• Previous part (4)

As a solitary dude, all my life I have relied on music to connect with the world at large, to feel that my feelings weren’t that unique or detached from the rest of humanity. Over the years, I’ve returned to certain albums that have spoken to me in ways that can’t be fully put into words. I love discovering new albums, and perhaps that’s also the case for whoever is reading these words, so I’ll spend some of my limited time on Earth sharing some specifics about the albums that have marked me, and that in many ways changed me.

Today I’m tackling a big one for me: Joanna Newsom’s Ys, released back in 2006. I will need to think about Joanna quite a bit in the coming year, so I may as well tackle this now. Ys, her pinnacle, and as well as I’m concerned one of the pinnacles of artistry, is a baroque masterpiece of music and storytelling, produced by a songwriter at the height of her powers, who at the time danced with her subconscious unimpeded.

Joanna changed her major from music to creative writing in college; she found the constraints that teachers put into music creation too oppresive, like straitjackets. She’s a songstress of old, the kind you could imagine traveling from town to town and reweaving her careful tales to an enraptured audience. All five songs in the album are mesmerizing.

Joanna is the kind of person who would write until four in the morning, obsessing over individual words and meanings. Added to her difficulties interacting with people, authenticity, extreme sensitivity, obsession with obscure people and topics, etc., I have always suspected she’s autistic, but I’m very biased in that respect.

In addition, this version of Joanna retained her beautiful, creaky voice, before she developed vocal cord nodules and could not speak or sing for two months; afterwards, her voice changed permanently, which made her fantastic following album Have One on Me quite tragic to listen to at times.

All the songs in Ys give me chills consistently. You can use words to justify anything, but chills don’t lie. Joanna’s music is unbridled beauty. I revere her as one of the most magnificent artists to ever live.

“Emily”

This song is a love letter to Joanna’s sister, during a period of their youth in which Joanna likely got pregnant and decided to abort it in a surreptitious manner that could have caused quite the stir in the small town where they grew up. She likely refers to this event in her other song “The Sprout and the Bean.” The way she paints a picture of the whole thing, including how they were taught about nature, is awe-inspiring in the purest way. That bell at the end, the resonance of meaning and beauty, kills me every time.

There is a rusty light on the pines tonight
Sun pouring wine, lord, or marrow
Into the bones of the birches
And the spires of the churches
Jutting out from the shadows
The yoke, and the axe, and the old smokestacks and the bale and the barrow
And everything sloped like it was dragged from a rope
In the mouth of the south below

We’ve seen those mountains kneeling, felten and grey
We thought our very hearts would up and melt away
From that snow in the night time
Just going, and going
And the stirring of wind chimes
In the morning, in the morning
Helps me find my way back in
From the place where I have been

And, Emily, I saw you last night by the river
I dreamed you were skipping little stones across the surface of the water
Frowning at the angle where they were lost, and slipped under forever
In a mud-cloud, mica-spangled, like the sky’d been breathing on a mirror

Anyhow, I sat by your side, by the water
You taught me the names of the stars overhead that I wrote down in my ledger
Though all I knew of the rote universe were those Pleiades loosed, in December
I promised you I’d set them to verse so I’d always remember

That the meteorite is a source of the light
And the meteor’s just what we see
And the meteoroid is a stone that’s devoid of the fire that propelled it to thee

And the meteorite’s just what causes the light
And the meteor’s how it’s perceived
And the meteoroid’s a bone thrown from the void that lies quiet in offering to thee

The lines are fadin’ in my kingdom
Though I have never known the way to border ’em in
So the muddy mouths of baboons and sows, and the grouse, and the horse and the hen
Grope at the gate of the looming lake that was once a tidy pen
And the mail is late and the great estates are not lit from within
The talk in town’s becoming downright sickening

In due time we will see the far buttes lit by a flare
I’ve seen your bravery, and I will follow you there
And row through the night time
So healthy
Gone healthy all of a sudden
In search of the midwife
Who could help me
Who could help me
Help me find my way back in
And there are worries where I’ve been

