Faeries

On wednesday night i saw Joanna Newsom perform songs.

Joanna Newsom plays harp, and most people do not like her because of her voice, which had been like an awkward little girl voice, but for the people who have gotten used to the voice, they would have it no other way, and we say that the voice is a very big reason for the mystique that we are hearing.

Joanna Newsom put out an album a couple years ago, which i liked more than most all of the other albums from then. It was like a set of very strange appalachian folk songs, with the most intricate poems being used for words that i have ever heard. It took a while to get used to the voice, but i did and i liked it very much.

On wednesday night, it was a couple years later and Joanna Newsom had a more restrained voice, which made her sound older, maybe twenty-four. Joanna Newsom is twenty-four, which makes me feel very old. The older songs suffered just a little from the matured voice, because they need that singer to be completely over the top, but the old songs were not the focus.

The new songs were Completely Different. The new songs apply a whole new formulaic approach. Traditional approaches to making songs are Gone. The new songs are revelations. The second song that Joanna Newsom played was her first new song of the evening, being revealed to the world, and it was one of about three performances i have ever seen that left me feeling like i had just witnessed something like an epiphany, true art truly, which is truly difficult for a guy like me, in a crowded room full of strangers.

The song was about ten minutes long, no verses or choruses anywhere in sight, it was like a one-hundred-and-fifty-line poem that puts Walt Whitman to shame. The music was being channeled from a spirit somewhere overhead, or actually the music was being channeled from several, ancient, spirits, overhead and below the floor, and Joanna Newsom switched between them at random.

The music was in themes. It went like this:

-theme #1
-excursion
-theme #2
-theme #3
-theme #1
-excursion
etc.

Afterwards i was out of breath and accidentally having my eyes open very wide. But Joanna Newsom was not.

I found the lyrics to the new songs online, already. Except they are not lyrics, they are full-fledged poems, i keep forgetting.

Here is that first new song that she played.



the meadowlark and the chim-choo-ree and the sparrow
set to the sky in a flying spree, for the sport over the pharaoh
a little while later the Pharisees dragged a comb through the meadow
do you remember what they called up to you and me, in our window?

there is a rusty light on the pines tonight
sun pouring wine, lord, or marrow
down 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 nighttime
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
tho 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

you came and lay a cold compress upon the mess I'm in
threw the window wide and cried; Amen! Amen! Amen!
the whole world - stopped - to hear you hollering
you looked down and saw now what was happening

the lines are fadin' in my kingdom
(tho 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 butte lit by a flare
I've seen your bravery, and I will follow you there
and row through the nighttime
gone 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
there are worries where I've been

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 know 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-a their brow

and everything with wings is restless, aimless, drunk and dour
the 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
starin'
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

.



Umm. Woah.