here's my version: the song is sad. it's about her relationship with an ex. the bell represents his discontent or desire for someone/something else. the boat journey is their path through life. when the bell returns it means he dumps her. "you would have seen me through/but I could not undo that desire". the bird and the lip of fire? not sure, but i love it. no it's not about her harp you muppet.

I think this is about a girl who has a husband who is a sailor. She worries about his long trips out to sea; in fact, she worries that he will never come back home.

"from the top of the flight
of the wide, white stairs
through the rest of my life
do you wait for me there?" So she last saw him from the top of the stairs as he left through the door.

"there's a bell in my ears
there's a wide white roar
drop a bell down the stairs
hear it fall forevermore" That is the "tolling" of...the lighthouse? There is some bell at the beach that you can hear at night, but I am not sure which it is. It, however, is a constant reminder to the girl of her husband being out at sea.

"drop a bell off of the dock
blot it out in the sea
drowning mute as a rock;
sounding mutiny" The bell is driving her crazy because she is worried and it is a reminder of that about which she is worried. She wants the bell to stop tolling, and she is saying "Throw that bell into the sea!"

"there's a light in the wings, hits this system of strings
from the side while they swing;
see the wires, the wires, the wires" These wings could refer to the sails of a boat, the wires and strings those that hold up the sails. She can see lights through the sails at dock, which is sort of hopeful.

"and the articulation
in our elbows and knees
makes us buckle as we couple in endless increase
as the audience admires" The endless increase is the growing distance between them as he travels away from her. The reference to the elbows, knees, and audience, is a little more difficult to fit into this interpretation...maybe they are a well known couple, or he a well-known sailor, and the town is highly aware of the length of time he has been gone? If this were so, perhaps the lights through the other sails is not hopeful but sad because it shows the otehr sailors are back home. Maybe the articulation is every day tasks, like walking and talking to people...and the weight of her worry is crippling her.

"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" In the Noah story, the dove brings back hope of land, so this reference obviously is to that. Maybe her husband made her a little dove before he left to comfort her, promising he would make it back to land. She is looking up at it in the night while she lies in bed, probably with a window open, which would both allow her to hear the bells tolling and allows the wind to drift in and swing the dove, on its string from the ceiling.

"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" She was able to fall asleep, but her sleep was full of nightmares, but she does not remember the nightmares, or maybe she could not remember the promise or the hope while she had the nightmares?

"then the furthermost shake drove a murdering stake in
and cleft me right down through my center
and I shouldn't say so, but I know that it was then, or never" One of her nightmares awakened her, and she knew in her gut that he was back either then or gone forever.

"push me back into a tree
bind my buttons with salt
fill my long ears with bees
praying: please, please, please
love, you ought not!
no you ought not!"

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

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 pulleys trail after
and the holiest belfry burns sky-high

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?

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 the damnable bell!" Again, the bell interrupts her thoughts, and she is ripped back to the reality in which her love is still lost at sea.

"and it tolls - well, I believe, that it tolls - for me!
it tolls for me!" This is her believing the bells to be taunting her, or maybe they are giving her hope that her love may still find his way home, from the sound of the bells?

"Though my wrists and my waist seemed so easy to break
still, my dear, I would have walked you to the very edge of the water
and they will recognise all the lines of your face
in the face of the daughter of the daughter of my daughter" She is saying she would have come with him to the end of her life to prevent the worry she has now, but he apparently would not let her come because she was not fit for the rough work of a sailor. She is getting down on the situation, feeling that he will not come back, and that instead of seeing him again, the town and everyone will only ever see his face again in those of his descendants.

"darling, we will be fine, but what was yours and mine
appears to be 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 I know when the wave breaks?" She is saying of course it will be fine (trying to convince herself), but right now she is just panicking, and she asks that her love say her name in the hopes that she will hear his voice and know he is still alive.

