Blessing All the Birds

Help: sources on Joanna Newsom's creative and artistic processes

princepsfemina — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 19:58:00 -0400

Hi Newsom fans,

A week or so ago, byaspringforaspell posted awesome audio of Joanna Newsom playing “The Sprout and the Bean” on piano. This audio reminded me of other songs which she first debuted on piano and then later recorded on the harp for Have One on Me (see this video of “Ribbon Bows” and this video of “Baby Birch”). I am wondering if there are any sources in which Newsom details her creative processes. Does she often compose her songs first on the piano? Is this because it was the first instrument she knew? What motivates her to change the main instrument of the song? What other songs did she first compose/perform on the piano that I am missing? And in addition to that, does she compose lyrics first? Harp and/or piano melodies first? How much does she use from improvisation?

This is a personal interest of mine as I struggle to write music, but is also deeply related to my wider political interest in women and music. I want there to be more chronicles of the creative and artistic processes of women because too often people ignore and denigrate those processes.

Thanks in advance for any help!

—Melissa

UPDATE: An early piano version of “Only Skin.” Thanks odetodeb for reminding me! But she mentions at the end of the video that she needs to play much of her set on piano because of blisters. Hmmm. Makes me wonder if she practices all her songs on both harp and piano.

"And speaking of indie marquee names, the song on We the Common liable to generate the most chatter..."

princepsfemina — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 10:06:00 -0500

“And speaking of indie marquee names, the song on We the Common liable to generate the most chatter is probably ‘Kindness Be Conceived’, a sprightly and predictably pastoral duet with Joanna Newsom. (According to Thao, the two met somewhere that I assure you is not a soundstage for a ‘Portlandia sketch’ but an actual place in the world: ‘a Virginia Woolf-style farm paradise where women writers get their own cabins and write all day and meet in the evening for dinner.’)”

- Lindsay Zoladz for Pitchfork on Thao and the Get Down Stay Down’s collaboration with Joanna Newsom. My big question/reaction is: that camp most be one of the most glorious, feminist, and creative places on the planet, right? And, of course, this means Joanna is writing new material???

"I personally feel like a lot of the ways people (and critics…usually men) talk about Newsom..."

princepsfemina — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 14:00:00 -0500

“I personally feel like a lot of the ways people (and critics…usually men) talk about Newsom and discuss her music is really, really intensely sexist. Like that SO much of the language used for her (‘fey’, ‘precious’, ‘elfin’, etc) are really just code-words for ‘feminine.’ And related to this, she gets described as ‘crazy’ and as being some wild muse that needs to be hemmed in by the more ‘rational’/’intellectual’ male collaborators like Callahan, O’Rourke, Banhardt, and [Van Dyke Parks]. But the thing is, Newsom IS intelligent, and her music isn’t some ‘wild’ thing, nor is it ‘precious’ or ‘childlike’ or ‘fey’. It’s complex, intelligent, intricate, creative, technical and also very mature. It feels to me like Newsom is a very extreme example of people’s perceptions of gender conditioning and distorting their perceptions of art and artists. The Newsom I read about in reviews has NOTHING to do with the Newsom I actually encounter in her music. And the former seems like it’s just a myth mostly constructed from fear of recognition of women’s intelligence, creativity, and proficiency. They’d rather cling to a storybook wild pixie filled with some magical, incomprehensible female inspiration than actually accept that a woman can be every bit as capable a songwriter as their beloved Leonard Cohens, Tom Waitses, Bob Dylans and so on, and as capable a composer as their [Van Dyke Parkses]…Seems to me a perfect example of sexism prevalent in music journalism and ‘hipster’/indie sub-culture, amongst people who pose themselves as more ‘enlightened’/sensitive than the rest of society.”

- Natalie Reed, in conversation with me on twitter, on the sexist, infantilizing, and reductive media narratives about Joanna Newsom. She brilliantly synthesizes what we have been saying at Blessing All the Birds since the beginning.

I also think the “fey” words are code for “we do not want to actually engage with this music because doing so would actually mean acknowledging a woman’s words are powerful and intellectual and thus, threatening to patriarchy in music (and the world).” Those words, most importantly, bespeak of the fear of Newsom’s intense and subversive femininity.

Comment from Melissa: what was and what will be

princepsfemina — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 15:23:00 -0500

Rachel is leaving Blessing All the Birds, the blog she started with this fabulous post—a post which opened my eyes to the possibility of seriously writing about Joanna’s music and her media image and which allowed me to form wonderful friendships and correspondences with so many on tumblr. Rachel, in particular, has become an amazing friend and I am constantly in awe of her intellect, her heart, and her passion. She was gracious enough to invite me to the blog over two years now and I cannot thank her enough for the opportunity and for her continued support.

I, Melissa (the one who usually gets this blog into trouble), am not leaving, even though I will always feel a pang of regret and disappointment that things have turned out like this. To to be frank and open concerning my feelings about all this, the person I am is that I have always been a polarizing figure, so continuing to write on this blog to a vocally and united hostile audience is really nothing new to me (although people hating my blog so viscerally does, of course, affect me deeply). There are people who love what we write on Blessing All the Birds and yet, I admit it’s becoming harder to be uplifted by them. I do not understand how this became so personal and I do not understand how people expect me to sever feminism from its political and philosophical context. A rampant and inveterate criticism of the blog has actually always been that we are feminist and that “it’s just about the songs, stop boring us with your wider analysis and your politics.” And that, honestly, is pure, unadulterated malarky. Everything we do, every move our body makes is politicized. Literature has to be liberated from the ivory tower and exposed as political. When Joanna literarily sings of abortion, that is inherently politicized and that’s important.

