#445: Yes, ‘Close to the Edge’
ATLANTIC, 1972
My grief has never been a series of steps. It is a tapestry of remorse, pain, emptiness and loss but also peace and relief and a long inhale and exhale. It is a slowing down and speeding up at the same time resulting in vertigo as we suddenly remember our loss after forgetting it for a moment.
In Joan Didion’s, “In the Year of Magical Thinking,” she explained, “Grief comes in waves, paroxysms, sudden apprehensions that weaken the knees and blind the eyes and obliterate the dailiness of life.”
Throughout the book, she references grief as a state of mental illness. In fact, the American Psychology Association added prolonged grief to their classification of mental disorders in 2022. In detailing her grief after her husband and then her daughter died, she explained that she could not hold onto reality. She kept thinking that maybe, just maybe, her lost ones would come back and their deaths would have been a strange dream. She wrote, “We might expect that we will be prostrate, inconsolable, crazy with loss. We do not expect to be literally crazy, cool customers who believe that their husband is about to return and need his shoes.”
After 8 months of fighting, my baby nephew followed his older brother into the next life. My sister and her family have now lost two children out of their four. I am currently in that moment of thinking that their baby boy will wake up, that this is a strange lapse in my consciousness. That if I choose to wake up, everything will melt into another reality. I don’t think I am at the point of mental disorder with my grief, but I do know that I am not functioning at all cylinders in my grief.
Knowing myself, I know that as soon as I really come to understand this loss, the grief will be unbearable. Also with it will come little moments of exhale remembering that this baby is no longer in pain.
I was in the middle of listening to this album when my sister told me her son passed away. It was at the beginning of the song, “You and I” when my phone buzzed and lit up in my family’s group chat texting that my nephew was gone.
When my sister posted the news on Instagram, she pled with her followers to rejoice in the fact that we are all still living and not mourn or pity them. She asked them to rejoice in life and live.
Jon Anderson, lead singer and founder of Yes, said that the reason why we live is to find the divine and the miracle we all are actually seeking is life itself. This is what Yes’s album, Close To The Edge is all about. This understanding should lead us to wake up in gratitude and wonder knowing that we are all eternal beings.
When bassist and co-founder, Chris Squire, died in 2015, Anderson said that Squire had visited him right before he died. When pressed, Anderson explained that he had a dream that Squire appeared to him and was risen to the sky with arms open and tears in his eyes. To Anderson, the dream was just as real and valid as if Squire did really visit him in real life. Chris Squire, although dead, is just as eternal as Anderson who still breathes on this earth.
Making this album was intense for each band member and created riffs between one another. The process was described as exhausting, tedious, confusing, amazing and a basic genius fighting genius scenario. All of this culminated in creating the first real Progressive Rock album to rule all prog rock forever. This album placed rock and roll side by side with classical music and literature. This album is one of those rare pieces created through sweat and tears to remind us that we are and can do better than we are right now. We must get up and look towards the east because redemption is nigh as we close our own hero’s journeys.
After one recording session in the middle of the album, Anderson left the studio in tears proclaiming that he could finally call himself a musician. He finally achieved greatness in his musicality.
What is wonderful is that I don’t need to know anything about music theory to be moved by the three songs on this album. My heart pumps when Anderson comes in singing “In her white lace, you could clearly see the lady sadly looking, saying that she’d take the blame, for the crucifixion of her own domain. I get up, I get down. I get up, I get down.”
I don’t even know what is happening in the story, but I don’t need to. I just know that I am affirmed when the band “gets up” as they continue to “get down.”
If you really give yourself time to listen – really listen – to the full album, it becomes a meditation on submitting to the beauty and tragedy of life.
As I prayed for my nephew, I learned the real miracle is simply life. It is living and dying and just getting to experience it. The miracle is waking up and looking around yourself.
I don’t know if I buy every mystic note that Anderson preaches in his interviews but I do know that this music feels pretty to my heart. I sit here listening overwhelmed by loss. I am hungry for courage and strength. I am feeling a little bit too aware that I do not have the tools to show up for my sister and her family right now. With all of that inside myself, I do think that choosing to believe in our divinity is rather pretty. To frame this life as an adventure, moving through different challenges and getting back up over and over again as heroes on our own paths is a pretty idea.
My new year’s resolution is to live fully. To wake up with gratitude and see this as just one big adventure. There will be loss, there will be villains, there will be heroes and there must be courage, lots of courage. Hopefully, I will fall asleep remembering that those whom I battled are all divine too, all eternal with the capacity to change and evolve into their best selves.
Fun fast facts:
Lyrics and music inspired by Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha and Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings.
Not a fact….but do it: I recommend listening to Sibelius’ Symphony #6 and #7 before starting this album.
Jon Anderson toured Yes hits with a bunch of teenagers from Paul Green’s all-star school of rock attendees. Remember the movie School of Rock – that is Paul Green's story. They start the album at 1:11:30