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Re: New Song at Treasure Island (Look and Despair)

PostPosted: 07 Nov 2012, 15:28
by Alex Ysoltsev
Weirdelves wrote:I've been to all three :)

Which one was the most impressive?

Re: New Song at Treasure Island (Look and Despair)

PostPosted: 07 Nov 2012, 16:47
by Steve
Not to be confused with that Egyptian/Chinese restaurant, Cleopatra's Noodles

Re: New Song at Treasure Island (Look and Despair)

PostPosted: 07 Nov 2012, 17:54
by Alex Ysoltsev
My two cents about the lyrics.

One of the most controversial lines about which there is still no general consensus is the second one. There have been quite a few variants:
- The map or sap or content
- The map (something that sounds like "o sacre") continent
- The mapa sacra content
- The map, all sapped of content,
- The map of sacred content
- The map of sacre content

I think it is:
The map o' sacred continent

There is another place in the song where of is pronounced as o' - "The event is in the hand of God".

Scientifically speaking, as Polish-American philosopher and scientist Alfred Korzybski put it, "The map is not the territory". But in the poetry the terriory may be metaphorically represented (I hope my terminology is correct here :) ) by the word "map".

If it is right and if we are dealing with the territory which is sanded and bevelled than the next question arises: What is this sacred continent?

As far as I know, there is no set expression "sacred continent" in English language denoting some particular place. But as we have already found out, the primary location of the song is New York (the others being Louisiana and probably Europe) so it will be logical to suppose that this continent is North America. And indeed there are some sources in which it is used in this meaning.
The first one is Jose Ramon Pico who gathering recruits to fight in the Civil War said the following words quoted in a number of historical books:

Sons of California! Our country calls, and we must obey! This rebellion of the southern states must be crushed; they must come back into the union and pay obedience to the Stars and Stripes. United, we will, by the force of circumstances become the freest and mightiest republic on earth! Crowned monarchs must be driven away from the sacred continent of free America!

The other source is more obscure but seems to me even more interesting. It is a book by William George Fitz-Gerald (written under a pseudonym Ignatius Phayre) "America's day; studies in light and shade" written in 1918 :

"Why," asks the new historian, "has the sovereign voter of America remained so heedless? I was a grown man of thirty, hoeing my beard with a safety razor, ere it dawned upon me that the fighting record of our country had not been one long, unbroken record of star-spangled victories. Like other boys, I'd been fed upon Fourth of July orations. ... I believed that one lone, grey-haired farmer with a drum, a bloody rag round his head, and a son and a grandson behind him, had chased the British Army from our sacred continent. I believed that — did you? I thought that a single American patriot, with a muzzle-loader and both hands tied behind him, could beat any horde of foreign hirelings that ever marched down the pike. I had no doubt of it — had you? I was sure the Redcoats outnumbered the Colonials. Yet in that glorious year of '76 we mustered 89,600 men against the British 20,121! I didn't know that— did you?"

It is highly unlikely but I guess there is a chance that maybe this passage was another source of inspiration for the song. The book deals with World War I. There are few mentions of John Purroy Mitchel in the text. There are mentions of "sacred continent", "drum" (althought in lyrics it is a verb), "rag" (this word is used in Andrew's version of the lyrics: "and famous to all of the ages' rag"), "twenty thousand".
And the most interesting thing here. This passage occurs in the chapter titled "The Watchman and the Sword".
As Wanbly has already ironically stated:
Wanbli wrote:I am pretty sure the whole song is a tribute to Alan Moore's "The Watchmen"- in particular the character of Ozymandias :mrgreen:

But I'm sure that Joanna definitely knows about this book as there are a lot of similarities which can't be just coincidental. 1) The nickname of the main antagonist is Ozymandias. 2) Shelley's poem is quoted. 3) The destruction of Manhattan is a very important part of the plot.

That's it about the second line. It will be really cool if it turns out that she sings something completely different. Yet still, guys, what do you think about my suggestion and the reasoning?

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map%E2%80% ... y_relation
http://books.google.ru/books?id=ZRnjfZe ... &q&f=false
http://www.archive.org/stream/americasd ... z_djvu.txt

Upd: This version turned out to be wrong but I'll leave it here just for the fun of it.