There are absolutely things I have said on here that I regret and am mortified by (for example, I used to sincerely think only women had uteruses, which is not at all the case), but what was said the other day does not embarrass me in the least. I firmly believe that no one is free from kyriarchy (an intersecting system of oppressions like racism, cissexism, sexism, heterosexism, ableism, etc) and that it deeply and complexly affects all our interpretations of everything and that it creates abortion stigma, which is something we every day have to strive to unlearn. I just wanted to call attention to that system and show how although we are autonomous and free to interpret a song however we want, we are constrained and that that constraint sucks and that that constraint is what I fight against every day as I think and practice feminism. The post was an attack on the system which frames all of us, including Joanna’s corpus. It is a philosophical and political question and concern that was not a personal attack in any way. But, of course, how can people not take politics personally? For me now, I am taking criticism of us to heart because what is said about our words is often in no way political. And that hurts very personally. No one is under any obligation to respond to us politically, but it would make me feel less sad.

More generally, the problem with the Internet is that online debate has a problematic and dangerous anonymity and no matter how much Rachel and I have tried to personalize ourselves, it has done little to help. When I “debate” with somebody on here, I do not know anything about their beliefs, their ethics, their values, their age, their geography. That is a depersonalization I have always been uncomfortable with about this blog, but I always have opted to just say what I wanted to say because otherwise nothing will have been said. I do not know most of you and you do not know me. It’s imperative to remember that you do not know me.

On a more positive note, I cannot wait for Joanna to release new material. Hopefully when new songs are released, there will be more submissions to the blog and shared discourse. I love this blog and I am proud of how it has helped me even more deeply appreciate Joanna’s music and I cannot wait to experience new Joanna and new feminist analyses with all of you. To the future!

Hey other people in the Joanna fanworld, Rachel here. I just read over some of the stuff...

milklake — Sun, 13 Jan 2013 16:56:00 -0500

Hey other people in the Joanna fanworld,

Rachel here. I just read over some of the stuff that’s gone in the past few days after Melissa’s most recent post. Here’s what I want to say and I hope you will read it.

I started this blog a long while ago because I wanted to talk about Joanna Newsom’s music with other fans and I wanted to talk about it seriously. I wanted to talk about the way her music makes me feel personally and I wanted to talk about the way she approaches topics that really interest me, like femininity and women’s sexuality and love and death and the pain of existing within the limits of the human body. I started it because I wanted there to be a place to organize those types of song interpretations and maybe encourage some discussion (this was before I knew that such a place already existed- the milkymoon forums).

I’m sad because it didn’t really become that. Instead, it’s become a wedge between fans of Joanna’s music and it’s become personal. People think that the things we post are directed at them specifically.

I don’t want people I don’t know to harbour anger or hate towards me or something I’m involved in. I’m just not interested in arguing or defending. It’s just not who I am and it’s not how I want to be known in this fan community or in any community I am involved in.

There are some posts I am incredibly proud of on this blog and I’m thankful that it has allowed me the opportunity to hear from other fans who think about Joanna’s music the way that I do.

With that, I am letting Blessing All the Birds go.

Thanks for reading and commenting and contributing and encouraging.

Rachel :)

maybe i don't interpret baby birch as a song about abortion because that's just not my interpretation????????????????

princepsfemina — Sat, 12 Jan 2013 21:10:00 -0500

[Question in reference to this post about “Baby Birch” and abortion.]

The point of the post on abortion stigma was to display how problematic interpretation, taste, attraction, and thought is in kyriarchy. We are taught and socialized from birth by the media, by literature, by education, by government, by the justice system, etc. to only value white, cisgender, straight, thin, able-bodied, Christian, rich men. Everything we do and say and think is a part of that system and even acknowledging that we are so limited and framed by a system of many oppressions is radical. But, of course, that does not mean we do not make choices and that we are not autonomous. For example, I know I do not want to engage in capitalism at all, but the only way to not engage in capitalism at all would be to live in the woods, off the grid and how in the world has capitalist education prepared me for that? Is there a course I missed at public school about hunting and tracking animals and deserting your entire life? So, I make choices about how to engage with capitalism and at the same time, it must be said that I have many more choices than most people. Some people do not have the privilege to decide to say “hey, I’m not going to shop at Walmart” because that is the only store in their damn town as a result of years and years of unchecked capitalist hegemony. Hence, the limited choices issue I was talking about.

More importantly, acknowledging that those who are not white, cisgender, straight, thin, able-bodied, Christian, rich men matter and have value is even more radical. Every day for me is a process of unlearning all I have been taught by kyriarchy and and every day is a process of learning about how it operates and to liberate myself and others from it. Yes, people can interpret things (especially Joanna Newsom songs) any way they want (as mentioned in my initial post), but I was just drawing attention to the fact that we are socialized and conditioned by many forces. To name a sort of trivial example in my life, I am super critical of heteronormative narratives about romance, but yet, I eat that stuff up (Downton Abbey, anyone?). I am queer and yet queer romances do not excite me in the same way heterosexual ones does. And do you know why that is? It is because I have been conditioned since the time I was born to think like that. I have been conditioned to see my worth only in relation to heterosexual relationships. I cannot help that I feel like this, but I hate it and recognizing this was such a huge, AUTONOMOUS step for me. Liberation from kyriarchy means that people will have full autonomy over themselves and we are absolutely not there yet.

