The music:Cygnus X-1 Book II: Hemispheres from the Rush-album Hemispheres. Released on October 29, 1978. Recorded in June--August 1978 at Rockfield Studios i...
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03. Cygnus x-1 Book II: Hemispheres (113 Punkte, 16 Nennungen)
(Hemispheres, 1978)
"'Book II' is about the same space traveler that appears in 'Book I' on "A Farewell To Kings
". After arriving through a black hole, he helps bring into balance the warring followers of Apollo and of Dionysus. The basic idea for the piece came from a book I was reading,
Powers of Mind. It was just an incidental thing, but it was something I had read before, so I tied it into a whole lot of things and it’s the basic constant conflict between thoughts and emotions, between your feelings and your rational ideas. Apollo and Dionysus have been used in a lot of books to characterize these two elements, the rational side and the instinctive side. I’ve always been interested in the ways these two themes transmit themselves into people in political life or in social life. All these conflicts—whether the instinctive way is right or the rational way is right—are always going on between people. The basic theme of 'Hemispheres' is that conflict. 'Armageddon' (the fourth section of the piece) is really the focus of that. It’s the climax of that conflict and our hero Cygnus comes in and breaks up the conflict. One of the main points that I wanted to make is that the battle is inside each of us. It’s not some abstract, cosmic battle.
For those who want to dig deeper: The world our protagonist Ieaves is being ruled over by two gods who represent opposing forces—Apollo and Dionysius. Apollo champions the force of reason and rationale and Dionysius champions the force of instinct and intuition. I’m taking the setting back to the dawn of creation when there was just man not knowing who he is or why he’s there. Apollo comes along and gives the people a shot at progress and offers all these benefits and they say ‘sure we’d like fires to warm us in winter. They follow him along and build amazing cities and get involved in science and build beautiful things just for the sake of it. But they’re bored because they don’t have an emotional attachment to the things that they’re making. They lose the knack and the interest in doing them any more. An ennui falls over everybody and they hang out, bored. They go after Dionysius who tells them what he can offer and obviously the instinctive and artistic side of things that he offers them—the music and dancing and love. They say ‘yeah, that sounds great after what we’ve had. Everyone has a wonderful time, they leave the cities and just rave. But when winter comes along they’ve lost the skills that would keep them warm and that whole rational side of them doesn’t function the way it did. So the wolves and cold get to them and at that point they break into total anarchy and chaos. That’s the Armageddon section of the song because both Apollo and Dionysius are fighting for control. Eventually the whole problem is solved by the arrival of Cygnus. He points out the chaos that the struggle between Apollo and Dionysius is causing. So they appoint him as a god—the bringer of balance.” (Neal Peart)
