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("Two portraits of Ryogen" - Author Unknown - copyright holder is Kiemon Tsuruya)

« Creeper » is an allegory wherein destructive mental processes are compared to creeping plants. The piece depicts four stages of a confrontation between creeper and host : introduction, growth, conquest, and extinction.

The audio clip presents the introduction and verses. As the lyrics suggest, the creeper really represents insidious suggestion, worry, negativity, or doubt, which are generally rooted in ignorance o

(Blue Morpho Butterfly by Martin Johnson Heade)

The third part of “The Idler” is entitled “Upward.”

The idea behind the movement is quite simple : once the necessity of evolution has been recognized and accepted, there’s only one way to go and its up.

To convey the feeling of somebody who is reinventing themselves, the music reintroduces some of the themes already presented earlier in the suite, but gives them new forms or turns them completely inside out.

There are no vocals in his section. Here's

("Climbing Plant" by Popperipopp)

“Creeper” is directly inspired by the following aphorism from The Dhammapada :

The streams flow everywhere; the creeper, having sprung up, becomes established. When you see that creeper sprout, sever its root by intense insight. – (XXIV. Craving, #7)

and accompanying translator’s note :

The “creeper” is insidious suggestion, rooted in ignorance and craving, developing into bondage, aggression, and folly. To sever it the moment it sprouts is what the Tao Te Ching ref

("Upward" - detail from an old kindergarten painting)

The Idler was born of a combination of concepts discovered while exploring various domains of knowledge during the second half of the 1990s and the beginning of the 2000s.

« The idler who does not arise when it is time to arise, who is full of sloth though young and strong, who is lazy and weak in thought and mind, does not find the path to insight. » – The Dhammapada

I was developing an interest in Buddhism, and from the works of Jung, in the c