—Melissa

huerca zafada: one of my weird death hills concerns Joanna Newsom fans who are...

princepsfemina — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 21:31:00 -0500

huerca zafada: one of my weird death hills concerns Joanna Newsom fans who are...:

desliz:

one of my weird death hills concerns Joanna Newsom fans who are extremely resistant to the idea that “Baby Birch” is about an abortion, and who write lots of words about how this song is OBVIOUSLY about lots of things like… things (maybe she’s just really sad she broke up with a dude before they got to make babies :( did you ever think of that) and it’s JUST SO COMPLEX NO ONE CAN ASSIGN A MEANING, IT’S UNPOSSIBLE and how dare you imply my fragile ethereal elf queen might write anything that reaffirms abortion as a necessary choice sometimes blah blah blah

I mean, have you even read the lyrics? it’s not vague at all, you’re just really fucking resistant to the idea that abortion could inspire a complex, emotional song that simultaneously examines regret about limited possibilities and offers no apology for the decision made, because you’re choking on pro-life propaganda that implies that no one could think about an abortion for two seconds and go through with it, much less produce art about it

long story short, these fans can kiss my ass

I completely understand and appreciate this rage. Anti-abortion rhetoric and beliefs make my blood boil to dangerous temperatures. The very root of my feminism is about absolute self-determination and bodily autonomy and if people do not have absolute control of their uteruses, they are not liberated. And true liberation will not happen until abortion is available to everyone, for free, on demand (many other things have to happen as well, of course). Abortion stigma, even from those who work within and for reproductive justice, also makes my blood boil. There is this extremely problematic rhetoric going around which amounts to: “abortion should be safe, affordable, and rare.” First, as mentioned, abortion should be free and on demand, not “affordable.” Second and more importantly, “rare” stigmatizes the act of abortion and attaches a treacherous ethical value on it. “Rare” implies that abortion should be eliminated and that if the world were a perfect, utopian place, abortion would be “bad.” Someone should be able to have an abortion NO MATTER WHAT THE CIRCUMSTANCES. There should be no ethical judgments placed upon abortion as some sort of “necessary evil.” The “rare” rhetoric also implies that people have to explain WHY they had an abortion. No one should have to explain anything to anyone about their bodies and we should stop trying to police them by demanding an explanation. I would get an abortion no matter how I became pregnant. I just never, ever want to be pregnant. That’s it. The demands for explanations make some situations appear more legitimate than others. All abortions are legitimate. None should be policed. None should be shamed. All are about controlling one’s body without apology.

We live in a society that absolutely and constantly stigmatizes marginalized people (e.g. people with uteruses) when they control their bodies. Marginalized people controlling their bodies is a direct threat to kyriarchy and we are taught from the moment we are born to uphold kyriarchy and it takes years of unlearning to even acknowledge that there is kyriarchy. And I know it is the case that sometimes when people interpret “Baby Birch,” they are reacting within that stigmatizing, kyriarchal framework. We live in a world where it is much more acceptable and admired for a person to say they deeply regretted their abortion than that they were deeply relieved by their abortion. There is so much more room for abortion stigma and apology than abortion acceptance and joy and that is so deeply problematic. I am not going to call out people whom I believe interpret “Baby Birch” in this way because I am much more critical of the “system” than the individual cases. I do not want to police people’s interpretations, I just want people to be aware of the system of interpretation and what voices and opinions there are room for in the kyriarchy. I am not at all saying that those who interpret this song as a miscarriage are wrong (it absolutely could be and I think “Only Skin” is in part about a miscarriage rather than an abortion). I am discussing those who absolutely deny that “Baby Birch” could be about an abortion because of the cultural narratives and stigma around abortion. I just want people to unlearn abortion stigma. That would be great.

Moreover, it is completely valid for the original poster to bring up how if “Baby Birch” is about an abortion, it muddles the dominating narratives about Joanna Newsom and her (expressions of) femininity. Perfect ladies like Joanna don’t talk about abortion and they certainly do not get them! Controlling one’s body is radical in the kyriarchy and talking about it openly is just as radical. Too often I see that some people have no idea how messy and dark and troubling Newsom’s music can be, especially on Ys and Have One on Me. And people are resistant to see that because that complexity does not fit their preconceived notions of femininity. Ladies cannot talk eloquently about death, sex, mortality, obsession. They can only talk about love!!! Just take a look at some of the reviews of Have One on Me. They are pitiably uncritical and recycle sexist tropes and they are so and do so because of misogyny. That is a real concern and I do not think we throw that concern away because the original poster is angry. I am angry, too! Anger is a valid reaction to misogyny.

The Baring and Burying of Bear

princepsfemina — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 21:33:00 -0500

[CONTENT WARNING: ABUSE, DOMESTIC VIOLENCE, RAPE, SUICIDE]

I have been having thoughts about the refrain of “sooner or later, you’ll bare your teeth” in “Monkey & Bear” for quite some time now. I wrote an early draft of this mini-essay on my iPhone while on a disastrously long subway ride to Queens a month ago and it’s taken me this long to actually set it down officially.

As mentioned previously on this blog, “Monkey & Bear” is probably my least favorite from Ys musically and aesthetically, but its lyrics have always been a treasure trove for feminist analysis. Some of what I will talk about below responds in part to Rachel’s most wonderful essay on Bear, clothing, and performative femininity.

At a literal level, the refrain refers to Bear and her (in)ability to eat because of Monkey’s abuse. Monkey is controlling her food consumption as a way to fetter her and exploit her. He explicitly begins their “liberation” from the farm with fear-mongering about eating (But, Ursala, we’ve got to eat something/ And earn our keep, while still within/ The borders of the land that man has girded).

But the refrain also bespeaks of Monkey’s fear of Bear and the revenge she may take against him. Monkey knows she is fierce and ultimately capable of violence. And that is always the fear from the abusers that be: what happens when women take revenge after the kyriarchy has controlled their bodies and freedoms for so long? What happens when there is a violent reversal? The common tactic of abusers and the kyriarchy alike is to try to squelch any ability to externally fight back. Monkey attempts to do so through emotional and physical manipulation, always making his promises seem simultaneously attainable and unattainable (Oh, the hills are groaning with excess/ Like a table ceaselessly being set/ Oh my darling, we will get there yet…Your feast is to the East, which lies a little past the pasture). He promises he loves her and that she will eat once he feels she has earned that love enough through bodily coercion.

But once Bear finds a way to control her own consumption, it becomes clear that she internalizes, rather than externalizes, the violence she is capable of. Her act of simultaneous violence and liberation is the shedding of her body as she uses it to have her fill of food. She rids herself of her old identity after she obtains what she most desired as Bear, what she most desired when Monkey abused her. For Bear, it is an independent act to reclaim control of her body, but is it too much for her to do it through literal and physical revenge against Monkey? Just as Monkey enforced femininity upon her, her death itself is hyper-feminine. It is one of internalized violence, it is one of excess, food, and luxury (Fell off, as easy as if sloughed from boiled tomatoes…Now her coat drags through the water/ Bagging, with a life’s-worth of hunger, limitless minnows). But, of course, Monkey feared all along that she would wreck masculinized violence against him.

