Circle

I usually have a song taking up primary residence in my head. These days, it’s “Circle,” the Miles Davis song from 1967’s Miles Smiles.

As I said in my last post, I’ve been a little obsessed with Miles Smiles for a while now. The first three tracks are particularly addictive for me, and “Circle” might be foremost among those.

One of the first times I heard this song, it occurred to me that it has some commonalities with the Kind Of Blue track, “Blue In Green.” My thinking was that both songs have a floating, ethereal quality that makes them a little hard to pin down, almost like impressions of songs rather than songs. Vapor songs. It’s probably not clear, but this is high praise in my book.

These days, I stand by my thesis that the two songs have some things in common, but I’m also hearing the important ways they diverge.

“Blue In Green” feels sadder, and more based in standard, recognizable human emotions. It feels vaguely bluesy, so it’s coming from a more recognizable music foundation. It feels evocative in a more familiar, sort of predetermined way: it evokes a rainy Sunday walk in Manhattan when you’ve got too much on your mind. (Or some such familiar cinematic scene.) It feels a little self-consciously elegant. In other words, I guess, it feels like it’s built on a fair amount of borrowed equity.

“Circle,” on the other hand, feels like it’s from outer space. It doesn’t borrow shit. It feels like it is the thing rather than being about the thing. “Circle” invents its own scene; it is not accompaniment to anyone else’s scene, not a soundtrack to a familiar movie.

The differences are partly in the band dynamics. “Blue In Green” feels more molded, more shaped by players who were totally comfortable with each other. “Circle” has a more wild, unpredictable, cagey feeling, maybe due to its being probably a first take (though “Blue In Green” was allegedly a first take, too). “Circle” sounds like nobody knows what’s around each corner and they’re finding out together. “Blue In Green” sounds like they know exactly where they’re going, like they’ve studied the map.

I initially thought the two songs were similar for their unresolved, slightly disorienting feeling. In each, there’s a sense of not knowing where the melody begins or ends, which chord feels like home, which moment resolves the story. They both feel constant and eternal, like the cut on the record is just you eavesdropping on a performance that always has been and always will be. Perhaps there’s a reason “Circle” is called “Circle.”

It might sound like I’m out here saying “Circle” is the better song. I’m not. I probably prefer it these days, but that’s sure to change. I’ve always admired “Blue In Green” for being the dark horse on Kind Of Blue; it’s probably the most skipped track on the most listened-to jazz record. For some reason that makes me like it more.