"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/oh, desire..." She is getting up from her bed because she realizes she was not made of soft things that would allow her to sit by and trust in a crafted dove-promise. She was made of sturdier things that reveal to her the truth, no matter how painful. She thinks they deserve to know one way or the other and not to continue being clueless and worrisome. You would have seen me through refers to the dove he made, that it would have helped comfort her had she been able to settle down her desire for her love to return safely, and to be with her.

"from the top of the flight
of the wide, white stairs
through the rest of my life
do you wait for me there?" Just back to the beginning.

So that was the interpretation I got when I hear this song. Oh my gosh, though, this song is so beautiful; I love it! I also love Peach, Plum, Pear, and Bridges and Balloons, which was the first song of hers that I heard and that won me over. I feel like I am Joanna sometimes...those songs suit my feelings perfectly haha. Oh, they are wonderful. Sorry my comment was so INCREDIBLY long; I just did not want to leave out a point.

Sorry--I had skipped around when I was writing my interpretations, and I missed a few stanzas.

"push me back into a tree
bind my buttons with salt
fill my long ears with bees
praying: please, please, please
love, you ought not!
no you ought not!" I think, maybe this is a dream she had, or a memory, to before he left. She is asking him to take her back to that moment before he left, when she was begging him not to go.

"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" Now she is definitely either going back to a memory or dreaming of better times, when her love was home and chopping wood, doing every day tasks. The system of strings is either her dreaming, or the boats again, which take her back, while she is gazing at them through the window, she begins to think of those times.

"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 pulleys trail after
and the holiest belfry burns sky-high" She is saying it is manly enough of her love to stay home and do those chores, and she could have rung the bells herself with no worries.

"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" The light house light comes through the window, illuminating that dove he made her. It reminds her that he DID go, and while the other happier things were happening, he was also beginning to build that dove, the promise, that he was beginning to plan to sail away. She is unable to stand it, she is hungry for him, for his return, as she desires both as strongly as a lion might desire his food. The dove now is only a reminder of how much she misses him and wants him to come back and hold her closely.

"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" Maybe the reason her love left was because he was down, having wanted more adventure than was presentin his life. Maybe she had considered asking how she could have fixed it for him, but instead she kept silent and he decided to sail.

"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?" She fears the "long face," the last she saw him in before he decided to leave, will be the last she will see until she dies. She will be haunted knowing she never asked, and thereby was never able to rid him of his long face before he chose to leave.

"in the trough of the waves
which are pawing like dogs
pitch we, pale-faced and grave
as I write in my log" She can hear/see the waves crashing, and she is forced to reflect, as she has done, here having written this song with a grave face in her "log" or her journal.

Okay, so that was the missing piece of my interpretation. I like this way of seeing it, and I only read about a page and a half of comments for the song, so if someone else has already written this, well, that is fantastic that maybe I have an idea that may fit. If anyone agrees or disagrees for reasons, I would be interested in seeing future comments.

This is a break-up song of sorts. The break-up hasn't happened yet, but it is sure to come, hence the tolling of the bell. She tries to ignore it, but it's no use. Their love is a "sand castle that the gibbering wave takes". The relationship is at an end.

General Comment

hi. i love this song to death.

General Comment

yeah no.

this is a song about her own journey through death
and the fear

General Comment

For some reason I keep finding greekmythology-type refrences. For example:

"And the little white dove made with love, made with love, Made with glue and a glove and some wires"- Reminds me of the marriage of Aphrodite and Hephaestus

"push me back into a tree, bind my buttons with salt, fill my long ears with bees, praying: please, please, please, love, you ought not!no you ought not!"
Reminds me of Odysseus's crew tying him to his ship while they pass the Sirens

"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"
Most definitely reminds me of the birth of Athena.

I'm not sure but for some reason they greek mythology seems to tie into the song perfectly.

P.S. There was still one more thing that bothered me:

"hold me close," cooed the dove, who was stuffed now with sawdust and diamonds"
Is that really about stuffing a bird with cocaine!?!






General Comment

One of the main messages i get in this song is Joannas heaven;
-the wide white stairs, the use of doves to symbolise peace in heaven, waiting at the stairs very much like "waiting at the gates", her muscles and bones going like she's dying and going up to heaven, she speaks of hearing the bell calling for her which could be her calling for her to die and she also mentions the terror then the getting lighter and everything: the terror of dying then gettng lighter and leaving everything that was hers on earth as she travels up.