As the song ends, the refrain repeats, although slightly changed (“sooner or later, you’ll bury your teeth”). We recall Monkey’s promise and ostensibly, if we are not listening closely enough, we believe Monkey’s promise is fulfilled. But the lyrical alteration manifests what Monkey’s refrain meant and portended all along: her doom. The “baring/burying” conflation represents the constant tension between the liberation and the eradication of self for female bodies after abuse, which I have been thinking a lot about in terms of Lucretia, the Roman matron who after her rape commits suicide, consciously asserting it as an act of liberation, submission, and elimination.

Nevertheless, we must remember that Bear (and Lucretia), despite her limited circumstances and fate and gendered expectations, defined the terms of her first and final “baring/burying,” even if we would have wished for a different fate, for a different victim of violence than Bear.

Hi Newsom Fans, Recently I can’t stop thinking about the role that Joanna’s music has...

milklake — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 12:48:15 -0500

Hi Newsom Fans,

Recently I can’t stop thinking about the role that Joanna’s music has played in my life not only as a source of inspiration and comfort, but as a catalyst to personal reflection and growth.

I was wondering if any fans would be interested in joining me in writing personal essays on how Joanna’s music has impacted them. Are there any particular songs or lyrics that have helped you, resonated with an experience you went through personally, or somehow helped shape you? Any aspects of Joanna’s work that you find particularly empowering?

I’d love to hear your stories.

Rachel

Hi, I've been recently reading your entries on Joanna's and Kate Bush' and Björk's comparisons with all that's magical and witchy. I've found them really interesting, and there's a thought that passed though my mind that I wanted to discuss or clarify: Witches don't exist per se. What does exist, is the enormous number of women who died because of the unfair accusations of a sexist society. And these women, I believe, have always been women who stand up for their rights, (...)

princepsfemina — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 20:33:00 -0500

(…) and did things that only men were allowed to do, and therefore disturbed people that lost their power over them. Witches, in reality, were nothing but forceful women who weren’t understood, and generated fear due to their intense pasion and love and freedom that were so restricted for the twisted society of that era. And in a way, Joanna, Kate and Björk are like that, and to look at them as witches is not that offensive. Maybe being a witch doesn’t always got a negative connotation.

Hi, thanks for the great question! I agree about the innate power of witches and I realized a little while ago how much empowerment I actually derive from reading the history and culture of witches. And I understand the impulse for people to call Kate Bush and Björk and Joanna Newsom witches. They are powerful, they are special and talented, they tap in to and use feminine energies that are important (but misunderstood), and they are extremely independent and smart. But my main criticism around that moniker for them as artists is that it is too often cast upon them by people and critics who don’t actually analyze and engage with their femininity and its power in a critical and clear way. They cast that moniker on them because they are being reductive and unwilling to explain what “witch” means in a literal and figural way and also many times, I think they are intimidated. Witches directly threaten kyriarchy and when one is called a witch, it’s a warning to those who want to uphold oppressive structures. And we also cannot divest that moniker of its sexualization. Witchcraft and (illicit) sex have been tied together for centuries and I think that is part of the impulse to give them that moniker, too: it’s just another facet of how objectified and sexualized female artists are in this society. Witches are desired and hated because of their sexual independence. Transgressions are attractive, but they also must be squelched.

Let’s keep on talking about this. Anyone else have any witchy stuff they want to discuss here?

Bone From The Void: Ys

princepsfemina — Sun, 04 Nov 2012 10:37:00 -0500

Bone From The Void: Ys:

bonefromthevoid:

I was thinking in the shower just now; the reason why Ys is my favorite album is probably structural. It is very structurally clever, especially from a lyrical perspective. We know Ys is only 5 songs and only 5 characters. And if we couldn’t figure that out on our own, Joanna gave it away in a magazine interview. There’s all of the great mythology, theology, and literary references, but really the key to unlocking the whole thing is in the characters. The multi-faceted nature of the characters is what makes it beautifully complex and orderly at the same time. I feel like when a lot of people give Ys a once through they hear pretty words and nature imagery, but don’t realize how organized it is. If you know what themes go with what characters it all falls into place. This is my interpretation of how that works on a very basic level:

Joanna Herself (Narrator): Merope, Water, Divinity, Immortality, Doves, Astrology, Bear, Existentialism, Creativity, Free Will, Christianity, New Testament

Joanna’s Lover: Sisyphus, Fire, Mortality, Hell Imagery, War, Soldiers, Wood, Lightning, Earthiness, Craftsmanship, Doubt, Control, Monkey, Classicism, Old Testament, Industry

Their Child: Bell, Remorse, Dove, Actual musical cue of a pinging bass note in Emily and Sawdust, failed synthesis, swallowing waves, sin, desire, sex

Emily (Joanna’s sister, an astrophysicist): Christ, Science, Astronomy, Knowledge, Love, Comfort, Nature, Paradox, Meteoroid

Cassie (Joanna’s deceased friend, whom the album is dedicated too): the cosmia moth, death, night, light, ascension, revelation, successful synthesis, nirvana, heaven, edification, enlightenment, fire and water

All of these things are woven together in such a way that it doesn’t seem like the narrative is being forced upon you. The map of symbolism allows Joanna to step out of linear storytelling. On each layer of interpretation the characters are represented differently, but it is always the same players. Some characterthemes overlap in relation to each other, like doves. (And Merope the goddess is also associated with doves btw) That’s absolutely fascinating to me.