And say, say, say in the lee of the bay, don’t be bothered
Leave your troubles here where the tugboats shear the water from the water
Flanked by furrows, curling back, like a match held up to a newspaper
Emily, they’ll follow your lead by the letter
And I make this claim, and I’m not ashamed to say I knew you better
What they’ve seen is just a beam of your sun that banishes winter

Let us go, though we know it’s a hopeless endeavor
The ties that bind, they are barbed and spined and hold us close forever
Though there is nothing would help me come to grips with a sky that is gaping and yawning
There is a song I woke with on my lips as you sailed your great ship towards the morning

Come on home, the poppies are all grown knee-deep by now
Blossoms all have fallen, and the pollen ruins the plow
Peonies nod in the breeze and while they wetly bow, with
Hydrocephalitic listlessness ants mop up their brow

And everything with wings is restless, aimless, drunk and dour
Butterflies and birds collide at hot, ungodly hours
And my clay-colored motherlessness rangily reclines
Come on home now, all my bones are dolorous with vines

Pa pointed out to me, for the hundredth time tonight
The way the ladle leads to a dirt-red bullet of light
Squint skyward and listen
Loving him, we move within his borders
Just asterisms in the stars’ set order

We could stand for a century
Staring, with our heads cocked
In the broad daylight at this thing
Joy, landlocked
In bodies that don’t keep
Dumbstruck with the sweetness of being
Till we don’t be
Told, take this
And eat this

Told, the meteorite is the source of the light
And the meteor’s just what we see
And the meteoroid is a stone that’s devoid of the fire that propelled it to thee

And the meteorite’s just what causes the light
And the meteor’s how it’s perceived
And the meteoroid’s a bone thrown from the void that lies quiet in offering to thee

“Monkey & Bear”

A story about a couple made out of a monkey and a bear who escape from servitude to strive for freedom. It just happens that freedom also involves dancing to tunes that clash with one’s self. This song is clearly based on Joanna’s relationship with her then boyfriend Bill Callahan, a passionate, tumultuous romance that saw Bill either pushing her, or Joanna feeling that he was pushing her, into paths that didn’t come naturally to the gal. The climax of the song, with Bear, clearly Joanna herself, wading into the water to disappear by sloughing off her form is one of the most beautiful expressions of communion with the subconscious that I’ve ever encountered.

Down in the green hay
Where monkey and bear usually lay (lay)
They woke from a stable-boy’s cry
Said someone come quick
The horses got loose, got grass-sick
They’ll founder, fain, they’ll die

What is now known by the sorrel and the roan?
By the chestnut, and the bay, and the gelding grey?
It is, stay by the gate you are given
And remain in your place, for your season
And had the overfed dead but listened
To that high-fence, horse-sense, wisdom

But Did you hear that, Bear? said
Monkey, we’ll get out of here, fair and square
They left the gate open wide

So, my bride, here is my hand Where is your paw?
Try and understand my plan, Ursula
My heart is a furnace
Full of love that’s just and earnest
Now you know that we must unlearn this
Allegiance to a life of service
And no longer answer to that heartless
Hay-monger, nor be his accomplice
The charlatan, with artless hustling
But Ursula, we’ve got to eat something
And earn our keep, while still within
The borders of the land that man has girded
All double-bolted and tightfisted
Until we reach the open country
A-steeped in milk and honey
Will you keep your fancy clothes on, for me?
Can you bare a little longer to wear that leash?

