The windmills of your mind: NOEL HARRISON

Consider the gif above. Is the film being played forwards or backwards? We have no way of knowing. If this were a bowling ball for instance and if we saw the bowling ball return from striking the pins, back into the hands of the person who bowled the ball we would know at once that the film is playing in reverse. But without an established end point (like bowling pins being struck down) or an established starting point (like someone rolling a bowling ball), we cannot say if the ball is rolling forwards or backwards - we are stuck in the middle and all we know is that the ball simply rolls. Or one could even say in the above gif that the objects aren't rotating at all - they are merely surfaces on which other things move and lend these surfaces the illusions of motion.

As you read further you will realize I have completely wasted your time. I did not need to begin this piece talking about either gifs or bowling balls. I allowed myself to be carried away by my thoughts and sure enough they lead nowhere. But after all, the dormouse protested - its whiskers dripping with treacle and honey - if you wanted to go somewhere you should never let your thoughts carry you! A horse is better for that job and twice as cheap!

If only horses were wishes! Enough. I'll get to the point.

One of the great things about this song is how it begins with the word "Round". No proper english sentence begins with the word round. In other words from the very beginning, we are dropped right into the middle of something or perhaps it is more accurate to say that we are dropped into the middle and a middle is a something that has neither beginning nor end like the gif with which we began this article.

The Windmills of your mind is something of a standard which means it has been covered by many people. However the only version I like/ can stand is Noel Harrison's.

Noel Harrison sings this song with understated urgency. The song traffics in images of perpetual motion - creating poetic gifs in our mind half a century before gifs were even a thing - "round, spiral, wheel within a wheel, ever spinning reel, circles that you find in the windmills of your mind."

I find that to be the key distinction between Noel Harrison's version and the versions of this song sung by Dusty Springfield and Sinne Eeg Dusty Springfield and Eeg's sing slower cadenced versions of this song. Dusty Springfield's version is a minute and a half longer than Noel Harrison's and Eeg's is nearly four minutes longer than Noel Harrison's. In slowing down the song and pausing, even relishing the beautiful lyrical poetry, Springfield and Eeg have lost the haste and urgency, understated yet palpable in Noel Harrison's version.

Round like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel

Never ending or beginning on an ever spinning reel

Like a snowball down a mountain, or a carnival balloon

Like a carousel that's turning running rings around the moon

Like a clock whose hands are sweeping past the minutes of its face

And the world is like an apple whirling silently in space

Like the circles that you find in the windmills of your mind!

Like a tunnel that you follow to a tunnel of its own

Down a hollow to a cavern where the sun has never shone

Like a door that keeps revolving in a half forgotten dream

Or the ripples from a pebble someone tosses in a stream

Like a clock whose hands are sweeping past the minutes of its face

And the world is like an apple whirling silently in space

Like the circles that you find in the windmills of your mind!

Keys that jingle in your pocket, words that jangle in your head

Why did summer go so quickly, was it something that you said?

Lovers walking along a shore and leave their footprints in the sand

Is the sound of distant drumming just the fingers of your hand?

Pictures hanging in a hallway and the fragment of a song

Half remembered names and faces, but to whom do they belong?

When you knew that it was over you were suddenly aware

That the autumn leaves were turning to the color of her hair!

Like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel

Never ending or beginning on an ever spinning reel

As the images unwind, like the circles that you find

In the windmills of your mind!

Noel Harrison's version has momentum, the words sweep past you before you can register their full import. Where Neil Diamond and Barbra Streisand enunciate the words carefully and deliberately, Noel Harrison seems to calculatedly avoid deliberation - as far as I could tell no word was emphasized or lingered over another.

This sensation of being carried away - of one interminable thought leading to another interminable thought - going somewhere but never quite arriving - requires momentum, not deliberation. Every word is meant only to hail or recall another word. Meaning is evanescent - it passes quickly out of sight, memory and existence - like footprints in the sand or faces in a crowd.

PS. I was introduced to this song by Aditya "Crazy Crazy" Narayan. Several of the ideas in this post are both his and mine - came from the discussion we subsequently had.