| Joanna Newsom – Have One On Me Lyrics | 13 years ago |
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ugh. i wish there was an edit button. i just wanted to add after looking over the lyrics again that one thing clear by the narrative of this song (as well as others) is that the female protagonist hurt the male and reproaches herself for it... in this case she jumps ship when her affair with the king becomes public and both parties are at risk of humiliation. Later, she returns, realizing she loves him and tries to make amends and resolve it but he is insatiable in his demands. she didn't know how to feel bad enough and ultimately ... in spite of all the other crap he pulled to get back at her and make her feel guilty, the fact that she was never enough for him is what hurt the most and is his true revenge. she gave herself to him when it was not her character to ever do such a thing... and he betrayed her and took her for granted and if that wasn't bad enough, he then sent her away in the most humiliating fashion. So I definitely think that it is a bitter plea at the end, to "have one on me." particularly since it seems louis has a bit of a drinking problem. anyway, i hope this makes some sense. I loooovveeee the way joanna newsom writes :) she speaks so well about the ebb and flow of life. her songs are so simple, yet bottomless. I really admire the way she is able to evoke the truth, depth, and complexity of situations we all have dealt with at one time or another through her storytelling. her music is like fine wine. more enjoyable, more complex, and more beautiful as time goes by. |
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| Joanna Newsom – Have One On Me Lyrics | 13 years ago |
| also, i need to add, that this song has a definite air of this relationship being doomed from the start. | |
| Joanna Newsom – Have One On Me Lyrics | 13 years ago |
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Hmmmmm love the comments here. I feel like most of Joanna's songs are large metaphors to describe the climate of various relationships, particularly on this album. She used this story to reflect the dynamics of a relationship and all of its complexities. So beautiful. Lola is self serving (or believes she is), obsessed and angry (resentful)... The beginning is like the back story... how they came together, what happened, who she is... who others think she is. Some of it seems like inner dialogue lola would have against herself. Louis is an egotistical, high status person who is caught up in appearances. They're helplessly in love, but it's killing both of them. There are all kinds of upsets and confusion... their relationship is taboo, sometimes it seems like they have poor timing, and they married for love but at some point one or the other them succumbed to their addictions and darker sides and lola was ultimately disposed of. This is the story of her bitterness, but also how much she truly and deeply felt for this person, in spite of herself. it was ultimately an abusive relationship, probably for both parties, but irresistible. The lyrics to me read like fragmented memories and scenes, from the relationship... things that were maybe said between the two/around town, impressions of events, so on. Since the whole album seems to be about the many emotions in the life of a single relationship from the height of adoration to the death knells, it makes sense that this epic story of obsession, struggle, misunderstanding and destruction would be its title track. |
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| Joanna Newsom – Sawdust and Diamonds Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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Just wanted to weigh in with my own sense of the song (by verse)... I'm just assuming the narrator is female. I've always thought that the lover was the one who rejected HER, but now reading this, I'm not as sure. It seems just as likely that she rejects him/breaks up with him, but is still struggling with the fact that she LOVES him. Either way, this song seems to be about the two of them fighting with their connection/love... but knowing that it can't work out because of problems that keep them apart. The two are trapped in a cycle which makes it seem almost as if they are star crossed lovers. Anyway... here are my thoughts broken down... "From the top..." She has an incredible connection with this person, but they had to leave each other... she carries him around though they are not together... she wonders if at the end of her life (when she is about to step into eternity) he will be waiting for her. "There's a bell..." The bell is like the distraction... it's the thing that keeps them apart. It's a nagging problem, or maybe something one of them is chasing after... the bell falls and falls further away until it is buried & drowning in the sea... however, no matter how much she buries it, it still has the same power and she can't escape what it's blaring at her so loudly. "There's a light in the wings..." These two stanzas reference her public persona and the way outside people are seeing the situation. I take this two ways... 1) the way their relationship has played out in the sight of other people... as if the people in their lives are actually watching them make love and fall apart. (perhaps they are, as it relates to my next point) 2) "the system of strings" seems to me at once her harp and also the strings which hold puppets in a theatre. It is how her creative pursuits expose her feelings, force her to expose the relationship and all of its ups and downs making it feel like they are characters in a play being put on display for others' entertainment. Perhaps it makes her feel vulnerable/like there is a lack of privacy somehow. Everyone around knows their business because she can only cope with it by making art... "And the little white dove..." The dove seems to me the love they created together. The sight of it makes her desire it terribly, but she tries to cool down the fire ("settle down, settle down, my desire..." LOVE those lines.) "And the moment I slept..." But still her desire flares up with such a force that it wakes her in the night... in a nightmare... "And the furthermost shake drover a murthering stake in..." She has