¤ milky moon ¤

I'm not sure if this has been mentioned before ... I know we talked about animals in HOOM, but I don't remember reading about this. I came across this Shakespeare poem tonight, and it obviously reminded me of In California (this is only part of it):

When daisies pied and violets blue
And lady-smocks all silver-white
And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue
Do paint the meadows with delight,
The cuckoo then, on every tree,
Mocks married men; for thus sings he,
Cuckoo;
Cuckoo, cuckoo: Oh word of fear,
Unpleasing to a married ear!

Then I wondered if perhaps the cuckoo of In California could be related to the cuckoo as used here? One of the things that struck me was that apparently the term cuckoldry comes from not only the mate-changing habit of the cuckoo, but also that they lay their eggs in others' nests, which reminded me of "...content to see my garden grow so sweet and full of someone else's flowers." But I'm not really sure that I see other connections. Y'all are smarter than me.

Any thoughts?

ann wrote:I'm not sure if this has been mentioned before ... I know we talked about animals in HOOM, but I don't remember reading about this. I came across this Shakespeare poem tonight, and it obviously reminded me of In California (this is only part of it):

When daisies pied and violets blue
And lady-smocks all silver-white
And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue
Do paint the meadows with delight,
The cuckoo then, on every tree,
Mocks married men; for thus sings he,
Cuckoo;
Cuckoo, cuckoo: Oh word of fear,
Unpleasing to a married ear!

Then I wondered if perhaps the cuckoo of In California could be related to the cuckoo as used here? One of the things that struck me was that apparently the term cuckoldry comes from not only the mate-changing habit of the cuckoo, but also that they lay their eggs in others' nests, which reminded me of "...content to see my garden grow so sweet and full of someone else's flowers." But I'm not really sure that I see other connections. Y'all are smarter than me.

Any thoughts?

Freaky! The conclusion you draw with the flowers line is really convincing. I always assumed it was a cuckoo clock and that the cuckoo section was dealing with the idea of being hounded by time.

I think the cuckoo clock thing is pretty clear, which is why I'm not so sure about this, but Joanna's definitely clever enough to put more than one meaning behind cuckoo!

This plant that Shakespeare is referring to "cuckoo-buds of yellow hue" is also known as the "Buttercup" or "Crowfoot" and has a native strain "in california"

http://www.laspilitas.com/nature-of-california/plants/ranunculus-californicus

I saw this on Last.fm some months ago, in that song shoutbox

relequel said:
"My face when I realised that the 'cuckoo cuckoo' occurs almost exactly one hour into the album: :O"

Is that true?

cliquott wrote:I saw this on Last.fm some months ago, in that song shoutbox

relequel said:
"My face when I realised that the 'cuckoo cuckoo' occurs almost exactly one hour into the album: :O"

Is that true?

It's 15 minutes and 42 seconds into the second disc.

Disc One is 43:55

The cuckoo happens at 1 hour, 1 minute and 37 seconds. I think it's just coincidence. In order to make that happen, the tempo of EVERY song would have to be INCREDIBLY specific throughout every single song - even the ones with time changes. Of course, she could've influenced that by how long she allowed GIPC and BB to fade out. I still think it's just concidence.

I do seem to recall this "one hour in" business being posted on the old forum, as I almost referred to it on here the other day. Doublewuzzy is probably right in suggesting it's pure coincidence, but more of a coincidence than he gives it credit for. Even by his figures (43:55 + 15:42) that makes it 59:37 into the album as a whole (not 1:01:37).

Now, perhaps Joanna was being extremely clever: try starting your stopwatch as you begin to play disc 1, and then when it's finished, keeping it running as you extract the disc from your player, slip it back into its sleeve, take out disc 2, and insert it into your machine and press play. Then see what you hear exactly as the stopwatch clicks onto 1:00:00.

More seriously, I concur with the 43:55 timing, and On A Good Day and You And Me, Bess total exactly 9:00; ie 52:55 into the album. So I set my pointer to exactly 7:05 in In California, and guess what - "cuckoo" came through my speakers!

The first mention of "cuckoo" in In California comes at 3:40, and reappears at 6:40, but the climactic rendition runs from 6:45 to about 7:15, which would be 0:59:40 to 1:00:10.

Incredible

Time math is hard, so sue me!

This seems like one of those things people learn to do in lit class - applying meaning where there is none. Steve's calculation takes into account the changing of a CD, but not every CD player loads discs at the same time. Other people may not be listening to a CD at all, but MP3s. Still others may be on LP. Joanna is apparently notorious for having somewhat-erratic tempo (not to be confused with rubato, though she does that too which is totally appropriate), at least during the Ys performances, and I just can't be convinced that she was consistent enough through the other 8 songs and the first half of IC to place that cuckoo right at one hour in. Not to mention she'd have to composed the other songs with this purpose in mind, then chosen the order so as to facilitate it, THEN played with a metronome during to recording to ensure that everything went as planned. While it's not necessarily out of the realm of possibility, that just seems a little over-the-top for her.