Does anyone else get the theme of Horses in alot of Joannas songs???
Well i definatley get that in this song aswell, so i don't know if it's actually the horse dying or something?


General Comment

i think this song is the story of death, or at least one of the major parts of joanna's life concerning loss. i don't remember where i read, but one of these songs on ys regards death. and this is a solo song so it's much more personal than the rest.
"from the top of the flight
of the wide, white stairs
through the rest of my life
do you wait for me there?"
-could represent heaven, "wide white stairs" and if she'll meet whoever is there when she dies?

"darling, we will be fine, but what was yours and mine
appears to be a sandcastle that the gibbering wave takes"
-like love is being taken from the two, "gibbering wave" could represent death


"love, you ought not"
-seems like a way of grief over death, or a "why?". confusion of since there's a life full of love, why must there be seperation and suffering?

"I will take to the grave
your precious long face
and though our bones they may break, and our souls separate"






Song Meaning

she also talks about in MANY interviews that people probably miss the point- that there probably isn't as much "hidden" in her lyrics as you might think, but rather that it's straightforward, but poetic. i highly doubt this song is about her harp. actually, i know it's not about her harp, or anything pushing the imagery too far.

1 Reply  ·  General Comment

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.

My Interpretation

I went throught this song and just put what each part meant to me. Much of it, I think, expresses some of the same ideas as other folks'. The main idea of the song is about death, eternity, and vulnerability.

“from the top of the flight
of the wide, white stairs
through the rest of my life
do you wait for me there?”
The first and last stanzas are the big question of: what happens after we die? Is there an afterlife and will we be reunited with the people from this life?

“there's a bell in my ears
there's a wide white roar
drop a bell down the stairs
hear it fall forevermore”
The idea of listening to the bell drop down the stairs and hearing it fall forevermore expresses the depth of eternity.

“there's a light in the wings, hits this system of strings
from the side while they swing;
see the wires, the wires, the wires
and the articulation
in our elbows and knees
makes us buckle as we couple in endless increase
as the audience admires”
Joanna uses the analogy of a stage/a show
I think the light in the wings is referring to “seeing the light” (death) and how it is always present and threatening. Our lives are fragile and can be ended at any moment. Once we leave the stage (life), death is waiting in the wings.

The dove is referring to peace. It is “made with glue, and a glove, and some pliers”. It is not naturally there, but requires a manmade effort.

“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
then the furthermost shake drove a murdering stake in
and cleft me right down through my center
and I shouldn't say so, but I know that it was then, or never
push me back into a tree
bind my buttons with salt
fill my long ears with bees
praying: please, please, please
love, you ought not!
no you ought not!”
Once our illusions are gone, we realize how fragile we are. It is much easier, but not necessarily better, to live with the illusion of being untouchable.

“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”
Peace is fragile, and while we may think it exists, there is always something ready to destroy it.

“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?”
Yes we are all mortal, we will eventually die and it will all end, and yet.. we must live!

“and it tolls - well, I believe, that it tolls - for me! it tolls for me!”
The tolling again refers to death (like in the beginning). Saying the bell is tolling for her she means that death is coming.

“though my wrists and my waist seemed so easy to break
still, my dear, I would have walked you to the very 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”
We are mortal, but our memories and legacies are immortal.

“darling, we will be fine, but what was yours and mine
appears to be 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 I know when the wave breaks?”
Everything in this life is temporary, and that’s okay, but will you reassure me you are still there?

“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”
We are born “old” and imperfect, and we all experience pain. But we deserve happiness as well. The goal in life is to better ourselves.

Song Meaning

A few things...

1) I haven't read every comment thoroughly, so forgive me if I repeat previous people.

