Page 2 of 11

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

PostPosted: 15 Oct 2012, 14:50
by Jordan~
Image

There. Tobias and the angel becomes a mother and child on the flight into Egypt.

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

PostPosted: 15 Oct 2012, 14:53
by Andrew
Well it's supposed to be Mary and the infant Jesus on the donkey, with Joseph leading. The print is particularly distorted so it is certainly difficult to see the child in Mary's arms. Are the bones are hidden in the reworking of the print?

I want to say kin rather than kid now, but kin doesn't rhyme with hid.

"land lone and levelled" is almost a direct quote from Shelley.

also:
IN Egypt's sandy silence, all alone,
Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws
The only shadow that the Desart 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.


http://www.potw.org/archive/potw192.html

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

PostPosted: 15 Oct 2012, 14:57
by cliquott
Thank you so much for recording this. I'm in awe. I reckon her bluesy/whatever efforts are not much of my liking though (I tend to skip Soft as Chalk), but her singing on this song is just mesmerizing. I'm completely in love with her !!!

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

PostPosted: 15 Oct 2012, 14:58
by cliquott
By the way, some Last.FM user commented on Joanna Newsom's page that her new album is coming out sooner than we think and that it'll have 14 tracks. True? False? ...

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

PostPosted: 15 Oct 2012, 14:59
by Andrew
false

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

PostPosted: 15 Oct 2012, 15:10
by Ann
Also:

In whose employ contaminant himself proceeded John's fall.

John Purroy Mitchel died falling from an airplane, so a reference to that? The rest of the sentence is weird though, can't figure out how it's supposed to go.

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

PostPosted: 15 Oct 2012, 15:12
by Andrew
yes! yes. oh god. falling from the airplane into thick snow. okay I'm typing this all up right now hold up

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

PostPosted: 15 Oct 2012, 15:21
by Ann
Jordan~ wrote:With Ozymandian and phosphoresce, I think we're seeing a return to her not being embarrassed to use her vocabulary. She toned it down a little after hydrocephalitic, spelunking, etc. on Ys, the words critics always quoted as exemplary of her style.

That "John's force" is confusing, too. I think "contaminant" could be being used adjectivally, to mean "contaminating", but I'm not sure. I seem to recall her using a similar word similarly in another song. So it'd be, "in whose employ, contaminant, [this older man] proceeded ______".


Oh! I think it's King Tamenend not contaminant.

this older man, confounding Tammany Hall,
In whose employ King Tamanend himself proceeded John's fall.

Totally has to be it, right?

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

PostPosted: 15 Oct 2012, 15:26
by Headless_Caboose
Wow. I just watched the vid for the first time and I'm a bit dumbstruck. I don't know any of the lyrics and haven't read any of the discussion in this thread but this song effected me in such a strong way. I just burst into tears about 2/3 through. Not sad tears mind you, but rather tears of joy at the fact that the world is often so depressing, trivial, and banal, and yet an artist is still capable of creating something brilliant, affecting and unexpected. Although I love the Diver's Wife, it seemed very close to her other recent material and didn't have such an immediate effect on me. I guess unconsciously I was perhaps expecting her other new material to be a simple extension of this. The lesson: never doubt Newsom's drive to continually push herself artistically. This song felt like a breath of fresh air or a beam of sunlight on this rainy day. I'm so happy this exists. When I witness an individual artistic breakthrough it gives me hope that humans are perhaps also capable of a collective breakthrough in a political sense. Things don't simply stay the same. But now I'm really starting to ramble...

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

PostPosted: 15 Oct 2012, 15:27
by Ann
Ha, direct quote from the New York TImes article about his death:

"He was frequently mentioned as having shown unusual daring."

Damn, and he's actually quoted as saying "That's all right; it's all over now," right before boarding the plane as a response to a man saying he was sorry he hadn't vote for him.

The article:

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9507E3D7103BEE3ABC4F53DFB1668383609EDE

Aaaaand, "It makes my hair stand on end to see Major Mitchel fly."

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

PostPosted: 15 Oct 2012, 15:28
by ursulabear
Well i just heard it for the first time.
Some thimgs are just too beaitiful for words.

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

PostPosted: 15 Oct 2012, 15:37
by Ann
Yes! It's

swearing that our hair stood on end
to see John Purroy Mitchell depart

Also -- anyone else hearing, "My cunt" after the Western front part...? Or is that just me?

and

Interred with other daughters,
in dirt in other potters' fields.

I'm glad I didn't miss out fully on the lyric party.

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

PostPosted: 15 Oct 2012, 15:50
by Andrew
The cause is Ozymandian.
The map of Sapokanikan
is sanded and bevelled,
the land lone and levelled
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.
Well, I swear 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 so 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 (?) to go out.
I will the hunter to decipher the stone
and what lies under. The city is gone.

So look and despair.
Look and despair.


okay! Ann, you're awesome. king tamanend was honored at the original tammany hall by a statue, which fits in with the ozymandian themes.

also haha cunt would rhyme with front certainly. She doesnt seem to have much reason for including the word tho.

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

PostPosted: 15 Oct 2012, 16:01
by Ann
The only other thing I can think of right now is that:

"The event is in the hand. / Oh God."

Is actually:

"The event is in the hand / o' God."

"O" can replace "of" in that way, right? I feel like the sentence makes more sense that way.

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

PostPosted: 15 Oct 2012, 16:04
by Andrew
I think it makes sense either way really and it doesn't really make sense that she'd contract such a pronounced syllable. I think I do prefer it as "hand of god" tho. I dunno

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

PostPosted: 15 Oct 2012, 16:12
by Andrew
It's really interesting that, after an album embedded in the lore and imagery and history of northern California, we're getting a song rooted in the city, specifically New York. I think that's really reflected in the academic word choices...

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

PostPosted: 15 Oct 2012, 16:49
by Jordan~
I hear O mercy, O God, and not an x sound.

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

PostPosted: 15 Oct 2012, 16:54
by Andrew
yeah okay. it's good enough probably. it's the flurry of water/ol flory walker bit that's really stumping me.

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

PostPosted: 15 Oct 2012, 17:02
by Jordan~
The King Tamanend bit works really well!

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

PostPosted: 15 Oct 2012, 17:27
by Andrew
from Ann's article, which I think is probably the key text here, alongside the two competing Ozymandias sonnets:

"My one wish," he added, "is to get over to the western front, where I can do some work that will count"


So I think the line is "for the western front where my work might count". Explains the cunt confusion...