My love, I swear by the air I breathe
Sooner or later, you’ll bare your teeth

But for now, just dance, darling
C’mon, will you dance, my darling?
Darling, there’s a place for us
Can we go, before I turn to dust?
Oh, my darling there’s a place for us

Oh darling, c’mon will you dance my darling?
Though the hills are groaning with excess
Like a table ceaselessly being set
Oh my darling, we will get there yet

They trooped past the guards
Past the coops, and the fields
And the farmyards, all night till finally

The space they gained grew much farther than
The stone that Bear threw
To mark where they’d stop for tea

But Walk a little faster, don’t look backwards
Your feast is to the East, which lies a little past the pasture
And the blackbirds hear tea whistling they rise and clap
And their applause caws the kettle black
And we can’t have none of that
Move along, Bear, there, there, that’s that

Though cast in plaster
Our Ursula’s heart beat faster
Than monkey’s ever will

But still, they had got to pay the bills
Hadn’t they? That is what the monkey’d say
So, with the courage of a clown, or a cur
Or a kite, jerking tight at its tether
In her dung-brown gown of fur
And her jerkin of swan’s down and leather
Bear would sway on her hind legs
The organ would grind dregs of song
For the pleasure of the children who’d shriek
Throwing coins at her feet and recoiling in terror

Sing, Dance, darling
C’mon, will you dance, my darling?
Oh darling, there’s a place for us
Can we go, before I turn to dust?
Oh my darling there’s a place for us

Oh darling, c’mon, will you dance, my darling?
You keep your eyes fixed on the highest hill
Where you’ll ever-after eat your fill
Oh my darling dear mine, if you dance
Dance darling, and I’ll love you still

Deep in the night, shone a weak and miserly light
Where the monkey shouldered his lamp
Someone had told him the
Bear’d been wandering a fair piece away
From where they were camped
Someone had told him the bear’d been sneaking away
To the seaside caverns, to bathe
And the thought troubled the monkey
For he was afraid of spelunking
Down in those caves, also afraid what the
Village people would say if they saw the bear in that state
Lolling and splashing obscenely
Well, it seemed irrational, really
Washing that face, washing that matted and flea-bit pelt
In some sea-spit-shine old kelp dripping with brine
But monkey just laughed, and he muttered
When she comes back, Ursula will be bursting with pride
Till I jump up saying, You’ve been rolling in muck
Saying, You smell of garbage and grime

But far out, far out, by now, by now
Far out, by now, Bear ploughed
‘Cause she would not drown

First the outside-legs of the bear
Up and fell down, in the water, like knobby garters
Then the outside-arms of the bear
Fell off, as easy as if sloughed from boiled tomatoes
Lowered in a genteel curtsy
Bear shed the mantle of her diluvian shoulders
And, with a sigh she allowed the burden of belly to drop
Like an apron full of boulders

If you could hold up her threadbare coat to the light
Where it’s worn translucent in places
You’d see spots where
Almost every night of the year
Bear had been mending, suspending that baseness

Now her coat drags through the water
Bagging, with a life’s-worth of hunger
Limitless minnows

In the magnetic embrace, balletic and glacial
Of bear’s insatiable shadow

Left there, left there
When Bear left Bear

Left there, left there
When bear stepped clear of bear

Sooner or later you’ll bury your teeth

“Sawdust & Diamonds”

This song is the closest Joanna has opened up about the extremely hard to express process of artistic creation, as well as her relationship with it. The whole thing feels like Joanna lost in the currents of her subconscious, grasping at beauty while guided by the resonant bell deep inside her that lets her know what’s right. This song contains some of my favorite lines of anything ever, the acknowledgement of the ancient wildness inside every human being: “I wasn’t born of a whistle / Or milked from a thistle at twilight / No; I was all horns and thorns / Sprung out fully formed, knock-kneed and upright“.

There’s a bell in my ears
There’s the wide, white roar
Drop a bell down the stairs
Hear it fall forevermore
Hear it fall, forevermore

Drop a bell off of the dock
Blot it out in the sea
Drowning mute as a rock;
And sounding mutiny

There’s a light in the wings
Hits the system of strings
From the side, where they swing —
See the wires, the wires, the wires
And the articulation in our elbows and knees
Makes us buckle;
And we couple in endless increase
As the audience admires

And the little white dove
Made with love, made with love;
Made with glue, and a glove, and some pliers

Swings a low sickle arc, from its perch in the dark:
Settle down, settle down, my desire