This is absolutely fabulous, although, as always, I am skeptical of biographical readings of Joanna’s corpus. Joanna, to me, is different from “Joanna.” But anyway…we have never done this type of organization as systematically on Blessing All the Birds (even though we have thought about it), but we have previously discussed the overlapping connections manifest on Ys, particularly in regards to representations of femininity and sexuality and desire. Check out our archive.

I personally would LOVE/KILL to hear more religious aspects you have noticed (Christ, Old vs. New Testament, etc.) and the schools of thought (Classicism and Existentialism, etc.) you have believe different characters represent. I’m still very vaguely thinking about the psychoanalytic and Freudian impulses throughout Ys. Must. do. serious. research. and. have. more. than. three. times. the. time. I. actually. have.

A new, gorgeous Joanna Newsom song, everyone! After I decipher...

princepsfemina — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 08:07:00 -0400

A new, gorgeous Joanna Newsom song, everyone!

After I decipher the lyrics (which I actually think have a curse word in it!!!—oh shit), expect a feminist analysis sometime soon. I don’t know about Rachel, but for me, I assume a Joanna Newsom song is feminist until proven otherwise. And even if not “feminist,” it will be fun anyway to catch some thematic continuity and to maybe theorize about the big themes we might see on the new album.

"The Diver's Wife:" Water, Pearls, and Femininity

princepsfemina — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 22:35:00 -0400

So, of course, I have been thinking about the newly-surfaced Joanna Newsom song over the past couple of weeks. I haven’t contemplated it as much as I would like because of MY HUGE ZOMG PH.D QUALIFYING EXAM, but it’s quite beautiful and wonderful and I hope to hear more live versions of it soon. I am not convinced that this a song she wrote recently. Its themes are so similar to her Ys period that at first I was a little dismayed with it (but—let’s be real—that didn’t last long).

Water for Joanna Newsom means so many things. In “Emily” and “Cosmia,” it’s a place of discovery and epiphany and family and grieving. In “Monkey & Bear,” it’s a place where Bear can finally escape Monkey, let go of her bodily shame, and take control. It’s freedom. In “Sawdust & Diamonds,” the water is where the narrator can possibly drown her desires and it again promises liberation. In “Only Skin,” water is the place where the narrator discovered loved, lust, and desire and the drowning, which we find in “Sawdust & Diamonds,” becomes more bodily for the lovers and represents the dissolution of their relationship and the impossibility of them staying afloat. Their relationship is never truly healed as they drown in waters of their sexuality. We must also consider the deep and complex interplay between fire and water in this song (both, oddly, representative of their desire and the destruction of desire). And in “Colleen” the narrator was once free in the water and is encouraged on land to forget about that freedom and to practice enforced and repressive femininity. Both Colleen and Bear, female-identified figures, find freedom in water and restrictions on land. Water offers fluidity and land offers rigidity.

Rachel has already excellently discussed the role of water in “The Diver’s Life” and it’s connections to the gender-binary and gender roles. And let me say here that I, too, am going to concede that these lyrics are tentative and that I am completely willing to eat my words later. And I most definitely have to read The Pearl by John Steinbeck and do a comparative analysis in the future. But, from what’s available and especially considering her previous corpus, we again see in this song that water is the source of discovery, adventure, liberation, and bounty for the diver. The man can easily enter its depths and easily take advantage of its freedom and opportunities, but the women, including the narrator, are restricted just to the shore. The women on the pier represent the hope the patriarchy gives women that they can experience this freedom, that they can be liberated, that they can capture knowledge from its depths. Hope is an effective tool of manipulation. The diver wishes that narrator will be “deceived” by this hope and by her gender role. But she asks tough questions of life generally and it’s lack of bodily autonomy (“How do you choose your form?…) and she desperately wants to enter the water to take control and to get the pearl.

In this song, the interplay between the water and the pearl, and what they are symbols of, is key to understanding that very desire of hers. Water offers (to men) a pursuit, the pursuit of truth and knowledge and it speaks to how those notions are tangible prizes for men to possess and with which to tantalize women (represented by the pearl). We see this same hegemony over and exploitation of truth and knowledge in “Go Long” and The Bluebeard’s Tale” generally. Bluebeard (and men generally) possess knowledge (and thus, power) that they do not want to share with women and the curiosity that women would naturally have to experience that knowledge leads to their deaths/destructions. The narrator knows her pursuit of water and the pearl will be her death and she is painfully aware that “woman is a lie,” but she is going to pursue that pearl, that diver, that water, and her death anyway (“I’ll hunt the pearl of death to the bottom of my life/ And ever hold my breath ‘til I may be the Diver’s wife) and she will not blame patriarchy in totality for her fall (“and the divers are not to blame…”). Her desire for the pearl is also heavily feminized because she connects it so directly with her love for the diver. She strongly desires to explode her gender role and become “masculine” by seeking the pearl but at the same time she revels in being a woman by hoping to be a wife. This is a theme we have seen throughout Newsom’s work: the constraints and pleasures of femininity.

I am not convinced that the pearl means death for the male diver, as well. It most surely means death for her, the woman. For a woman, the hope for knowledge is acceptable by patriarchal standards, but actually pursuing it and understanding it is never acceptable. Both men and women share the need for knowledge, but for one, the pearl is a reward and for the other, the pearl is death because it signifies a gender reversal, it signifies a reversal of power, it signifies transgression of the “rules that bind us here.” But is the threat she poses tempered by her strong femininity? Will that protect her?

An Interpretation of Joanna's New Song, Based on Speculative Lyrics

milklake — Sun, 01 Jul 2012 12:03:26 -0400

Photo Source: John William Waterhouse, found online at Femme Classic Art

Now that most of us have heard the new song (eternal thanks to those who recorded and were kind enough to share), and are in full agreement that it is stunningly, heartbreakingly beautiful, I’d like to propose a reading of the lyrics. I use the word “lyrics” with hesitation, as there’s still some debate around what Joanna actually sings* and I have been conflicted as to whether an interpretation based on speculative lyrics is an insult to Joanna’s writing. Consider this fair warning that I may have misheard portions of the song that would directly alter this particular interpretation of it. For clarity’s sake, I’ve marked lyrics that are disputable by placing them in square brackets.

