. 

One day you find ten years 
have got behind you.
No one told you when to run. 

So you run and you run, 
racing,
but you're older.  

A page of scribbled lines,
hanging on in quiet desperation,
the time is gone, 
the song is over.
Thought I'd something more to say. 

Song of Ascent III

Time | Pink Floyd

All of the Songs of Ascent

Two | Time | Cat Stevens

One | Into the Mystic | Van Morrison

Time | Song Two | Cat Stevens

Yusuf Islam,
who used to be Cat Stevens,
says that he had long been drowning
on the night when he swam into a wild ocean
and was pulled down by the undertow
and was sure would not come out again
and begged for divine rescue
and vowed to submit to a new life as a devout Muslim if he was saved.



Cat Stevens,
who became Yusuf Islam,
had been drowning in a life without purpose, he says,
pulled under by waves of fear and distraction from his true self,
the true believer he was meant to be:
the ocean simply proved it.

When he awoke on the shore,
still breathing
lungs burning
heart racing
eyes wide open
he knew that he had been reborn,
given a second chance to take shape in place and time.

Time—
before the spiral of song
before the songs of ascent
before the ceremonies
and conjuring of calendars and choices
rituals and pleading
initiations and invitations and introductions—
is wild, white ocean.

Song of Ascent II

Time | Cat Stevens

All of the Songs of Ascent

One | Into the Mystic | Van Morrison

Into the Mystic | Song One | Van Morrison

The first day after the new year,
in the early morning before sunrise,
the idea was simple:
a rock and roll spiral of songs of ascent for the entire year.

Take time as the landscape and map it day by day,
each day holding an aspect of the year rooted in a deeper understanding
of the flow of time beneath them.

That's the spiral.
These are the songs of ascent.
Just find the blueprint of the world,
the unseen scaffolding upon which they rest,
the unseen wisdom pacing the flow of night
followed by day
followed by night
followed by day.

So we started digging around,
looking for the map beneath division,
and Google gave up the evidence as it usually does.

The Mystic Chamber of Commerce, it said.
This sounded incredible.
Imagine the figures of time gathered around a long table
in an ancient hall,
lamps lit,
voices hushed,
all of these ghouls and magicians and seers and fixers getting down to it,
setting the clocks for all of the spheres
and inviting the spiral
and the songs of ascent.

So this was the start, and then we arrived here. 

You get what you ask for,
that beautiful reimagined whaling town on the Atlantic Ocean
butting up against the real town on I-95 and Amtrak's Northeastern Line,
and we're off to sea once more.

We were born before the wind
Also younger than the sun
Ere the bonnie boat was won as we sailed into the mystic
Hark, now hear the sailors cry
Smell the sea and feel the sky
Let your soul and spirit fly into the mystic

Song of the Ascent I

Van Morrison | Into the Mystic