Still II

- CHAPTER TWENTY -

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"And he arose, and rebuked the wind, and said unto the sea, Peace, be still. And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm."

- Mark 4:39

Empty yourself of everything.
Let the mind rest at peace.
The ten thousand things rise and fall while the Self watches their return.
They grow and flourish and then return to the source.
Returning to the source is stillness, which is the way of nature.

- Lao Tzu

Jon Green:

he title, along with the photo on the back cover, seems to imply the goal and practice of meditation. Andrew Keeling has also mentioned that " Still seems to be Peter Sinfield out of the influence of the Crimson King. The title 'Still' (passive as opposed to active) has always struck me in this way."
Yin as opposed to the Yang of cruel King Logos. I further take "Still" to mean that, despite what had transpired, Peter was at peace with himself - and also a tad defiant: "I'm STILL here."

The album cover image, a little girl resting in the jaws of a dragon, also expresses stillness, a sense of peace. When Neil Ingram pointed out that it is "in marked contrast to the screaming face of the 21st Century Schizoid Man", he touched on the connection between the cover images of In the Court of the Crimson King and Still . Like the the dragon of Still , the 21st Century Schizoid Man is a monster, the monster of the unrecognized unacknowledged shadow lived out and projected out into the world. In the world of the 21st Century Schizoid Man the dragon of the unconscious is a terrifying realm to be avoided at all costs. But in the world of Still , the dragon is a friend, a Big Friend within whom the narrator is resting comfortably. He has, through the individuation process, come to accept both the light and the dark aspects of his unconscious (integrated them into consciousness). We can also see this another way. The little girl is the anima, the Moonchild, no longer far away and out of sight but finally regained and in view. She is resting comfortably within the re-unified self. On the album's back cover the anima (unconscious content) is resting comfortably within Peter Sinfield.

"Jung suggested that if the encounter with the shadow is the "apprentice-piece" in a man's development, then coming to terms with the anima is the "master-piece."["Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious," CW 9i, par. 61.] The goal is her transformation from a troublesome adversary into a function of relationship between consciousness and the unconscious."

- The Jung Lexicon

There is another meaning to the image of Peter Sinfield on Still . The union of front and back cover images represents the union of conscious and unconscious, a further step toward individuation.

"In her book on Shambhala, (Shambhala, the Fascinating Truth Behind the Myth of Shambhala, 1996, p. 58) Victoria LePage remarks that 'The octagon, with a ninth point in the center, is also central to the mystical symbology of Sufism. It is the seal or design which Ernest Scott says 'reaches for the innermost secrets of man'. Meaning wholeness, power and perfection, this primary geometrical symbol is one which Sufis associate with Shambhala ..."

- The Enneagram as 'Triple Mandala'

And as Neil Ingram observed in the previous chapter :
" Still (the album) is, perhaps, like a mandala, with Still (the song) at its centre. This is the point of unity with the 'Self'; a place where wholeness and integration are found. The 'stillness' and calm at the centre of the storm. It is 'the still point of the turning world' (Eliot)."

And so we see that just as the title song of Islands was a microcosm of that album so too does the thematic structure of Still reflect the structure of the four King Crimson albums - with Still , the quintessence, at the center.

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