The song covers so many of the themes and images familiar to Joanna fans: love and death intertwined, frustration at the limitations of the human body, mortality and impermanence, birth, questions about the [Seer]’s role, water, drowning, the moon, love and death, love and death, love… and death. Most interesting to me, though, is the way the song confronts and dissembles gender roles** and the concept of “man” and “woman” in love.

Division and separation run throughout the song. The lovers are separated by water and land, and the narrator references the “infinite divide” and a “rift spanning distant shores”. Her world, it seems, is divided into “the divers” (water) and “the women on the pier” (land) and, of course, the [Seer]/Fate/God, here represented by the personified moon that brings water and land together in an “infinite backslide”. The narrator laments that fact that, although we have no say in the form we take, we must “abide […] by the rules that bind us here”. In other words, we do not choose our gender, but are forced to “abide” by society’s rules of how men and women present themselves. We are all caught in this trap, this invisible barrier that says each gender is static and must behave in particular ways.

The most interesting portion of the song is the verse that defiantly begins:

Woman is a [lie]/A woman is a [lie] /You do not take her for a [sign/siren?]

The entire concept of “woman” is a lie (wow!). The true division between men and women is the ridiculous behavioural attributes that we consider “natural” to each biological body. Women are presumed to be naturally deceitful and have been perceived as the downfall of men for much of human history. In the lyrics, Joanna counters this by pointing out that “the divers” (and in case this isn’t clear, “the divers” are Man) are also capable of deceit (“A Diver is my love and I am his, if I am to be deceived”). Joanna’s lyrics warn us not to take women as a [“sign”] (or perhaps, as a [siren], which would nicely tie together the idea of women as a symptom of man/their downfall). Women do not cause the downfall of men. In reality, women and men are like “an anchor on a stone”, both are sinking, doomed to drown eventually. Similarly, men are “not to blame for the rift spanning distant shores”. There is no blame placed here on either men or women for the harm done to the other.

This gets to the crux of the matter. Men and women are no different, we are both doomed. We will all die, regardless of the roles we’ve played on this earth. There is no seperation between the sexes when it comes to mortality. Men and women are both consumed by the mortal pursuit of the pearl. We seek love because we feel it will save us from our own mortality. Fate/the [Seer] constantly pulls us together, like the moon pulling the water to the [arid] land in the daily tides. We come together in “birth” (sex/conception/the promise of creating “life”) and we come together in death. The image of the pearl ties this together. It is, at once, a symbol of Love, a jewel given to a lover, and a symbol of Death, the treasure at the bottom of the breathless sea. The narrator realizes the connection by the end of the song and seems tragically, painfully reconciled to her own drowning, the unescapible fact that to be the “Diver’s wife” means death for both.

A few days after first listening to the song, I came across the Mary Oliver poem, “In Blackwater Woods”, whose final lines I feel perfectly capture Joanna’s notion of Love and Death and their inescapable connection:

To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

Thanks for reading my thoughts!

Rachel

____________

* Lots of excellent fan discussion on this milky moon thread

** Here, gender roles are binary (water/land, man/woman) although I would argue that Joanna often plays with the mutability of gender roles by making her lyrical characters morph from one world to another (see: Colleen, and even the “diver”, who is ostensibly of the land, but spends most of his time below the sea). In fact, I think Joanna’s worlds are full of characters who are trapped by the limitations of the gender binary and long to escape their biological bodies for a truer form.

ohheybill: Aaaaaah Joanna Newsom performed a new song last...

milklake — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 18:02:15 -0400

ohheybill:

Aaaaaah Joanna Newsom performed a new song last night and I am dead.

Joanna fans rejoice! Joanna’s new song (performed last evening for the very first time live) has leaked and it is glorious. Upon first listen, I’m already seeing connections to some of her other songs, particularly Colleen. There are themes of death and life and the importance of naming and water. I’ll have to do a closer listen, but was so excited I couldn’t resist posting. What are your thoughts?

"The Bloody Chamber" by Angela Carter and "Go Long" (Once Again)

princepsfemina — Mon, 28 May 2012 13:43:00 -0400

So, I re-read “The Bloody Chamber” by Angela Carter recently and seriously, whenever I read it, I always think about how it will help to illuminate “Go Long” and many of the themes of Have One on Me. (I suppose I am ultimately more interested in Joanna Newsom and hence, the Newsom blog and not the Carter one.) The connections between these renditions of the Bluebeard myth are almost too hard-wired now. I know Blessing All the Birds is always going on about “Go Long” and Bluebeard and all that, but the questions raised by Newsom and Carter as they explore the folk tale affect me so personally as I constantly navigate and contemplate my own femininity and its existence under the imperium of the patriarchy.

The thing that truly terrifies me about both Carter’s and Newsom’s take on Bluebeard is how enforced femininity or at least femininity expected and demanded by a powerful male figure is presented as dehumanizing. The more vain the narrator becomes in “The Bloody Chamber,” the more materialistic she becomes, the more she dependent she becomes on the riches of a powerful man—the more she is complicit in dehumanizing herself and the more she becomes like an object for Marquis to possess and violate. The more she is corrupted by greed the more corporeal she becomes and the more she is like a piece of meat for Marquis to slaughter. She swears early in the story that before she met him she was never vain or very feminine. Marquis does not believe he truly owns his wives until he dominates them with luxury, beds them in the bed of his patriarchs, and kills them for the curiosity he detects in all of them. Curiosity is only another form of greed. In the end, femininity in “The Bloody Chamber” in part becomes about the capacity to be corrupted and dehumanized and to be rendered vulnerable to violence. This becomes even more apparent to the audience because the possessions he gives the narrator directly reflect violence he will inflict upon her (his first gift to her is a ruby choker and he chooses to murder her by decapitation). But does femininity always render one a victim? Carter at the very end of the story subverts that notion and makes the maternal figure the narrator’s salvation against male predation. There is so much to unpack about this short story with all its contradictory impulses.