And the moment I slept
I was swept up in a terrible tremor
Though no longer bereft
How I shook! And I couldn’t remember
And then the furthermost shake drove a murthering stake in
And cleft me right down through my center
And I shouldn’t say so
But I knew that it was then, or never

Push me back into a tree
Bind my buttons with salt
And fill my long ears with bees
Praying please, please, please
Oh, you ought not
No you ought not

And then the system of strings tugs on the tip of my wings
(Cut from cardboard and old magazines):
Makes me warble and rise, like a sparrow
And in the place where I stood
There is a circle of wood —
A cord or two — which you chop
And you stack in your barrow
And it is terribly good to carry water and chop wood
Streaked with soot, heavy-booted and wild-eyed;
As I crash through the rafters
And the ropes and the pulleys trail after
And the holiest belfry burns sky-high

And then the slow lip of fire moves
Across the prairie with precision
While, somewhere, with your pliers and glue
You make your first incision
And in a moment of almost-unbearable vision
Doubled over with the hunger of lions
Hold me close, cooed the dove
Who was stuffed, now, with sawdust and diamonds

I wanted to say: Why the long face?
Sparrow, perch and play songs of long face
Burro, buck and bray songs of long face!
Sing, I will swallow your sadness, and eat your cold clay
Just to lift your long face;
And though it may be madness, I will take to the grave
Your precious longface
And though our bones they may break, and our souls separate —
Why the long face?
And though our bodies recoil from the grip of the soil —
Why the long face?

And in the trough of the waves
Which are pawing like dogs
Pitch we, pale-faced and grave
As I write in my log

Then I hear a noise from the hull
Seven days out to sea
And it is that damnable bell!
And it tolls — well, I believe that it tolls
It tolls for me and It tolls for me!

And though my wrists and my waist seemed so easy to break
Still, my dear, I’d have walked you to the edge of the water
And they will recognize all the lines of your face
In the face of the daughter, of the daughter of my daughter

And darling, we will be fine; but what was yours and mine
Appears to me a sandcastle
That the gibbering wave takes
But if it’s all just the same, then will you say my name;
Say my name in the morning, so that I know when the wave breaks

I wasn’t born of a whistle
Or milked from a thistle at twilight
No; I was all horns and thorns
Sprung out fully formed, knock-kneed and upright

So enough of this terror
We deserve to know light
And grow evermore lighter and lighter
You would have seen me through
But I could not undo that desire

“Only Skin”

This nearly seventeen minutes-long song is one of the most beautiful love songs I’ve ever heard. Clearly about her relationship with fellow songwriter Bill Callahan. Lots of vivid scenes of their relationship, more or less mythologized. Possible references to Callahan’s drug use (“But always up the mountainside you’re clambering / Groping blindly, hungry for anything / Picking through your pocket linings, well, what is this? / Scrap of sassafras, eh Sisyphus?“) as well as cheating (“With your hands in your pockets, stubbily running / To where I’m unfresh, undressed and yawning / Well, what is this craziness? This crazy talking? / You caught some small death when you were sleepwalking“). The petite mort, of course, is an orgasm. Poor Callahan; it’s all downhill from Joanna Newsom.

And there was a booming above you
That night, black airplanes flew over the sea
And they were lowing and shifting like
Beached whales
Shelled snails
As you strained and you squinted to see
The retreat of their hairless and blind cavalry

You froze in your sand shoal
Prayed for your poor soul
Sky was a bread roll, soaking in a milk-bowl
And when the bread broke, fell in bricks of wet smoke
My sleeping heart woke, and my waking heart spoke

And there was a silence you took to mean something
Run, sing
For alive you will evermore be
And the plague of the greasy black engines a-skulkin’
Has gone east
While you’re left to explain them to me
Released from their hairless and blind cavalry

With your hands in your pockets, stubbily running
To where I’m unfresh, undressed and yawning
Well, what is this craziness? This crazy talking?
You caught some small death when you were sleepwalking

It was a dark dream, darlin’, it’s over
The firebreather is beneath the clover
Beneath his breathing there is cold clay, forever
A toothless hound-dog choking on a feather

