| Joanna Newsom – Kingfisher Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| I thought Kingfisher was a portmanteau of the words King and Fisher, rather than an actual living, breathing, literal Kingfisher. For example, God reigns as King over our lives, and when it's time, casts his fly, and fishes us out of earth, or the "farm" as it's referred to here. | |
| Joanna Newsom – Kingfisher Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| Kingfisher is God. | |
| Joanna Newsom – Colleen Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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The way i see it, this song describes the conflict between being free and being at peace. Basically the life Colleen acquires is a skeletal excuse for an existence, unproductive in nature and lacking enjoyment. To be at peace one must be detached from knowledge and desire. By this is Colleen most blessed, for she has been deprived of each. But the girl's free spirit finds itself tied down to a meagre existence, a life of toiling beneath a horizon full of empty air, a manner of living that offers nothing but hollow serenity. Colleen does not want to reconcile herself to this life, and secretly yearns for the sea, yet she is bound to either by both corset and by what it is composed of. Everyone has opposing desires, these are inherent to ourselves and keep us constricted and immobile. In Colleen's case, she has caught the 'dead disease', walking around corpselike in her shoes with only an illusion of happiness to comfort her. But really, this is not what she wanted. By subcribing to this life, she demerits the life of the vagrant seafarer for which she shares a mutual longing. Eventually the girl accepts that she does not identify with any "damned colleen", effectively pursuing the promise that the sea - though treacherous - has to offer. It is of course, an open question whether this was the right decision. The opening of the song serves to suggest that such a quest may dissatisfy, for the sea violates and destroys, does it not? The reassuring thing is that, in comparrison to life on shore, it is the lesser boredom. She would rather merge with the raging tides than stay idle in the fields, a chaste vessel and pointless advertisement for a life that was really no life at all. |
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