In “Go Long,” in the very first stanza we learn of how much the narrator has relinquished her bodily autonomy and has become a possession. She is carried in on a palanquin, “made up of the bodies of beautiful women”—women who have faced the ultimate dehumanization and the ultimate loss of bodily freedom. And she has been “brought to this place to be examined…” perhaps to see if she has become feminine enough, if she has enough curiosity. We learn later that the narrator’s ankles are bound in gauze, which may illuminate why she was carried in a litter. Is she no longer free to escape? Can she not run away from the violence? Has her surrender to femininity incapacitated her? But if we think of the narrator being static throughout Have One on Me, it becomes very hard to decipher the narrator’s feelings about enforced femininity and the violence it manifests. The narrator throughout is also very keen to highlight the pleasures she derives from femininity and how much it defines her identity, especially in “Does Not Suffice.” The narrator in “Does Not Suffice” emphasizes her possession of the feminine garments over and over again (“I will pack up my high-heeled shoes…”). The clothes are all hers and she uses them to help her cope with her loss and to remind the person she loved “how easy [she] was not.” Instead of the clothes dehumanizing her, they “re-humanize” her. To the narrator of Have One on Me, femininity does not automatically translate into possession and loss of self and violence. Femininity is very capable of affirming her humanity. But throughout Have One On Me such destruction is always disastrously close. Can femininity ever have one meaning? One type of consequence?

Ribbon Bows and Fancy Clothes: Joanna Newsom on Fashion

milklake — Sun, 13 May 2012 20:05:13 -0400

I originally began this post as something of a love letter to Joanna Newsom’s clothing. Her closet is, no doubt, the stuff of 1970s, full skirted, chiffon-swirled dreams. Over the past year or so, Joanna Newsom Fashion, byaspringforaspell and Milky Moon forum user Claire have thoroughly researched and documented Joanna’s beautiful stage costumes and provided sources for Joanna-inspired adornments, all happily consumed by admirers of her aesthetic world. Joanna herself has been spotted in the front row at fashion shows, shopping at vintage clothing stores, on the streets ofNew York wearing designer trench coats, and featured in numerous fashion-focused print magazines. I realized, as I thought more about it and as I struggled to siphon my thoughts onto paper, that this topic is more a series than a single post.

Joanna Newsom isn’t just a clothes horse or a dress-maker’s mannequin. She’s an intelligent and thinking human being whose relationship to clothing is as complex as her harp rhythms and lyrical worlds. In this series, I hope to provide a compendium of quotes and lyrics from and by Joanna that deal with clothing and fashion, along with my own commentary and that of other fans and/or critics. It will look at the role that clothing plays in the lives and performance of female artists, the way that clothing is used to shape and shame the female body, the way that womenfolk use clothes to shape themselves and how women speak about their clothing in relation to their identities.

Here is an overview of the organization of this series (although I may not cover the topics in this particular order), as well as some of the topics I’d like to touch upon:

Clothing and Identity – This post will focus mostly on Joanna’s early days and her love of Gunne Sax dresses, specifically the way in which those particular dresses have forever shaped the popular perception of her as a “fairytale princess”, “wood nymph”, and “pixie” etc. etc.

“Fashion”, Backlash and Internalized Sexism – Looking at Joanna’s work with major fashion designers and the “Fashion” world. How does she speak about “Fashion” and how do others speak about her relationship to it (particularly other women). I will use a reading of the song Ribbon Bows to explore some of her ideas here.

Clothing and Performance/Artistic Expression – I’ll use quotes from interviews, as well as lyrical references from Have One on Me and Monkey and Bear to discuss the role that clothes play in “performing femininity”. I will also touch on the packaging aesthetic of Have One on Me as it relates to the overall artistic vision.

Clothing and the Male Gaze – Here I’ll challenge the assumption that women’s fashion choices are made solely for the purpose of sexual appeal. I’ll discuss how body ideals have been imposed upon women and how women have challenged those impositions in order to shape their own bodies. I’ll look at lyrics from Does Not Suffice, Colleen, and Monkey and Bear to see how Joanna subverts the idea that women’s bodies are not their own to shape and clothe in whichever manner they choose.

Clothing and Materialism – This post will briefly discuss the way that indie culture has commodified the female body and the role that Joanna’s image played in the “bohemian”/ cultural appropriation trends of the past decade. Also, I’ll talk about Joanna’s vintage aesthetic and the implications behind it.

Clothing and Practicality – Looking at the way that Joanna herself discusses clothing. It’s not all dress up and fairytales.

I look forward to writing about this over the summer. I hope you’ll enjoy it and, as always, if you have any suggestions or topics you think I’ve missed, I’d love to hear them!

Rachel

"There's Blood on the Eye:" Femininity, Masochism, Identity, Shame, and Pleasure in "Have One on Me," Part I

princepsfemina — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 11:42:00 -0400

[EDITOR’S NOTE from Melissa in 2013: I never picked up the second part of this intended series. Mea culpa. Maybe sometime in the future.]

The other day on the train, I broke down and cried over “Have One on Me.”

This is a pretty common occurrence for me, especially when I haven’t listened to Newsom in a long time (i.e. two weeks). Most of the time, I cry over Newsom’s music because it’s just too amazing to even be conceivable, but sometimes I cry because her words on the feminine condition are too powerful and too close to home. And I don’t even mind weeping in public over music. It’s part of my personal feminist agenda to reclaim crying for female-identified persons and to legitimize it as a radical action.

Have One on Me speaks too profoundly about the dependency, self-sacrifice, self-destruction, masochism, pretense, and shame that can arise from femininity. But it also speaks of the pleasures that femininity can bestow upon people. As a female-identified person, I have (fortunately and unfortunately) experienced the full spectrum of femininity. And the narrator on Have One on Me does, as well, although it most often seems she is exorcising herself of its detriments and traps.