But I took my fishingpole, fearing your fever
Down to the swimminghole, where there grows bitter herb
That blooms but one day a year by the riverside, I’d bring it here
Apply it gently
To the love you’ve lent me

While the river was twisting and braiding, the bait bobbed
And the string sobbed, as it cut through the hustling breeze
And I watched how the water was kneading so neatly
Gone treacly
Nearly slowed to a stop in this heat
In a frenzy coiling flush along the muscles beneath

Press on me, we are restless things
Webs of seaweed are swaddling
And you call upon the dusk
Of the musk of a squid
Shot full of ink, until you sink into your crib

Rowing along, among the reeds, among the rushes
I heard your song, before my heart had time to hush it!
Smell of a stone fruit being cut and being opened
Smell of a low and of a lazy cinder smoking

And when the fire moves away
Fire moves away, son
Why would you say
I was the last one?

Scrape your knee, it is only skin
Makes the sound of violins
And when I cut your hair, and leave the birds all of the trimmings
I am the happiest woman among all women

And the shallow
Water
Stretches as far as I can see
Knee-deep, trudging along
The seagull weeps “so long”

Humming a threshing song
Until the night is over
Hold on!
Hold on!
Hold your horses back from the fickle dawn

I have got some business out at the edge of town
Candy weighing both of my pockets down
‘Til I can hardly stay afloat, from the weight of them
And knowing how the common-folk condemn
What it is I do, to you, to keep you warm
Being a woman, being a woman

But always up the mountainside you’re clambering
Groping blindly, hungry for anything
Picking through your pocket linings, well, what is this?
Scrap of sassafras, eh Sisyphus?

I see the blossoms broke and wet after the rain
Little sister, he will be back again
I have washed a thousand spiders down the drain
Spiders ghosts hang soaked and dangelin’
Silently from all the blooming cherry trees
In tiny nooses, safe from everyone
Nothing but a nuisance gone now, dead and done
Be a woman, be a woman

Though we felt the spray of the waves
We decided to stay till the tide rose too far
We weren’t afraid, ’cause we know what you are
And you know that we know what you are

Awful atoll
Oh, incalculable indiscreetness and sorrow
Bawl, bellow
Sibyl sea-cow, all done up in a bow

Toddle and roll
Teeth an impalpable bit of leather
While yarrow, heather and hollyhock
Awkwardly molt along the shore

Are you mine?
My heart?
Mine anymore?

Stay with me for awhile
That’s an awfully real gun
I know life will lay you down
As the lightning has lately done

Failing this, failing this
Follow me, my sweetest friend
To see what you anointed in pointing your gun there

Lay it down, nice and slow
There is nowhere to go, save up
Up where the light, undiluted, is weaving in a drunk dream
At the sight of my baby, out back
Back on the patio watching the bats bring night in
While, elsewhere, estuaries of wax-white
Wend, endlessly, towards seashores unmapped

Last week our picture window produced a half-word
Heavy and hollow, hit by a brown bird
We stood and watched her gape like a rattlesnake
And paint and labour over every intake

I said a sort of prayer for some sort of rare grace
Then thought I ought to take her to a higher place
Said “dog nor vulture nor cat shall toy with you
And though you die, bird, you will have a fine view”

Then in my hot hand
She slumped her sick weight
We tramped through the poison oak
Heartbroke and inchoate

The dogs were snapping
And you cuffed their collars
While I climbed the tree-house
Then how I hollered
Well, she’d lain, as still as a stone, in my palm, for a lifetime or two

Then, saw the treetops, cocked her head and up and flew
While, back in the world that moves, often
According to the hoarding of these clues
Dogs still run roughly around
Little tufts of finch-down

And the cities we passed were a flickering wasteland
But his hand in my hand made them hale and harmless
While down in the lowlands the crops are all coming
We have everything
Life is thundering blissful towards death
In a stampede of his fumbling green gentleness

You stopped by, I was all alive
In my doorway, we shucked and jived
And when you wept, I was gone
See, I got gone when I got wise
But I can’t with certainty say we survived

Then down, and down
And down, and down
And down, and deeper
Stoke without sound
The blameless flames
You endless sleeper

Through fire below, and fire above, and fire within
Sleeped through the things that couldn’t have been if you hadn’t have been

And when the fire moves away
Fire moves away, son
And why would you say
I was the last one?

