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"Circles" is a song by English musician George Harrison, released as the final track of his 1982 album ''Gone Troppo''. Harrison wrote the song in India in 1968 while he and the Beatles were studying Transcendental Meditation with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. The theme of the lyrics is reincarnation. The composition reflects the cyclical aspect of human existence as, according to Hindu doctrine, the soul continues to pass from one life to the next. Although the Beatles never formally recorded it, "Circles" was among the demos the group made at Harrison's home, Kinfauns, in May 1968, while considering material for their double album ''The Beatles''. Harrison revisited "Circles" during the sessions for his 1979 album ''George Harrison'' before he finally recorded it for ''Gone Troppo''. Over this period, Harrison had softened the spiritual message in his work and had also begun to forgo the music business for a career as a film producer with his company HandMade Films. The song was produced by Harrison, Ray Cooper and former Beatles engineer Phil McDonald, with recording taking place at Harrison's Friar Park studio between May and August 1982. The track features extensive use of keyboards and synthesizer, with Billy Preston, Jon Lord and Mike Moran among the contributing musicians. A slow, meditative song, "Circles" has received a mixed response from reviewers, some of whom find it overly gloomy. In the United States, it was issued as the B-side of the album's second single, "I Really Love You", in February 1983. As the closing track on ''Gone Troppo'', "Circles" was the last song heard on a new Harrison album until 1987, when he returned with ''Cloud Nine''. ==Background and composition== "Circles" was one of several songs that George Harrison wrote in Rishikesh, India,〔Madinger & Easter, p. 464.〕〔Badman, p. 300.〕 when he and his Beatles bandmates were attending Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's Transcendental Meditation course in the spring of 1968.〔Everett, pp. 199, 202–03.〕〔Shea & Rodriguez, p. 301.〕 Aside from providing an opportunity to progress with meditation techniques,〔Paytress, pp. 12, 13–14.〕 the two-month stay marked Harrison's return to the guitar after two years of studying the Indian sitar, partly under the tutelage of Ravi Shankar.〔Leng, p. 34.〕 Harrison biographer Simon Leng considers that "Circles" was composed on an organ, however, as most of Harrison's Indian-inspired melodies since 1966 had been.〔Leng, pp. 32, 34, 50, 236.〕 Leng writes of "fugue-like keyboard parts" on the song and "bass figures" that partly recall the works of Johann Sebastian Bach.〔Leng, pp. 232, 236.〕 Author Ian Inglis considers that "Circles" "displays a direct connection with the unspoken psychedelia" of Harrison's Beatles tracks "Blue Jay Way" and "Long, Long, Long".〔Inglis, p. 83.〕 The song's lyrical theme is reincarnation, in keeping with its composer's absorption in Hindu philosophy〔Allison, pp. 44–45, 79–80.〕 – a preoccupation that had led the Beatles to the Maharishi's teachings〔Nick Jones, "Beatle George And Where He's At", ''Melody Maker'', 16 December 1967; available at (Rock's Backpages ) (subscription required).〕〔The Editors of ''Rolling Stone'', p. 139.〕 and would result in Harrison's introduction to the Hare Krishna movement in December 1968.〔Tillery, pp. 69–71.〕〔Michael Simmons, "Cry for a Shadow", ''Mojo'', November 2011, p. 80.〕 Harrison had first taken reincarnation as his theme for "Art of Dying", which he began writing in 1966,〔Leng, p. 98.〕 and it would continue to be the focus of many of his compositions as a solo artist, notably the 1973 hit "Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth)".〔Allison, pp. 79–80, 136.〕 Theologian Dale Allison highlights "Circles" as the only Harrison song to use the term "reincarnate", however, and he also notes the composer's use of the word "soul" "in its proper metaphysical sense".〔Allison, p. 82.〕 Allison describes the lyrics as "a clear statement of reincarnation", as well as "the most blatant example" of Harrison's desire to pass on to a "'higher' and better world" at death, and so escape the cycle of rebirth in the material world.〔Allison, pp. 82, 139.〕 In the song's choruses, the lines "''He who knows does not speak / He who speaks does not know''" quote the Chinese sage and author Lao-Tse,〔 whose work ''Tao Te Ching'' inspired Harrison's 1968 composition "The Inner Light".〔Lavezzoli, pp. 183–84.〕 Elsewhere in the lyrics to "Circles", Harrison contemplates the changing nature of friendship as, over the course of lifetimes, according to Inglis, "our enemies become our companions, affections turn into hatred".〔 Lindsay Planer of AllMusic writes that Harrison carried out "significant lyrical embellishments" after debuting the song in 1968.〔 On the released recording, he concludes with a statement on how to break the circle of repetition: "''When loss and gain and up and down / Become the same, then we stop going in circles.''"〔Allison, pp. 82–83.〕 Allison interprets this conclusion, and Harrison's worldview generally, as espousing the need to recognise the illusory nature of the material world, saying: "All the multiplicity and diversity are in truth manifestations of the one hidden and divine reality … opposites are not opposites. To understand that up is down and that gain is loss is to be … on one's way to escaping from the material world."〔Allison, p. 83.〕 Musically, Leng views the "chromatic melodic web" of "Circles" as appropriate for conveying the "repetition and entrapment" of reincarnation, as the soul passes through one human life to another. The song is in the key of F major, although, in Leng's estimation, the melody "yearn() for resolution in E minor … revolving in dissonance like a lost soul awaiting its place in the reincarnation checkout line".〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Circles (George Harrison song)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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