Understanding Moonchild

many people hate the track "Moonchild" from "In the Court of the Crimson King"; they call it "boring" or "pointless noodling". it is, however, anything but that. the long instrumental part is an attempt at expressing the lyrics with instrumental means alone. you can actually find every line of the lyrics in the instrumental section. not necessarily in the sequence they appear though, except for the last; this is the logic of dreams.

I will give two examples for that; they may encourage you to go looking, or rather listening,  for the rest. it is actually a lot of fun when you look at "Moonchild" from this angle and try to spot the lines.

the line "dropping circle stones on a sun dial" is expressed from 6:10 to 7:10, with stones of different size.

the line "playing hide and seek with the ghosts of dawn" can be found from 9:48 to 10:20. you can almost hear the Moonchild cry out "come and catch me" in that sequence.

I could give more examples, but go and try to figure it out for yourself now.

here a link to that track on YouTube:



Edited by BaldJean - March 07 2014 at 20:18