2) I'm tired of everybody on here acting like Joanna's songs can only be about one thing. Her songs are multi-dimensional and often encapsulate infinite meaning within every couplet or quatrain. I'm not saying ALL interpretations are correct, but unless you're Joanna Newsom, you're not going to know exactly what she intended when she wrote it. Positing your own views is great and I've really changed a lot of my opinions and seen new angles to this song from reading everyone's comments, but I don't think any one interpretation was more valid to me than any other. Two completely different interpretations don't have to be mutually exclusive, and for Joanna, I think they rarely are.

3) That being said, I love how Joanna songs on here always get a million, "This song reminded me of this poem/song/book/movie..." comments. And I LOVE those comments, because they're rarely things that I had thought of.

4) Now my own small addendum: I know that the 5 songs on Ys are about a few things that happened to Joanna over the course of a year, and her attempt to make sense of them and make connections between them in order to surmount them (or something like that). I THINK that one of those events was someone in her family having to have some sort of surgery. I still agree with and love the interpretations about lovers, music, conforming to society, excess, etc., but I think the genius is that all of these things are ideas/meditations she arrived at while contemplating her family member's (I think her brother...if someone can find an article verifying, I'd be very appreciative) chances of survival. I find many images of being worried about someone not making it through a surgery. Even the taxidermy could have this dual meaning (though I like the ideas of the dove being the Holy Spirit and also sawdust and diamonds being the things society fills us with). I think it can be all of these things at once. That's the beauty of symbolism and why Joanna's is so rich.

General Comment

"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"

I love this part. I don't understand the "whistle", exactly, but it makes me think of Thumbelina, who "sprung out fully formed" from the flower. I like the idea of being milked from a thistle, coming out all horns and thorns. I feel that everything she writes relates back to nature. I get that feeling with other lines, like "it is terribly good to carry water and chop wood".

I love the passion in the verse, "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"

Like a lot of people, I just love to think of the power of the lyrics and song, and don't concentrate on an overall theme.

My Interpretation

This song can make me cry, easily.

My Opinion

I got a feeling that the song was topically about slavery and the travel across the Atlantic ocean to the New World. I realize that the Ya is autobiographical in nature, however, so maybe it's a metaphor for a forced move to somewhere Joanna Newsom didn't want to go.

General Comment

This was the first Joanna Newsom song I ever heard. The first time I was confused, and rejected it. But I kept coming back. The first time I listened through the whole thing, I had a new favorite singer.


General Comment

"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 it tolls - well, I believe, that it tolls - for me!
it tolls for me!
though my wrists and my waist seemed so easy to break
still, my dear, I would have walked you to the very edge of the water
and they will recognise all the lines of your face
in the face of the daughter of the daughter of my daughter"

I love that Joanna acknowledges that we are each subject to mortality and for this reason are each delicate. I also think she's singing of her sister (which I like too because my sister and I are quite close) and how dying doesn't mean the end of each's love for the other because we can pass on behaviors and traits to future generations. "Lines of your face" is not exclusively genetic because we earn lines from emotional expression, so our personalities and dispositions are remembered.

General Comment

I think the narrator, has cheated her partner, and well she still really loves this person, and its impossible to reunite, she takes pride and or confidence in the fact that her lover was extremely sad. At the beginning she wonders if he'll wait for her. The person she cheated with was not a person at all, but her harp, and in losing her love to her love of her instrument, She knew it was then or never, choose me or music. She chose music, he left, the bell being silenced, or going out to see , there are a few more references to this, love you ought not., and she realized that their romance was as fragile as a sandcastle in the waves. It fine to do what he does (or is this about the harp make, what is little whit dove?) Then she says i know you loved me, but i could not turn away from my desire, I believe her desire to perform, to perfect her art, but lastly she hold out hope that this person will wait her for no matter what, its not so much hoping hell wait around, but hoping that the love was genuine and can never be extinguished. The bell at first being silenced, and then hearing again like shes saying i know well never be together but at least love can never die. I dont know it seems to all make sense when i take this view.

General Comment

This only-harp song is unique and beautiful, one of my favorite's of the album <3
Ys is one of caffeinesounds' favorite albums: http://caffeinesounds.blogspot.com/2011/01/10faves-joanna-newsom-ys.html feel free to check it out!

