¤ milky moon ¤

Wow, so much incredible Joanna news all at once! It feels like such a shift to me, how not-under-the-radar she is now; I feel both satisfied that she is getting more of her due, and wistful about the previous era of being in on an amazing semi-secret. (I mean, you can't really call it that when from Ys on she was selling out giant, prestigious concert halls and all, but maybe you know what I mean.) Hoping to get to see the video, egads! I wonder if she and PTA teamed up for even more videos than these two?

"An anchor on a stone" --> "In nacre on a stone"

Wow! Nacre! I love that both of those "hearings" seem to work, even though nacre is such a beautiful image and really goes with the pearlescent imagery.

Another thing I just wanted to throw in here - I'm not sure if this has been discussed before, but "infinite regress" is a philosophical "problem" (if that's the correct designation). Here's the definition from http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Infinite_regress :

Infinite regress is a series of an infinitely cascading propositions, where the validity of one depends on the validity of the one which follows and/or proceeds it. Viciously circular infinite regressions, are propositions which reintroduce their own proposition in the solution. One example of a viciously infinite regression arises in intelligent design creationism; which states that there are problems in the theory of Darwinian evolution by natural selection which can only be resolved by invoking a designer or first cause without proposing a solution to the immediate question "who designed the designer?" Despite that, the response to this is an example of special pleading, creationists assert that God is an eternal presence which did not need to create Himself. No evidence for this has ever been presented for peer review, or critical analysis of any kind.

The "Turtles all the way down" anecdote illustrates a popular example of infinite regress:

“”A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: "What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise." The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, "What is the tortoise standing on?" "You're very clever, young man, very clever", said the old lady. "But it's turtles all the way down!
—Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time

Another thing that always comes to my mind when listening to the "how do you choose your form..." section of the song is a little scene in the movie The Tree of Life by Terrence Malick... I've only seen it once, and it's so dreamy that I'm not sure I remember it very well, but there's one scene that shows a group of children in a house, and they are attended by some people (can't remember if it was one or more?) who seem to be giving them some instruction or direction or basic information about the lives they'll be incarnating into, and they are at some point ushered out the door into water through which they kick and rise. Does anyone else remember it? It was one of the most striking images for me in that movie full of striking images, and gave me such goosebumps at the time. I thought it was an interesting image partially because it's a reversal of the direction usually assigned to the movement of incarnation - from the depths upwards towards an earthly life as opposed to the traditional heavens/sky down into flesh. And also it was a beautiful way of imagining a process of either incarnating into gestation in the womb or just being born.

Sorry this is so long! I'd love to hear any more thoughts on this song, especially as she's identified the title as the basic theme of the album...

Divers video has been released on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48xlgXqQKLA

I've just watched the Divers video all the way through for the first time (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=48xlgXqQKLA). Its perfect!
Its rare to be able to observe her in the act of singing, without having to twist her mouth towards a microphone, as the shape of her harp requires, and seeing her like this - she exudes such serenity when she sings this beautiful song.

I can't help wondering how it was done. It sounds identical to the album version, so at first I assumed she is mining. But we can see he breathing and shaping the words so carefully, I'm sure she must've been singing an almost identical performance, though this is not the one we hear. And there's a moment where she stops singing: during the repeat of 'A woman is alive' she merely glances to one side, blinks, and then rejoins perfectly with the next line...

Worth the wait!!

I'm hesitant to suggest this, because it doesn't seem to fit with the theme of the album, but is anyone else reminded of whalesong (perhaps the most alluring sound in the whole of the natural world) by the musical figures in this song. It was done a little more explicitly, but still without resorting to field recordings, by Laurie Anderson in the song 'One White Whale' from her Moby Dick inspired album Life On A String, but I keep getting hints of it here, too. And then there's the third line 'takes one breath above for every hour below the sea', which sounds more like a whale than any human diver, even those incredible Polynesians who've mastered the art of breath control to an amazing degree.

Very like I'm wrong, though, for I also hear shades of old black-n-white films set in Africa when the instrumentation changes around the "woman is alive" section, and that surely can't be right!

I'm wondering about this stanza:

And in an infinite backslide:
Ancient border, sink past the West,
like a sword at the bearer's fall.
I can't claim that I knew you best,
but did you know me at all?

The "ancient border" could be the "line of the coast" itself, which would correspond with the orientation/focus of the narrator, looking out to sea from the pier & shore, dreaming of the diver . . . I don't know if it's geologically accurate but from "infinite backslide" I imagine sheets of rock falling into the sea, the sea sinking "past" the West, over its edge . . . The stanza also rings with a despair, a crux or low point in a struggle: the "bearer's fall," in which she loses her sword or tumbles back with it flailing out behind her . . . This could be the struggle between the woman and the diver, or the internal struggle of the narrator to piece together/realize the "true love" between her and the diver.

I also see in these lines a summation of the colonization of North America, resonant with the musings in "Sapokanikan," & in particular the notion of the "Western Front," as well as in "Waltz of the 101st Lightborne," when the narrator time travels back to before European settlement, when the West is still "pristine, unfelled" . . . The "ancient border" in this sense could mean the border that divided the Europeans from the indigenous inhabitants of Turtle Island, & it backslides, sinking past the West, displacing much of the indigenous population to settle the coast & set up the resource extractive economies like gathering pearls . . . & as I get the sense of with the despair in Sapokanikan at the city's goneness, the melancholy of the "backslide" could be the American settler culture coming to the low point of its hubris in colonizing the continent all the way to the farthest shore.

Her fragile ankles, he said, which she placed very close together in her dainty and wavy walk, were the 'careful jewels' in Arnor's poem about a miragarl ('mirage girl'), for which a 'dream king in the sandy wastes of time would give three hundred camels and three fountains.'

Don't believe there's any actual connection but this line from Pale Fire really makes me think of 'a jewel worth twice this woman's life' and general themes of the album as well