¤ milky moon ¤

As we already know, Joanna uses a ring composition in Divers where the last word of the last song (“trans” in “Time, as a Symptom”) is broken half-way and continued in the first word of the first song (“sending” in “Anecdotes”).
It’s not something completely new in literature but, as for me, there are only two examples of it which come to mind without extensive googling and I’m actually pretty sure that both of them are known to Joanna and have been, in one way or another, sources of inspiration for her.

1. The most obvious one is James Joyce’s “Finnegans Wake” (which has already been mentioned both here and in Genius annotations) which she quotes in the text of “Time, as a Symptom”:

Take. Bussoftlhee, mememormee! Till thousendsthee. Lps. The keys to. Given! A way a lone a last a loved a long the // riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.

The additional proof to this connection is her words in the end of the liner notes where she writes:

For liberties taken, my apologies to Messrs. Smith, Shelley, Streeton, Washington. V. Gogh, and Joyce.

2. The second one, which is far less well-known, is Vladimir Nabokov’s short-story “The Circle”. You can read it here, it’s quite short:
http://www.goreading.net/The_Stories_of_Vladimir_Nabokov/159.html
Joanna is known for her love of Nabokov’s prose, she has quoted him multiple times, and in the recent NPR interview she mentioned him as the biggest influence on her as a writer. So, I guess, this connection isn’t a stretch.

The similarities are striking actually. The short story starts this way:

In the second place, because he was possessed by a sudden mad hankering after Russia.

The main character is sitting in a café in Paris, France and remembers his early youth in Russia, his first love, his life after he left his homeland, a sudden meeting with the mother of that girl he used to know and the girl herself (a grown woman now), which triggered the flow of memories, starting with:

In the first place, because Tanya had remained as enchanting and as invulnerable as she had been in the past.

Which is the sentence ending the short-story.

So there are a lot of similar themes here: primarily, love and time moving both ways.
But there are also quite a lot of similarities in the imagery. For example, there are birds, both alive:

In the third place, finally, because he regretted those years of youth and everything associated with it—the fierce resentment, the uncouthness, the ardency, and the dazzlingly green mornings when the coppice deafened you with its golden orioles.

And, indeed, Russian and foreign naturalists had described under the specific name of “godunovi” a new pheasant, a new antelope, a new rhododendron, and there was even a whole Godunov Range (he himself described only insects).

And stuffed:

the classes were graced with glossy educational appliances such as enlarged portraits of insects injurious to field or forest; but Innokentiy found even more irritating the stuffed birds provided by Godunov-Cherdyntsev.

There is horse riding:

The first time he saw them that summer was in late May (Old Style) from the top of a hill. A cavalcade appeared on the road curving around its base: Tanya in front, astraddle, boylike, on a bright bay; next Count Godunov-Cherdyntsev himself, an insignificant-looking person riding an oddly small mouse-gray pacer; behind them the breeched Englishman; then some cousin or other; and coming last, Tanya’s brother, a boy of thirteen or so, who suddenly spurred his mount, overtook everybody, and dashed up the steep bit to the village, working his elbows jockey-fashion.

And, of course, there is diving:

Diving still deeper, he could remember the demolition of the old school at the end of the village, the clearing of the ground for its successor, the foundation-stone ceremony, the religious service in the wind, Count Konstantin Godunov-Cherdyntsev throwing the traditional gold coin, the coin sticking edgewise in the clay.

Any other ideas about the meaning of the ring composition and other possible sources of its inspiration? Julia has written in the thread dedicated to “The Things I Say”:

I didn't catch that at first but it fits perfectly, as the song is placed in the middle of an album that - apart from the loop structure (Time, as a symptom / Anecdotes) - seems to be very concerned with the concept of time in general. And than there is the "time moves both ways" bit in "Time, as a symptom"!

Can it be that this album has a structure similar to the one described here?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiastic_structure

Chiastic structure! That was the term I was looking for with regard to "The Things I Say" and the reversed singing in the end. It would be interesting to try and trace that in the topics and lyrics of the songs ...

Thank you for pointing out Nabokov!

As refered to in the German article posted in "Reviews & Interviews", the song cyle tradition may also be significant for interpreting the structure of "Divers": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Song_cycle
Unfortunately I don't know enough about that genre to carry the point further ... The "song cycles" I know (Schubert) all seem to have a definite narrative beginning and ending.

Fascinating!

I thought this was very interesting about the "Songs of Travel", Vaughan Williams' song cycle:

"Whither Must I Wander" offers the first of Vaughan Williams's many "big tunes," the essentially strophic song recalls happy days of the past and reminds us that while the world is renewed each spring, our traveller cannot bring back his past. However, the composer offers the listener some consolation in "Bright is the ring of words": The listener is reminded that while all wanderers (and artists) must eventually die, the beauty of their work shall remain as a testament of their lives. The final song, "I have trod the upward and the downward slope", was added to the cycle only in 1960 after its posthumous publication. This song recapitulates the whole cycle in just four phrases that form a miniature scena of recitative and arioso, quoting four of the previous songs in the cycle, before ending with the opening chords, suggesting that the traveller's journey continues forever, even in death.

And of course it is well known that Joanna loves Van Dyke Parks album Song Cycle.

^^^ lots to think about!

