submissions
| Joanna Newsom – What We Have Known Lyrics
| 13 years ago
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I would imagine if it were a ghost horse or something the black would look like malachite. YEAH! And malachite can look pretty black anywho. |
submissions
| Joanna Newsom – Ribbon Bows Lyrics
| 13 years ago
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This song freaks me the heck out is all I know... I dated some dude who was a dog on the Chinese zodiac, and no one liked him because he was depressed etc. And I fell into the trap of liking him for being so lonely I suppose, but he was an atheist, which caused me to question my beliefs. I called myself an atheist the whole time I dated him to keep him from thinking I was strange or stupid. It took me three years to figure out that I am a very spiritual person, not religious, and that I see god in everything. Joanna Newsom is freaky. :[ But so good. |
submissions
| Joanna Newsom – Emily Lyrics
| 13 years ago
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That is probably my favorite line she has ever written. It brings back so many memories of cold mornings and friends and family and happiness and sadness. I don't know how she does it! |
submissions
| Joanna Newsom – Baby Birch Lyrics
| 13 years ago
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Wow... That song does seem to relate to Baby Birch so much. I haven't read Lolita yet, but I plan on it now. I definitely see the similarities in the writers though, not only in this song, but in many of them. Nabokov seems to emit from her lyrics. Both of them are incredible! |
submissions
| Joanna Newsom – Baby Birch Lyrics
| 13 years ago
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Yes! Definitely. She is such a therapeutic writer. There can be thousands of different interpretations for everyone. |
submissions
| Joanna Newsom – Baby Birch Lyrics
| 13 years ago
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Oh gosh. I am so sorry to hear that! I hope this album is medicinal for you. It's so strange that you heard that song live the same night. |
submissions
| Joanna Newsom – Baby Birch Lyrics
| 13 years ago
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This is my interpretation. Doesn't mean it's right or what Joanna meant to say. She speaks in Alien anyway. It's her gift to the world to be here singing to us.
The narrator, which seems to be Joanna in this one, is staring into the stars saddened by the fact that she can't take every path in life. She wants motherhood, but she also wants the love of a relationship, but she doesn't think she can do it... at least not now. It's like she's sorry she could not travel both paths, you know? She sees other people with children and feels pity for them: "You poor little cousin. I don't want your dregs... A little baby fussing all over my legs." That's not to say she dislikes motherhood at all. On the contrary, she's fascinated by it. But maybe it's not the right path for her at this point.
For some reason, I think that this narrator may also be questioning the partners with which she never had children. Throughout the album the narrators question their significant others' intentions, even while loving them all "one by one." Perhaps it doesn't feel right to have a child with incoming "dark, dark water" in all of these relationships. Or maybe that dark tide is coming in all the time, all over the world, and the narrator doesn't want to have a child be dragged through it with her.
This song also seems to be a conversation with a darkened lover or a dark part of the narrator herself (the male part - "There is a blacksmith, and there is a shepherd, and there is a butcher-boy, and there is a barber, who's cutting and cutting away at my only joy.") trying to determine what path to take now. She probably is thinking... why bring a baby into this disgusting world?! Joanna often talks about the difficulties of being a woman (or just an innocent). And it is so hard - maintaining the innocence of a baby birch in a world torn apart by evil warmongers. It's also hard being an alien harpist I'm sure.
I am really interested in the meat-eating guilt that Littlelifegiver talks about as well though.
Just some thoughts.
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submissions
| Joanna Newsom – Baby Birch Lyrics
| 13 years ago
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Me too! I can't tell, but knowing Joanna, it's billions of themes rolled into one. It could be about abortion and/or everything else in the world. |
submissions
| Joanna Newsom – Baby Birch Lyrics
| 13 years ago
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I definitely see abortion here too (or a miscarriage)... But it seems like it is an abortion that HAD to happen for some reason. Maybe the mother's health? And these themes recur throughout HOOM... A longing for a lover or a child ("my arms want to carry") but the inability to have either fully due to the need for independence.
I have only listened to this a couple of times, but I want to do some more thinking on this. I like your interpretations so much. |
submissions
| Joanna Newsom – No Provenance Lyrics
| 13 years ago
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Also, in the very beginning where it says she had slept for forty years and woke to find her gone... I think she is saying that she had a dream that this would happen in the future. It was a vision saying she needs to get out before it's too late. And this song is the retelling of that "prophetic" (even thought it's common sense) dream.
This whole album screams "homesick!" Longing for that bucolic Nevada City I guess, and for everyone she loves to be there with her. |
submissions
| Joanna Newsom – No Provenance Lyrics
| 13 years ago
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Oh yeah. Your reply seems spot on to me too. A lot of her songs feel like dream sequences, and this is another one. I agree with you on Good Intentions Paving Company relating to this song. It seems like this devil man has driven her to the burning barn and now she just wants to go back to the lights of Rome, but she feels like no one will accept her. |
submissions
| Joanna Newsom – No Provenance Lyrics
| 13 years ago
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I love your interpretation of this song!