Re: New Song at Treasure Island (Look and Despair)

PostPosted: 08 Nov 2012, 20:33
by Alex Ysoltsev
There is also another line about which I have some doubts but which so far hasn't caused any discussions: which plays along the monument

Can it be which flays along the monument ?

I actually hadn't even known this verb before, but after looking its definition in the dictionary I think the line makes more sense this way. What do you think? Is it possible? Can this verb be used with the preposition "along"?

Re: New Song at Treasure Island (Look and Despair)

PostPosted: 09 Nov 2012, 20:48
by Andrew
I hear plays honestly.

thanks Alex for your great research!

Re: New Song at Treasure Island (Look and Despair)

PostPosted: 18 Nov 2012, 20:27
by Jordan~
Whenever I hear, "what lies under the city is gone", I can't help but think, "what lies under the settee is gone".

Re: New Song at Treasure Island (Look and Despair)

PostPosted: 18 Nov 2012, 20:44
by Andrew
^story of my life

Re: New Song at Treasure Island (Look and Despair)

PostPosted: 20 Nov 2012, 05:35
by sophie
not sure if someone has pointed this out but I think the "to which a hunter, a hundred years from now, may look and despair" is a reference to the other Ozymandias poem which Horace Smith wrote
IN Egypt's sandy silence, all alone,
Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws
The only shadow that the Desert knows:—
"I am great OZYMANDIAS," saith the stone,
"The King of Kings; this mighty City shows
"The wonders of my hand."— The City's gone,—
Nought but the Leg remaining to disclose
The site of this forgotten Babylon.

We wonder,—and some Hunter may express
Wonder like ours, when thro' the wilderness
Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace,
He meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess
What powerful but unrecorded race
Once dwelt in that annihilated place.

Re: New Song at Treasure Island (Look and Despair)

PostPosted: 20 Nov 2012, 22:44
by Alex Ysoltsev
In addition to the stories of Arthur Streeton hiding a nude body of his beloved Florry Walker and Rembrandt changing Hercules Segers' "Tobias and the Angel" into "The Flight into Egypt with Holy Family", there is also the third story of concealment and revealing in this song. It is about another great Dutch master Vincent Van Gogh.

Beneath a patch of grass, her
bones the old Dutch master hid.


Here is an excerpt from Guardian article "X-rays reveal Van Gogh's hidden portrait":

A Vincent van Gogh portrait of a peasant woman that was painted over by the artist has been revealed in extraordinary detail through use of an x-ray technique that has never before been applied to a painting.

Research had previously disclosed the vague outline of a head behind the painting, entitled Patch of Grass, but the face of the woman emerged from the centre of the work only after the picture was subjected to x-ray fluorescence spectroscopy.


Articles:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2008/jul/31/2
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/ac801472t

Re: New Song at Treasure Island (Look and Despair)

PostPosted: 21 Nov 2012, 07:26
by butterbean
Hi all! I've come to this lovely site over time, so first I want to say thank you for making here such a valuable resource re: all things Joanna. It feels like this new song has been flowing in my veins ever since I heard it (or perhaps before I heard it, which is the way I feel about most of Joanna's music)... anyway, thank you all for deciphering, decoding, transcribing, etc. This song is a treasure hunt!

So I was thinking about potter's fields, and Washington Square Park, and thence googled things, which led to two possibly pertinent details from Mr. Wikipedia... as another user posted, Washington Square Park used to be a potter's field, and on wikipedia, it says, "To this day, the remains of more than 20,000 bodies rest under Washington Square." So 20,000 (attending your footfalls) might be an arbitrary number signifying "a lot", but also is specific to the recorded history of that geographical location.

The other thing is from the same wikipage, but I can't tell anymore if I'm hearing what she might actually be singing, or matching my perception to my conjecture. "The land here was divided by a narrow marshy valley through which Minetta Creek (or Brook) ran. In the early 17th century, a Native American village known as Sapokanikan or "Tobacco Field" was nearby." So... could she be saying Sapokanikan? Map o' Sapokanikan? Now that I've seen that word, it's all I can hear - anyone else, or have I just gone 'round the bend?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Square_Park

Re: New Song at Treasure Island (Look and Despair)

PostPosted: 21 Nov 2012, 08:22
by Alex Ysoltsev
butterbean wrote:So... could she be saying Sapokanikan? Map o' Sapokanikan? Now that I've seen that word, it's all I can hear - anyone else, or have I just gone 'round the bend?