In terms of literary influences, the cyclical thing occurs in Nabokov's 'Pale Fire' as well. The 999 line poem featured in the story is revealed to be a 1000 line poem, where the last line ('I was the shadow of the waxwing slain') also functions as the first. It's unwritten in the poem but mentioned several times in the footnotes, and there's a Finnegans Wake reference in there too!

The stickers on each side of the vinyl feature a little picture of the moon at different stages in its cycle, ranging from a sliver on the first side to a full moon on the last. I guess it's just a reminder that these sorts of circular patterns occur in nature all the time- the changing of the seasons is another example.

I looked up nightjars on Wikipedia today since I know very little about birds and this bit caught my attention:

They are mostly active in the late evening and early morning or at night, and feed predominantly on moths and other large flying insects

This seems to fit very well with Divers. Nightjars are sampled both on Time as a Symptom and Anecdotes - the end and the beginning. So maybe Time as a Symptom is the late night transitioning into early morning on Anecdotes? So the cycling of Divers represents the cycling of the day. And thinking about it, maybe the other tracks can fit into this too. When I listen to A Pin Light Bent I get this imagery of a plane in a dark night sky. She describes the light of the city, and that is much more evident during the night. It's definitely something to think about.

The moths make think of Cosmia too, although I don't have an interpretation of what it could mean.

Julia wrote:Chiastic structure! That was the term I was looking for with regard to "The Things I Say" and the reversed singing in the end. It would be interesting to try and trace that in the topics and lyrics of the songs ...

Both the first and last song have the sound of a mourning dove, mention a nightjar and a birth?
Both the second and penultimate song mention a fall from a plane?

A chiastic structure makes total sense for the organization of the album! Time moving both ways, and then also in a ring cycle, holy crap.

Not sure about what connects the third ninth songs? The one thing that draws my attention is that there seems to be a mysterious act undertaken in both Leaving the City and You Will Not Take My Heart Alive. There's the climbing of these rungs of light and the severing all connection in "You Will Not..", pushing against and going beyond limits, and the doing of whatever it was that "they alluded to" which leads to some mysterious experience in which light figures largely, and the final acceptance of limits in "Leaving..".

Fourth and Eighth: Goose Eggs mentions "old strangers" and "broken hopes", which are pretty well pictured in Same Old Man. A certain dryness and resignation is present in both, though Goose Eggs seems to have a little flicker of possibility in it, about trying to find a way to be a better friend, or the kind of friend that was needed earlier on; and the questioning in the last lines, maybe - do we have a reason to go, even though everyone else has vamoosed? Also, the theme of leaving town in both of those songs, and also the mention of repetition in Goose Eggs paired with the sense of repetition and the repeated lines in Same Old Man.

Fifth and Seventh: Divers and Waltz both have sea imagery and speak specifically of "my love", "my true love"...

Did anyone else get the vinyl? Those individual liner sheets are different sizes, some of them match and some don't ... I wonder if that has anything to do with anything about the songs, or if it was a basic design choice in order to get the desired crops of the images. I didn't have time to investigate yet.

I think the line "the Selfhood inverts on a mirror" might also be a hint at the chiastic structure of the album.

The image for "Time, As a Symptom" and "Anecdotes" in the vinyl liner notes are of the same tree, but the coloring is different between them.

I wonder about playing the sides of the vinyl in reverse order, since the markings go from a new moon to a full moon, so to complete the lunar cycle you would have to go backwards. Might try doing that.

Also there is very faint writing on the discs, I haven't read through all of the threads but I will post them here:

Disc 1 Side A: "BEFORE THE SUN IS GONE"

Disc 1 Side B: "INTRAVELING LIGHT" (note there does not seem to be a space between "in" and "traveling"

Disc 2 Side A: "THE CITY CONTINUES ON ALONE"

Disc 2 Side B: "NIGHTJAR TRANSMIT! (ONCEMORE, AND INNUMERABLE TIMES MORE.)"

Some of the letters are backwards here and there. These mostly come from the lyrics of songs on each respective side, with the exception of "the city" replacing "New York City" for the lyric of "Same Old Man" (could connect "Leaving the City" and "Same Old Man"). Other exception is the "Once more, and innumerable times more"

How wonderful! Thank you for mentioning this!

^ "Once more, and innumerable times more" :

The greatest weight.-- What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: "This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence - even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned uʍop ǝpısdn again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!"
Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus?... Or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to crave nothing more fervently than this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal?

from Nietzsche's The Gay Science, s.341, Walter Kaufmann transl.

http://www.theperspectivesofnietzsche.c ... recur.html

"NIGHTJAR TRANSMIT! (ONCEMORE, AND INNUMERABLE TIMES MORE.)" seems like a possible anagram, doesn't it? I did a bit of searching at OneAcross*, but didn't come up with anything very definitive. It contains a few evocative possible words -- "Joanna," "Time," "Unborn" (you can get all three of those simultaneously). Anyone else see a clear possibility?

Or maybe all the bits written on the discs, taken together, are an anagram?

Just a thought

* http://www.oneacross.com/cgi-bin/search ... S+BRED&c1=

Actually, there are actual lyrics that feel like possible anagrams, as well. eg, in "Time, As a Symptom":

"A dawn, unmarked, undone, undarked (a god)"

Or if not anagrams, maybe some other form of wordplay where every character counts?