¤ milky moon ¤

I don't know if it comes through as well in the recordings but I definitely heard "re-renders" with an "eh" sound this time. Neither makes sense though. Maybe she's singing nonsense words just to fuck with us

Probably! I give up! (It is an "eh" sound in there, though, you're right. )

She managed to sing the parts in question even more incomprehensibly :p

Maybe she's not got that part worked out yet so she just sang, "Raraaaanarerrouner".

Jordan~ wrote:Maybe she's not got that part worked out yet so she just sang, "Raraaaanarerrouner".

Haha, seeming plausible...

Every time I see this thread I read, "Our National Treasure: Look and Despair"

Could it be "the rear-enders"? Not sure how it would make sense, but it fits the pronunciation in the most recent video. And I feel like it's at least slightly more of a real word than "re-renders".

sean wrote:Could it be "the rear-enders"? Not sure how it would make sense, but it fits the pronunciation in the most recent video. And I feel like it's at least slightly more of a real word than "re-renders".

Wow, that's the first interpretation of it that sounds like it might actually be it. Not sure what that would make the rest of the line though. I have a gut feeling it might be something to do with "renders" though since the song is so much about painting, but I don't know.

I have a gut feeling it might be something to do with "renders" though since the song is so much about painting, but I don't know.

If that's the case even "re-renders" can be explained. "Render" means "a first coat of plaster for a masonry surface", "re-" is a prefix used with the meaning “again” or “again and again” to indicate repetition. So "re-render" may be a neologism denoting the numerous archeological layers of the territory which is now Washington Square and used to be a cemetery. It corresponds pretty well with the topic of layers in painting and history, but seems too complicated to be true.

Alex Ysoltsev wrote:

I have a gut feeling it might be something to do with "renders" though since the song is so much about painting, but I don't know.

If that's the case even "re-renders" can be explained. "Render" means "a first coat of plaster for a masonry surface", "re-" is a prefix used with the meaning “again” or “again and again” to indicate repetition. So "re-render" may be a neologism denoting the numerous archeological layers of the territory which is now Washington Square and used to be a cemetery. It corresponds pretty well with the topic of layers in painting and history, but seems too complicated to be true.

Ahh! That actually does make a lot of sense; I hadn't thought about it that way. It may be a bit convoluted, but so far it fits more with the context than "rear-enders". I guess we really won't know until the official lyrics are published with the release. Even if she performs it again and someone records it, I don't think it will become any clearer.

Alex Ysoltsev wrote:

I have a gut feeling it might be something to do with "renders" though since the song is so much about painting, but I don't know.

If that's the case even "re-renders" can be explained. "Render" means "a first coat of plaster for a masonry surface", "re-" is a prefix used with the meaning “again” or “again and again” to indicate repetition. So "re-render" may be a neologism denoting the numerous archeological layers of the territory which is now Washington Square and used to be a cemetery. It corresponds pretty well with the topic of layers in painting and history, but seems too complicated to be true.

Well, 'render' is also just a term that means to paint/draw an image, especially to paint light and shadows to suggest a 3D form. There's actually 're-rendering' going on in the song, when Tobias and the angel are painted over the mother and kid. Could also be "there he renders"

Trying to guess the meaning of this line we have always regarded it separately or with the previous line. Maybe we should take the next line into account?
Although, as we already know, it's a part of the text written on the Washigton Square Arch, it always seemed to me to be a little bit out of place (on the other hand, the other part of text "let us raise the standard to which the wise and the honest can repair" is changed a little bit and this way fits perfectly in terms of both syntactic structure and meaning). But what if there is no fullstop after this line? What if this quotation (and it is the exact quotation!) is the object of the transitive verb "renders" in the previous line?
So can it be?

The snow falls above me
And the rain there renders
THE EVENT IS IN THE HAND OF GOD.

Because this way the whole passage makes a perfect sense.
What do you think?

That's definitely a good way to help understand what she might be saying, since 'renders' also means 'to present for consideration'. Just listened to the Pitchfork version again, and suddenly could hear it really clearly ... Could it be as simple as:

and the renderer renders:
THE EVENT IS IN THE HAND OF GOD.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PG2_vYs7JLs

I can hear it there too now. It seems like she's just putting a lot of notes into "rend". "Reh-heh-heh-heee-eh-enderer"

http://www.joannanewsomlyrics.com/album ... r_as_sung/

Has this been posted? Note: "The map of Sapokanikan", which really makes sense.

Yeah, renderer renders! Nice! Fixing it now on the site.

'The cause is Ozymandian;
The map of Sapokanikan is sanded
And beveled, the land lone and leveled,
By some unrecorded and powerful hand

Which plays along the monument
And drums upon a plastic pad:
The brave men and women, so dear to God,
and famous to all the age is rad!

(Sang, 'Do you love me? Will you remember?')
The snow falls above me.
The renderer renders:
The Event is in the hand of God.'

I think the setting of these first three quatrains in the song (I'm assuming Joanna has written them as quatrains) has the narrator, most likely Joanna herself, sitting in Washington Square Park as she thinks about the American history of the area, the construction and constitution of "American history" itself, monuments covering previous, equally complex and constructed monuments.
The fact is that these monuments, as military memorials, re-write history with a particular tone. The unrecorded and powerful hand is that of a white man -- 'unrecorded,' because he must assume the given-ness of the right to his land and experience, he need not write his name because God has done so in advance. So, he effaces the previous map, the previous rationale of the land and its inhabitants, and sets his own take on the encounters of history by venerating his allies.

I think a sense of displacement motivates Joanna to write this song. Growing up in Nevada City, she perhaps looked to ghost towns for a sense of the abandoned past. But in New York City, abandoned pasts are continually reworked and covered over by the changing architecture of the city. The memorial stands out as a constant fixture, but it too has its own grim and shifted history, perhaps more haunting than the ghost towns of 'Swansea'.

It seems clear now that she's saying, "the Renderer renders" - do you think? And that she does say "go out", but I still can't figure out the preceding words, can anyone else? I keep wanting it to be something like "all lights -something something- go out"...? And is it - "...the hunter to decipher the stone, and what lies under, now [that] the city is gone.."? It's beautiful (and terrible in the way it's meant to be, I think) to see her singing those lines walking through the city.

butterbean wrote:It seems clear now that she's saying, "the Renderer renders" - do you think? And that she does say "go out", but I still can't figure out the preceding words, can anyone else? I keep wanting it to be something like "all lights -something something- go out"...?

I doubt this is the real lyric but it sounds sort of like "Oh ask the on-call" so that's what I'm singing when I sing along now. In the live versions I heard it as "Oh ask the old guard."

Excellent analysis Teenagelighting! Was just discussing with some friends the theme of displacement and erasing of culture in the song, whether it be about American Indians or artists/minorities. The fact the she runs in front of Cafe Wha? makes me think that she is also mourning the culture that once thrived in NY but has given way to gentrification.

The Fire Department of New York operated a fireboat named John Purroy Mitchel from 1921 to 1966.[10]

I wonder if this is in any way connected to the appearance of the fire truck at the end of the video while she's singing about John Purroy Mitchel?

the renderer RE-renders, right?