a realization that strikes her to her core. She realizes she has to make a choice about the relationship... whether or not the relationship can continue or not, basically. "Push me back into a tree..." Her lover seduces her, and even though it's wrong (because it will hurt her heart, also because of social taboos), she can't resist him. She protests and says, "We shouldn't, we shouldn't" but she succumbs anyway because her desire sweeps her away. "Then the system of strings..." Back in the "play" version of the characters... the main character is swept away by the bliss of her desire and love. She then falls catastrophically, inevitably. Again, it's like it's in front of everyone the way it raises her up and then just flattens her. She begins to wonder if it is better to just live a chaste life, carrying water and chopping wood. To not be absorbed by this cycle of pain and suffering the relationship puts her through. "Then the slow lip of fire..." But then it flares up again when her lover realizes what she means to him in a moment of "unbearable vision" and runs back to her. Apologizes... digs up all the old crap (sawdust and diamonds, which make up the dove, their love). "I wanted to say..." She doesn't want him to feel sad. Her love for him is so intense that his sadness invades her. She wants to take away his pain and make it her own. She wants to remind him that life goes on, that we're not dead yet... even though our souls need to be separated... She will never forget the impact of the relationship and will take the pain (and pleasure) of it to the grave. It also sounds like she's talking to herself, trying to be optimistic. "There's so much more to life..." "In the trough..." She's off on a journey, by herself... at sea (dwelling in her emotions?) She hears the bell and it is a reminder of what she lost... of what the painful realization was that set her off here in the first place. It follows her everywhere. "though my wrists and my waist..." Though she seems weak (I always get the image of the elbows and knees here from earlier...) perhaps physically (she is a woman?) but also emotionally, she would have shown him what she sees / feels / and where she's going. She would have allowed him to see the huge impact he has had on her... an impression which has created such a thumbprint, she imagines lines of his face could be recognized in the face of her daughter (perhaps he literally impregnated her) and generations after. "Darling, we will be fine..." She knows that they'll both make it through, but is finding that with the distance what they created seems to be drifting away...becoming unimportant. She figures if it doesn't change their destiny to express love or to ignore it, she would rather hold on to the love and hear echoes back from him so she knows that he's still there and that the connection is still strong. "I wasn't born of a whistle..." Another reference to enlightenment and escaping the cycle of suffering. She feels she can find enlightenment through true, patient, love and the he would have been with her ... but she couldn't control her desire for something more. Or, she wants to escape the pain of love with another by finding the love in light and be exalted, but her desire overtakes her and pulls her back in... Ultimately, it is not the desire she can't undo, it is the desire that undoes her! And the final verse is just an echo of the first, a reminder that even through the tumult of this relationship (and this song!!!) there is still a patient, enduring sense that he will meet her at the end. That the love between them sort of beats on, steadily, in spite of everything else. |
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| Joanna Newsom – Sawdust and Diamonds Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| Yes... I always think Joanna Newsom's lyrics are really quite straight forward in what they're about... but abstract so that they can mean different things to different people within the context of that. In this case, a struggling/failing/ending relationship. To me, it's just all of the feelings she is experiencing regarding that. The DESIRE which persists even though she knows the relationship is over... | |
| Joanna Newsom – Clam, Crab, Cockle, Cowrie Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| yes. | |
| Joanna Newsom – Sawdust and Diamonds Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| I always considered those lines to be sort of aggressively romantic. Her lover takes her, and she wants it, but she protests... "No, we shouldn't!" somewhat futilely since they know they're just going to do it anyway and deal with the pain and the criticism. | |
| Joanna Newsom – Only Skin Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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Wow, some really great interpretations on here. I probably won't add much to this discussion, but I had to say that the interpretation about abortion/miscarriage really struck me. I, too, feel that this song is most definitely about a complicated, cyclical romantic relationship (likely the same one as in Sawdust and Diamonds) in which both lovers are very intensely entwined, but can't seem to be together... Joanna Newsom does write in a lot of imagery relating to motherhood in both songs, and it has that tinge of loss / that some event made it all go wrong. I love the way that she writes. To me, it seems that she manages to capture the feeling of events rather than a literal moment. She paints it broadly, which allows a lot of different interpretations but I also think this is effective because, for me, it is almost more accurate to the way relationships struggle against each other than breaking it down into raw language (or limiting it that way). It captures the essence of what love is really like -- internal confusion and toil, the way it seems other people are viewing the situation, the way it feels to the narrator to be with her partner and how his actions impact her... how her actions have impacted him (and then her again). She REALLY captures it. It's amazing. I'm always trying to explain what these songs mean to me, but I can't give an honest interpretation without finding myself writing responses just as broad. |
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