Hard to say for sure, but now that you've said it I'm starting to hear it as well. And if turns out to be true, this variant fits the rest of the lyrics better than mine about "sacred continent".

Re: New Song at Treasure Island (Look and Despair)

PostPosted: 21 Nov 2012, 10:37
by butterbean
Thanks, Alex. I'm starting to think that Sapokanikan is what she's saying, just because so many lines in the song emanate from the monuments within that geographical niche. And that the Dutch were the first European settlers of the area, claiming and re-naming the land thus obscuring the original civilization ( the name "Sapokanikan" gets sanded and bevelled right off the map, replaced with New Amsterdam, then New York) chimes with the image of the Dutch Master (Van Gogh! Thank you for finding that!) burying the bones beneath a patch of grass.

Re: New Song at Treasure Island (Look and Despair)

PostPosted: 21 Nov 2012, 11:36
by Jordan~
So it is Florry Walker, then? Have we actually got this song fully transcribed? Well, except the reround the rerounders bit...

Re: New Song at Treasure Island (Look and Despair)

PostPosted: 21 Nov 2012, 12:07
by Alex Ysoltsev
Jordan~ wrote:the reround the rerounders bit...

Can it be something ending with "around us"?


And there is also "plays/flays along/alone the monument" part. Or is it without a doubt "plays along"?

Re: New Song at Treasure Island (Look and Despair)

PostPosted: 21 Nov 2012, 13:03
by Jordan~
I'm pretty sure it's "plays". It's idiomatic that way, it just sounds right.

Re: New Song at Treasure Island (Look and Despair)

PostPosted: 21 Nov 2012, 14:01
by under a CPell
Feeling unsatisfied with the Rembrandt/Segers explanation (in the song Joanna seems to have it the other way round: "Tobias and the angel disguise what the scholars surmise was a mother and kid" and with those paintings Tobias and the angel were replaced by a mother and kid) I looked a bit further and found this: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2005/sep/17/arts.artsnews

Some parts of the article:

It was painted over by an inferior artist, its subjects transformed from a lady and her daughter to an angel and a little boy. It was even lost in a garage in Bayswater and sensationally rediscovered with a stash of other Old Masters after the war.
But now, the top layer of the canvas - which depicted Tobias and the angel Raphael, a scene from the apocryphal Book of Tobit - has been removed.

And what lies beneath is a Titian, a unique double portrait of a mother and daughter whose subjects remain an intriguing mystery. Christie's yesterday announced it was auctioning Portrait of a Lady and Her Daughter in December for an estimated £5m.

Two years after that, Tobias and the Angel, as it still was, regarded as being by a follower of Titian, was X-rayed, and the existence of a second painting revealed beneath. But it was only in 1983 that the restoration - removal of the entire top layer of paint - was undertaken.

And here you can see a picture of the Portrait of a Lady and Her Daughter: http://www.economist.com/node/5249495
and here the Tobias and Angel it first was: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/p ... html/1.stm

Re: New Song at Treasure Island (Look and Despair)

PostPosted: 21 Nov 2012, 18:46
by Alex Ysoltsev
There are two places in the lyrics where the word "cause" is mentioned. The first one is in the very first line:
The cause is Ozymandian

The second one is:
and the causes they died for are lost in the idling bird calls

The second one refers to the 20,000 unknown people buried under the present-day Washington Park Square, as butterbean has stated above.
And I think that the first cause refers to John Purroy Mitchel. Besides the monument in Central Park, mentioned by Wanbli, there are also a few other places in New York commemorating Mayor Mitchel's memory. One of them is a bronze tablet on the west side of Hamilton Hall, which is located off of 116th Street and Amsterdam Avenue (Manhattan as well).

Here is this tablet:
Image

A fearless public servant who died in the great cause of a world's freedom.

What cause can be more Ozymandian?