General Comment

This is certainly a powerful song, and it could have so many meanings and no one ever knows quite what any of her songs mean because they are so personal to her. To me its mostly about illusions, like a beautiful dove being made from glue and a glove, but mostly the illusion of life and how easily it is broken by things like death and how it hurts to face reality and go on.

It has many allusions to death, and to me, questions about life after death. If we going on forever like the bell falling down the stairs chiming, or if we just end are are muted like the bell in the sea. It sounds like she is singing to someone she lost, a man that she'll recognize in her daughter's face and shes asking if there is an afterlife, if he'll be there waiting for her.

The lyrics that resonate the strongest with me are the ones about the long face because I feel understand the emotion behind them. When my dogs died I was just unhappy, everyone was trying to cheer me up and didn't understand my long face and why they couldn't lift it. My mom said things like "I would do anything so you wouldn't have to hurt like this" and it relates, to me, to "Sing I will swallow your sadness and eat your cold clay just to lift your long face". The narrator is trying to do anything to lift the long face. The lyrics are also ironic, these terrible things happening and the narrator doesn't understand the long face- "And though our bones they may break and our souls separate - why the long face?"

I can never perfectly articulate what her songs mean to me, the way they make me feel are hard to put into words. But she sings about things everyone goes through, questioning life after death, facing death and the pain it brings and how life is never the same.

That is what I gleaned from this wonderful song anyways.

My Interpretation

"chopping wood and carrying water" is a zen saying. this whole album seems to be about enlightenment/energy/"one light" more than anything, especially cosmia

General Comment

JOANNA IS GENIOUS. In an interview she says her favorite writer is Hemmingway and that she strives but could never write like him. There is a Hemmingway book entitled "For Whome the Bell Tolls" and here, Newsom sings "and it is the damnable bell, and it tolls, well I believe, that it tolls, it tolls for me!" This is so amazing and beautiful. I am certain their are countless literary references in her songs (aside from the obvious Camus and Nobokov).

General Comment

If you want to interpret Joanna Newsom’s songs, I think one should look at her work in the context of her life. She apparently went through several traumatic experiences and this album was a way of healing, of putting into words, her pain, loss, and sadness. While she has many layers in her work, it seems like it is always the simplest concept that is the bone structure, upon which she builds her meaty references and complex meanings as a way of expressing herself as an artist. Ultimately, I think this song is about the relationship she had with the man who fathered her lost child, how she copes with the loss, and him, and how she pulls herself out of it, out of his world and back hers, into music, her calling, the passion of which is the “bell” that tolls for her, that calls to her, brings her back in a desire for life and self-expression from the depths of tragedy and loss.

At the beginning of the song she asks her lost child if she will be waiting in heaven (“wide white stairs”) when she gets there (“Through the rest of my life, do you wait for me there?”). It’s a powerful opening and sets the stage for the state she’s in.

Her mind is neither calm nor clear after this loss. Her thoughts are distracted (“there’s a wide white roar”) and she is in despair, feeling that her passion, her desire, her creativity (this “bell”) is lost forever (“drop a bell down the stairs/hear it fall forevermore”), feeling that it stopped (“blot it out in the sea/drowning mute as a rock”).

She describes how she views her harp (“system of strings”) and the relationship she has with it as she plays on stage, that they're a couple, intertwined and enraptured (“the articulation…makes us buckle as we couple in endless increase”).

Her desire, her passion (“the dove”), inspires her creativity, her musicianship, which is made with love, devotion, and hard work (“make with love, made with glue, and a glove, and some pliers”), but she doesn't want to do any of it, out of fear, out of sadness, out of anxiety, no, she keeps it hidden "in the dark" and wants her desire to “settle down.”

After her grief subsides from the tragedy, she has a moment of clarity, shaken through to the core she realized she needed to start playing again, start creating once more. So she asked the father of their lost child to help her get through it, to help mend her, preserve what was once lost (“bind my buttons with salt”), to distract her from the pain (“fill my long ears with bees”). But he wouldn't “(no you ought not”).