I mean it's still pretty crazy that it's happening at all, but I don't think it's on purpose.

doublewuzzy wrote:This seems like one of those things people learn to do in lit class - applying meaning where there is none

I hate this idea that so many people seem to have. If you can make an interpretation and back it up, it is there, whether the artist intended it or not.

I actually agree with Doublewuzzy, despite my posting.

It IS there, but I believe it's a coincidence, but I think it will have to remain just a 'hunch' unless Joanna herself confirms or denies it.

In the unlikely event that I ever get to speak to her, perhaps that's exactly the sort of searching question I should ask. Oh, that and "Do you sing 'You blush, Ink-Boy' or is it just plain old 'You blushing boy'?"

There is no meaning anywhere save what we create. Interpretation is the only form of meaning that exists. Art is a causally determined structure with elements of randomness as much as the motion of the planets or the behaviour of an electron; the only difference is that there's an agency and intention behind it. The intention is unknowable and therefore may as well not exist - we can only guess at what is meant by anything anyone says, whatever the medium, and even the most literal interpretation is still only an interpretation.

It's totally 'blushing'

Jordan~ wrote:There is no meaning anywhere save what we create. Interpretation is the only form of meaning that exists. Art is a causally determined structure with elements of randomness as much as the motion of the planets or the behaviour of an electron; the only difference is that there's an agency and intention behind it. The intention is unknowable and therefore may as well not exist - we can only guess at what is meant by anything anyone says, whatever the medium, and even the most literal interpretation is still only an interpretation.

It's not so much an interpretative debate, just the question of "is the cuckoo purposefully placed at one hour in?" Everyone agrees that it does occur - the question is whether it's on purpose or not.

But would it be less meaningful if it wasn't on purpose?

Jordan~ wrote:But would it be less meaningful if it wasn't on purpose?

That depends on the listener, and on their opinions of meaning and art and all of that stuff.

Personally, for myself, it doesn't mean a thing - in my mind, if it meant anything at all, it would only mean that clocks chime at the top of the hour.

Jordan~ wrote:But would it be less meaningful if it wasn't on purpose?

I think there is absolutely people for whom it would be less meaningful.

Interpreting something one way, and then having the artist say that it wasn't intentional, or that they had intended something else, may very well change the initial interpretation. Not to say it isn't there, or it can't be just as meaningful, or whatever else, but I do think there is a clear difference between what we believe (whether told by the artist, or just assumed on our part) the artist intended and what we ourselves see. Most of the time, I think people do want the two to overlap, even be identical, and it makes them uncomfortable if they do not or are not.

I think both require just as irrational a leap of faith, though. For me, anything means what the observer thinks it means, since whatever it is, the only difference is a marginal difference of media for change through which the inevitable product is delivered. The difference between the Mona Lisa and the Grand Canyon is only a few hundred thousand years of action and history all of which is irrelvant in cosmological terms. And we all live in the cosmos, after all, however discomforting the idea of our relative insignifance might be.

It seems dicomforting to relate all our sensory experiences to a question of scale, and then to point out that we are many orders of magnitude smaller than the Universe [if there is just the one].

Ivor Cutler amusingly summed it up in his reference to "The Bacteria Bridge League", parenthetically adding "(A new season starts every nought point foooor of a second)"

Jordan~ wrote:I think both require just as irrational a leap of faith, though. For me, anything means what the observer thinks it means, since whatever it is, the only difference is a marginal difference of media for chance through which the inevitable product is delivered. The difference between the Mona Lisa and the Grand Canyon is only a few hundred thousand years of action and history all of which is irrelvant in cosmological terms. And we all live in the cosmos, after all, however discomforting the idea of our relative insignifance might be.

I don't know if that can apply to all situations, unless you intended it to apply only to issues of art-perception.

Like, someone can say something to you that you THINK means one thing, and you can base all of your actions around that one thing you've assumed, only to find out that wasn't what they person meant at all - i.e., just because you think it means something doesn't necessarily mean it does. But again, if you JUST mean to apply that to art, then I sort of agree (I need to ponder it a bit more before I draw my own conclusions).

Joanna said in an interview that she intends/hopes/would like for listeners to come up with their own interpretations. This was from around the time of Ys, and she said that her songs are very personal to her and she hopes that a listener can make it personal to themselves for their own reasons. We have no idea what Baby Birch is really about, but if someone can relate it to their own experience of something - something that may not even be what Joanna intended the song to mean - she's accomplished something.