I guess this information can be interpreted in a number of ways. As for me, I like the following variant.

Here is a quote from worldwar1.com about the Central Park memorial:
This plaque [...] near 95th Street in Central Park, is certainly noticeable and must mystify the joggers who pass on their daily rounds. Who was John Purroy Mitchel and why did he get such an elaborate personal monument?

Today people can see some monuments glorifying a person unknown to them, but under these bombastic tributes (similar to the original work of Titian revealed under the painting of some minor artist, etc.) there is a very personal, heartfelt and tragic story which is told in this song.

What do you think about this explanation? Any ideas about who is "I" in
Go tell the one that I love to remember and hold me

John himself? His wife? Or can be it be another hidden story of love?

Sources:
http://untappedcities.com/newyork/2011/ ... boy-mayor/
http://www.worldwar1.com/sfnycm.htm

Re: New Song at Treasure Island (Look and Despair)

PostPosted: 21 Nov 2012, 20:19
by Andrew
Jordan, I've been revising the version on page 2 with every new edit. I'll repost it in a second.

edit:
The cause is Ozymandian.
The map of Sapokanikan
is sanded and beveled,
the land lorn and leveled
by some unrecorded and powerful hand

which plays along the monument
and drums upon a plastic bag.
The brave men and women, so dear to God
and famous to all of the ages' rag,

sang:
"Do you love me?
Will you remember?"
The snow falls above me.
Around the hand, the rerounders. (?)
The event is in the hand of God.

Beneath a patch of grass, her
bones the old Dutch master hid
while, elsewhere, Tobias
and the angel disguise
what the scholars surmised was a mother and kid

interred with other daughters
in dirt in other potters' fields.
Above them, parades
mark the passing of days
through parks where pale colonnades arch in marble and steel,

where all of the twenty-thousand attending your foot fall
and the causes they died for are lost in the idling bird calls,
and the records they left are cryptic at best,
lost in obsolescence.
The text will not yield, nor x-ray reveal
with any fluorescence
where the hand of the master begins and ends.

I fell, I tried to do well but I won't be.
Go tell the one that I love to remember and hold me.
I call, I call for the doctor
but the snow swallows me whole with ole Florry Walker
and the event lives only in print.

He said:
"It's alright,"
and "It's all over now,"
and boarded the plane,
his belt unfastened;
the boy was known to show unusual daring.
And, called a “boy”,
this alderman confounding Tammany Hall
(In whose employ
King Tamanend himself preceded John’s fall).

So we all raise a standard
to which the wise and honest soul may repair,
to which a hunter,
a hundred years from now, may look and despair
and see with wonder
the tributes we have left to rust in the parks,
swearing that our hair stood on end
to see John Purroy Mitchel depart

for the Western front where my work might count.
O mercy, O God!
I will the hunter to decipher the stone
and what lies under. The city is gone.

So look and despair.
Look and despair.


so, there are two niggling q's

Alex that's a really beautiful post. The I's and me's in the song are certainly a mystery. The narrator mostly just exists in a kind of detached omniscience, and the sudden shift to a first person perspective kind of adds a dimension of vulnerability.

Re: New Song at Treasure Island (Look and Despair)

PostPosted: 21 Nov 2012, 20:40
by claire
Two thoughts on the lyrics:

1. "and drums upon a plastic bag" -- I think she's saying "and drums upon a plastic pad"
2. "Well, I swear Tobias and the angel disguise" -- This sounds more like "While elsewhere Tobias and the angel disguise" to me

Re: New Song at Treasure Island (Look and Despair)

PostPosted: 21 Nov 2012, 21:01
by Alex Ysoltsev
A few ideas about the current version of the lyrics.

is sanded and bevelled
the land lone and levelled

Although both variants are possible, I guess that, being an American, Joanna will use the words "beveled" and "leveled" with one "l".

where all of the twenty-thousand attending your foot fall

Although I'm not quite show if it's grammatically correct (seems like it's possible, nevertheless), I like the variant "footfall" more. The footfall of days, of parades.

to which the wise and honest so may repair

Can it be not "so" but "soul"?

O mercy (?) to go out.

I like the following variant:
"O mercy! O God!
God!"