I agree with you that it's about being in a locked-up relationship. The title itself seems to be referring to the fact that the narrator's significant other is keeping her from returning to her family, from even thinking about her other relationships. Being so immersed in this strange love, she has no provenance. This song seems to be yet another turning point for the narrator. She's beginning to see that maybe her family and friends were right about this dude, and that he just kept her from seeing "their flares". It's pretty common, though disgusting, for women and men in abusive relationships to be cut off from their family and friends. Being afraid of the Big Return might be that she doesn't want to go back to her hometown for fear of being rejected, since she had basically forgotten about everyone in her past (due to her s.o.'s warm arms that are really just burning). But she does want to go back at this point.
I love the spinning straw into gold. I wonder if it is meant to remind us of that one tune: "Make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver and the other is gold." Seems like this man isn't really gold at all, but he's trying to make her feel like he is more important than everything in her life up to this point, even her very origin. But the narrator's not that dumb... gold doesn't burn like this scarecrow.
It reminds me of Easy too. The differences are there though since she's at a different point in her relationship. In No Provenance, the narrator seems to at least acknowledge that she needs to break free. Her "dirty little dog sized horse" isn't really that at all, but her s.o. would have her believe that this part of her is worthless. I'm happy to see that by this song she might escape the flaming barn, since she finally notices the flames' existence.
But, like Eveiamnot, to me there are some parts of this song that don't fit entirely into that lone interpretation. I don't know... I have read a couple of comments on this site that talk about abortions, miscarriages, and the like. I don't know if that is - really - apparent, but it seems to be in this song and album. It reminds me of Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants." (I've heard Newsom likes him a lot as well.) A lot of the songs on HOOM seem to be about motherly longing. Not sure who the narrator is meant to be, but I feel so bad for her while listening to this album. Of course, that is a wild guess, but it makes sense to me with the (maybe) newborn horse, and tons of references throughout the album.
Women can be so silly and stupid when it comes to men, but these songs are so full of honesty and vulnerability that it might help others see when they're in a f***-up of a relationship too. Joanna Newsom is like an otherworldly, "via satellite feed", guidance counselor. Too bad most people can't get past the "squeaky voice" (but I love it).
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submissions
| Joanna Newsom – Easy Lyrics
| 13 years ago
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I agree, Erica. This song definitely listens just like a book with each song being a different chapter. Thanks for the info. |
submissions
| Joanna Newsom – Easy Lyrics
| 13 years ago
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Wow! I haven't thought of it this way. This really does seem to fit quite perfectly with Bloody Mary referring to Magdalene. I also see a lot of references to motherhood and the desire to bare child in this song, but after reading this post I think they may also have some ties to Jesus as well, or religion and the unknown in general. So many of her songs seem to be a pleading to the unknown to let her see and understand them. "Easy" also has a beautiful spiritual quality to it, like a slave song played in the master's parlor. Maybe intentional... |
submissions
| Joanna Newsom – Only Skin Lyrics
| 14 years ago
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I, like most of you guys, love Joanna Newsom and think that her lyrics are impossible to be interpreted "correctly". I think that she writes for herself,in her alien way about her alien thoughts, and to me that's amazing. She's unique, and every time I listen to her I swear she must have just landed on Earth less than a year ago. The fact that she has maintained the ability to see the world in the light that she does shakes me up a bit. I wish more people would be able to think and explain things the way she does.
Anywho, enough gushing. This song reminds me of a relationship I was in for two years. And this song is probably one of the reasons I was able to end it before I suffered too much. My interpretation is probably not what she meant to convey in this song, but it's what I got from it. I was in a relationship with a man who had a LOT of problems, which surprisingly endeared me to him further, and made me feel sorry for him so much that I wanted to take care of him (not necessarily pity... it was a difficult sort of emotion). The woman in this song seems to also be drawn to her lover for the same reasons. I was also looked down upon by many of my friends and some of my family members for being with a man with such a past and such problems. It seems that's what she means when she sings:
"...knowing how the common folk condemn what it is I do to you to keep you warm; being a woman, being a woman."
Most parts of this song are just way too beyond me to even try to interpret, and I don't mind. Joanna Newsom seems to have popped in from some world with beings infinitely smarter than any on Earth. But, although I don't understand most of it fully, this song has been my favorite of hers since I initially heard it. |
submissions
| Joanna Newsom – Have One On Me Lyrics
| 14 years ago
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The spider reference is from Montez's famous Spider Dance. She's known as Lola the spider dancer.
http://history-is-made-at-night.blogspot.com/2009/05/lola-montez-and-spider-dance.html
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