She gets the urge to play her harp, her music breathes life into her (“the system of strings tugs on the tip of my wings”), it starts to bring her joy again, brings out her desire and passion again ("makes me warble and rise like a sparrow"). But he doesn't support this, her playing, he chops her down, and takes what remains away piece by piece (“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”).

She tries to appease him, telling herself that it's alright how he treats her (“it is terribly good to carry water and chop wood”), that it’s okay that he doesn't support her playing. But this makes her fall even further from her beloved bell tower, from her creative ways, from her passion and desire (“as I crash through the rafters and the ropes and pulleys trail after and the holiest belfry burns sky-high”).

She is being changed by him (“with your pliers and glue you make your first incision"). He makes her not want to play music, his behavior towards her and her allowance of this try to change her, mold her from something alive and free, into something hollow and superficial ("the dove who was stuffed now sawdust and diamonds"). She craves his comfort ("hold me close") as she embraces him and not her music.

But ultimately, she tries to comfort him instead, ignoring her own needs(“I wanted to say: why the long face?”). She wants take his sadness away, to make it hers if that would make him feel better (“I will swallow your sadness and eat your cold clay just to lift your long face”).

She is sick to her stomach, sad, “pale-faced and grave as I write in my log” and starts to think things through. She starts to hear her passion calling to her (“I hear a noise from the hull,”), that “damnable bell” that urges her to play music again “and it tolls - well, I believe, that it tolls - for me”). P.S., I thought it was brilliant that it’s the cathedral bell from lost magical city of Ys that calls to her!

She may seem weak to him (“though my wrists and my waist seemed so easy to break”), but she's actually the strong one, the one that would have supported him, been with him until the end, until death (“I would have walked you to the very edge of the water”), where he will finally see his daughter and know she's his (“they will recognize all the lines of your face in the face of…my daughter”). But she realizes their relationship is crumbling (“what was yours and mine appears to be a sandcastle that the gibbering wave takes”) and they should probably go their separate ways, but not yet. She asks him to warn her when the final blow hits, when it’s finally over (“say my name in the morning, so I know when the wave breaks”).

She's not stupid (“I wasn't born of a whistle or milked from a thistle at twilight”), she understands and she's strong (“I was all horns and thorns, sprung out fully formed, knock-kneed and upright”). She realizes they both deserve better, to heal with time, to be better on their own (“we deserve to know light and grow evermore lighter and lighter”). He probably would have stayed with her (“you would have seen me through”), but she can't continue to stay with him, because she needs to be free, to be an artist, must start playing again, to leave him for a life that he isn't ready for or that he can't follow(“but I could not undo that desire”).

Her struggle between loss and life, a man who accepts neither, and her calling to create something so beautiful it brings us to tears, is magical. I thank Joanna for giving us her unique way of healing, as it has its own healing quality in us all.


My Interpretation

There's lots of little pieces that mean different things to me, and many others still unclear, but this part:

darling, we will be fine, but what was yours and mine
appears to be a sandcastle that the gibbering wave takes

I've always thought of this part as the sandcastle being their love or relationship that was destroyed by the wave which would represent something that brought them apart, like a major outside problem or just their own relationship that doesn't work, etc.
But just now as I read it again, I got this idea..
The sandcastle is their life, and the gibbering wave is death.
sandcastles are fragile structures, like life itself, that can easily crumble down. The sand represents no only what the sandcastle (life) is made of, but the time we have to live (the sand inside a sand clock). You can see a wave coming (you know death will eventually come) and once it comes it takes that fragile sandcastle (life) and all the sand crumbles down; you have to build a new one (flip the clock again) and so on.
Ahh I'm tired and don't know how to explain this. Hope it makes some sense..
Either way, I think both work. Love is a fragile "structure" just like life, so the sandcastle could represent either one of those. And just as you know death will come, you can also sometimes see problems coming and know that they will eventually destroy that life or relationship.
Anyways, this is one of the most beautiful songs I have ever heard.


General Comment