All my bones they are gone, gone, gone
Take my bones, I don’t need none
Cold, cold cupboard, lord, nothing to chew on
Suck all day on a cherry stone

Dig a little hole, not three inches round
Spit your pit in a hole in the ground
Weep upon the spot for the starving of me
‘Till up grow a fine young cherry tree

Well when the bough breaks, what’ll you make for me?
A little willow cabin to rest on your knee
What’ll I do with a trinket such as this?
Think of your woman, who’s gone to the west

But I’m starving and freezing in my measly old bed
Then I’ll crawl across the salt flats to stroke your sweet head
Come across the desert with no shoes on
I love you truly, or I love no one

Fire moves away
Fire moves away, son
Why would you say
That I was the last one
Last one

Clear the room! There’s a fire, a fire, a fire
Get going, and I’m going to be right behind you
And if the love of a woman or two, dear
Couldn’t move you to such heights, then all I can do
Is do, my darling, right by you

“Cosmia”

Final song of the album, this one’s about the death of Joanna’s best friend, Cassie Schley-May, who was killed by a drunk driver when Joanna started touring. Apparently the moment Joanna received the call was captured in a documentary, but I haven’t dared watch it (I don’t even remember the name of the documentary now, though). This one is raw and haunting, less polished than the previous songs, because it needed to be.

In the lyrics, Joanna references a period of her teenage years that she hasn’t opened much about that I’m aware of; she fell into a deep depression and felt that the darkness of the world was pouring into her, drowning her. She used to refer to herself consistently as having no skin, defenseless against the myriad assaults of reality itself (yet another reason why I think she’s autistic). Somehow she ended up sleeping alone for a few nights in the forest, by the Yuba River, to cleanse herself of darkness, and nearly got eaten by a bear. The whole thing didn’t quite work, but bears likely became her spirit animal.

When you ate I saw your eyelashes
Saw them shake like wind on rushes
In the corn field when she called me
Moths surround me, thought they’d drown me

And I miss your precious heart
And I miss your precious heart

Dried rose petal, red brown circles
Framed your eyes and stained your knuckles
Dried rose petals, red brown circles
Framed your eyes and stained your knuckles

And all those lonely nights down by the river
Brought me bread and water, water in
But though I tried so hard my little darling
I couldn’t keep the night from coming in

And all those lonely nights down by the river
Brought me bread and water by the kith and the kin
Now in the quiet hour when I am sleepin’
I cannot keep the night from coming in

Why’ve you gone away? Gone away again
I’ll sleep through the rest of my days
If you’ve gone away again
I’ll sleep through the rest of my days
And I will sleep through the rest of my days
And I’ll sleep through the rest of my days

Why’ve you gone away?
Seven suns, seven suns
Away, away, away, away

Can you hear me? Will you listen?
Don’t come near me, don’t go missing
And in the lissome light of evening
Help me Cosmia, I’m grieving

And all those lonely nights down by the river
Brought me bread and water, water in
But though I tried so hard my little darling
I couldn’t keep the night from coming in

And all those lonely nights down by the river
Brought me bread and water in the kith and the kin
Now in the quiet hour when I am sleepin’
I cannot keep the night from comin’ in

Beneath the porch light we’ve all been circling
Beat our dust hearts, singe our flour wings
But in the corner, something is happening
Wild Cosmia, what have you seen?

Water were your limbs, and the fire was your hair
And then the moonlight caught your eye
And you rose through the air
Well, if you’ve seen true light, then this is my prayer
Will you call me when you get there?

And I miss your precious heart
And I miss your precious heart
And miss, and miss, and miss
And miss, and miss, and miss, and miss, and miss your heart

But release your precious heart
To it’s feast for precious hearts