POINT OF KNOW RETURN

There is one thing about this album that sets it apart from nearly every other progressive work ever recorded: that is, with it the members of Kansas managed to achieve immortality. Despite the fact that the song has been so overplayed that most of us are sick of hearing it, “Dust in the Wind” is one of only a very small handful of progressive works that will still be being sung by people of all walks of life a hundred years from now – maybe five hundred years. You know it’s true – it’s like a box that, once opened can never again be closed (there’s a word for that…. it’s right on the tip of my tongue…. Ah, never mind).

Just the album cover alone is such a simple yet awesome statement – an old sailing ship teetering on the edge of an ancient and desolate world (in other words, a ‘flat’ one), about to dive full-length ahead into whatever lies beyond. There is a theme here, even if this is not specifically a concept album. It’s all about knowledge, and seeking, and discovery, and mysteries, and all written by a few guys who were simply trying to find their way through life in their chosen profession. There’s a simple beauty to this album that made a strong connection to millions of young people thirty years ago, on a scale few other progressive albums have managed to achieve. To-date, more than six million copies of this album have been sold, making it easily one of the ten or fifteen biggest- selling progressive works ever. And there’s a reason – each song speaks to someone in an incredibly personal way. There is not a throwaway or filler song on it. Every time I play it, it takes me to a place that nothing else ever did before, or probably will again.

“Point of Know Return” is a song about searching, and about taking those first fearful and tentative steps into the great unknown, whatever that unknown is for you. For some, that may be a spiritual journey of discovery. For others, maybe it’s striking out from home on the road to their destiny as childhood falls away into adulthood. For others, it may mean an intellectual quest, or an adventure. Maybe it’s marriage, or some other new relationship, or leaving a job or career for something new. Whatever that something is, this song speaks to that uniquely terrifying and yet undeniably seductive feeling one gets when they are on the brink of some new milestone in their life from which there is no turning back. I first heard this when I was sixteen years old, a time for many young men when life is nothing but new turns and new phases of discovery. Having been bitten with the meaning of this song, I can’t help but always hold it dear.

“Your father, he said he needs you; your mother, she said she loves you. Your brothers, they echo the words,

How far to the point of know return? Well, how long?”

In some ways “Paradox” is “Point” twenty years later. Steve Walsh and Kerry Livgren are telling us their own story of passing that point of know return, only to find another point just as mysterious ahead:

“I know there’s more than meets the eye, I’d like to see it before I die for sure.

Something tells me it’s alright – only one step farther to the door”.

The paradox is in that the yearning that leads to the search is the same element of humanity - that pretty much ensures the searching will never end.

“The Spider” is just a two minute orgy of sounds, a musical interlude that sets the stage for two powerfully insightful character sketches of two real men, both of whom knew that terrifying and seductive feeling that comes with stepping out into the unknown on a quest, and who discovered two starkly different new worlds beyond their point of know return. “Portrait (He Knew)” is a tribute to someone who had gone further in the search beyond what is in the realm of the known than almost anybody before or since – Albert Einstein, and who discovered worlds within worlds that have changed what we know forever. He brought all of us into a world of relativity, and found answers to questions that most of those before him never dared to even ask. But once again – the paradox, as Einstein could not escape the frailty of his humanness, and when his life was extinguished, nature reclaimed so many of the secrets he had uncovered (including the rumored solution to a unified field theory that puzzles physicists even today):

“He had a different idea, a glimpse of the master plan; he could see into the future, a true visionary man.

But there’s something he never told us, it died when he went away; if only he could have been with us, no telling what he might say”.

And a dramatically different story about Howard Hughes, who died shortly before this album was recorded. He also had tasted the nectar of the point of know return, as an adventurous aviator, entrepreneur, and inquisitive genius who amassed one of the largest personal fortunes in history, rubbed elbows with the most famous and powerful people of his day, and died lost in his own world of obsessive-compulsive and drug- addled madness:

“Once proud and full of passion, he fought because of man; many people loved his courage, many followed his command;

He changed the old into the new, and the course of things to come. and then one day they noticed - he was gone”.

“Lightning’s Hand” is the voice of the great and powerful Oz; God; the almighty Ra; the puppeteer who pulls our strings. This is an awesome and powerful experience that explores a myriad of climbs to musical crescendos, each one dashed back to the ground by the hand that controls the very skies. Robbie Steinhardt gives his most powerful vocal performance ever on a song that has long been mostly forgotten in the Kansas archives.

Out of this peak of powerful riffs, angry screaming violin and gruff and daunting voices, comes the quiet and pure voice of nature in “Dust in the Wind”. This is a song of resignation, of terribly personal reflection on what ‘it’ is all about, and a song that couldn’t be in more stark contrast to the one that preceded it:

“Same old song, just a drop of water in an endless sea; all we do crumbles to the ground ‘though we refuse to see”.

The “Sparks of the Tempest” signal the apocalypse, the fiery cataclysm when it all come crashing down. Rome is burning, the horsemen are galloping across the blood red skies – the knife blade gleams above your head. This is the march of evil and the spread of darkness, a tale written by trembling hands on a stormy night, and the darkest work on the album.

On the bloody morning after, one tin soldier… no wait – wrong song. “Nobody’s Home” is the mournful realization at the end of the journey that what was sought is not to be found. The ship has plunged over the abyss, the adventurer has withstood death and disease and destruction and danger, only to find the halls of the great beyond are empty. The implosion of the apocalypse, told in the previous song, has left nothing in it’s wake:

“A requiem was never sung, no elegy was read; no monument was carved in stone in memory of the dead.

For those who made this place do not remain, they feel no pain; a stranger fate was never known”. Nobody’s home.

In the end, of course, we’re all “Hopelessly Human”, and the search will go on regardless of the consequences. In some ways this album is a twisted version of the story of Scrooge, who was visited by three ghosts that revealed all in the past and future, the actions and their consequences to a man who was lurching full-tilt toward destruction because of his choices and actions. In “Hopelessly Human” we are faced with the realization that, when all is said and done, the blessing and curse of free will dictates that we will carry on anyway:

“They’re hopelessly human, both inside and out; a joyous occasion, there’s no reason to doubt.

When each word is read, would you know the difference – if nothing was said”.

Point of Know Return is so much more than just the pinnacle of commercial success for the band Kansas. It’s a stunning journey of the mind and the path of humankind, a treatise on the questions that burn within our souls, and the blank canvas that forms the framework for each of our lives. I think Kerry Livgren understood this, as did most of the other members of the band. Each followed their muse to their logical ends, and each life has been played out across a very public stage. What a journey!

Five stars, easily. This almost seems anti-climactic.

peace