Much of what I will speak of below and in the future, we have already touched upon on at Blessing All the Birds. My recent series “‘When I Broke My Bone,’ Parts I and II,” which detailed the images of physical dependency and self-victimization and its links to femininity, will most definitely have some analytical overlap. But nevertheless, I wanted to more specifically explore the themes of self-destruction, the expectation of self-sacrifice, the expected erasure of identity, the empowerment of identity, the pleasure, and even the performative tendencies which derive from traditional femininity and how those themes manifest themselves in many of the songs in Have One on Me.

As a result of too much verbiage on these topics, this will become a series that we all can digest a little at a time, although, admittedly most of my efforts will be expended on my analyses of “Easy” and “Have One on Me.” I shall also be exploring “No Provenance,” “In California,” “Go Long,” “Kingfisher,” and “Does Not Suffice.” But for now, let’s look into “Easy.”

“Easy,” as a song, speaks to the expectations for femininity the narrator of Have One on Me feels she must fulfill. She must be a “little life-giver.” She must sacrifice herself and her “life” to a man and to love. She also discloses a huge part of her identity as a woman (“I was born to love”). This speaks to how femininity frames identity as giving of oneself to another. It stipulates anti-individualization and stipulates possession by another and this is something that comes “easy” to her, for she is “easy to keep.” But one must admit that the song is also dripping with irony and casts a critical eye at these expectations of femininity and the double standards involved. She does not take this foray into love demurely and demands to love the man in this story (“I was born to love and I intend to love you”). There is a shift in the song towards the middle, where the narrator’s sincere confessions become bitter condemnations of someone who is unwilling to erase his identity in a similar way and to return her strong feelings (“Who died and made you in a charge of who loves who?”).

In the song’s ending, the narrator presents a startling image of herself, an image which has always enthralled and flummoxed me. She compares herself to Bloody Mary, a Bloody Mary one can always rely on to appear when called. Before that simile, though, she says “I am barely here…” This is a self-conscious admission of her feminine erasure of identity or at least of posturing of it (there’s the very real possibility that she is only telling him what he wants to hear or what she thinks is expected of her as a woman in this situation). Bloody Mary, as a supernatural figure, is an apparition—barely there—and only conjured when desired. The narrator discusses here her effacement of herself, but also threatens the man she is pursuing with that very effacement. She lulls him into thinking she is “barely here,” but reminds him that her femininity does not mean she is harmless. Her self-erasure is because of his desire for it, but what does it mean to present herself as such a threatening figure when she can only threaten when beckoned (“Speak my name and I appear”)? Does she only feel the need to harm because of his desire and possession of her? Is such violence only prompted by her willing sacrifice of herself? Is this the last defense of herself against full possession? I can hardly answer these questions and it’s something we should all consider together. Another important question that I will consider in future posts is the nature of violence. Does the narrator, especially in “Go Long,” consider external (rather than self-inflicted) violence gendered? Is the violent woman, like Bloody Mary, making a masculine statement?

What’s more, this comparison to Bloody Mary is the first clear instance of the narrator exploring the pretense and performativity of femininity. Being feminine is to be a blank slate onto which men can project their desires and onto which women control their personae. As femininity demands an erasure of self, multiple selfs become possible. And, of course, this Bloody Mary appears in a mirror, one of the ultimate symbols of vanity and thus, femininity. The Bloody Mary image, moreover, as Anna so shrewdly pointed out to me, alludes to the narrator’s battles with dependency on alcohol, which we shall explore in our discussion of “Have One on Me” for next time.

Newsom and Freud

princepsfemina — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 11:24:29 -0400

Hey everyone!

As I mentioned a while back, I’m going to be working on exploring sex and sexuality in Ys through the lens of Freudian theories on the death drive and the pleasure instinct. This is most definitely something I am going to work on during the summer because right now real life responsibilities are interfering with my creative and interpretive endeavors and I took off the summer in order to “study” for an important exam. But before I embark on such an analysis, I just wanted to thank some of our readers (and also my friends outside of the Internet) who suggested books for me to read. So, thanks to my friends Nicky and Rebecca and thanks to our readers teenagelightning, sisterswallow (Anna who regularly contributes to Blessing All the Birds), and shoiyer.

Here are the suggested reading materials (I am sure this enough for now, but feel free to suggest some more):

Denial of Death by Ernest Becker
Feminist Therapy by Laura Brown
Feminism and Its Discontents: A Century of Struggle with Psychoanalysis by Mari Jo Buhle
“The Lesbian Phallus” in Bodies That Matter by Judith Butler
Gender Trouble by Judith Butler
Feminine Psychology by Karen Horney
The Traffic in Women by Gayle Rubin
Female Authority: Empowering Women through Psychotherapy by Florence L. Wiedemann and Polly Young-Eisendrath

Unpacking “Femininity”, Childhood, and Fairy Tales in Joanna Newsom’s Work

milklake — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 10:52:06 -0400

This blog began with a post about Joanna Newsom and “enchantment”, a sort of rant that grew out of my increasing frustration over the portrayal she received in major press, particularly the conversations surrounding her “fairy princess” image.

As time has gone on, I have come to realize and even accept that for some listeners, this image is part of the appeal. I even admitted, in my original post, that I find Joanna “enchanting”, that there is something otherworldly and fantastical about her music that speaks to me as a lover of fairy tales, folklore and all things associated with “childhood”. This blog project has allowed me the space to “unpack” some of those associations, to understand exactly what it is I find appealing about Joanna’s particular representation of that world of innocence (as it is so often erroneously perceived) and how she uses traditional folk forms, references to “children’s stories”, rhymes, and fable to convey sophisticated commentary on feminist issues.

I’d like to write a more polished piece on this subject and am opening the floor to any suggestions, discussion, or recommendations our readers might have. Here are some questions I would welcome feedback to, but feel free to just generally comment on this topic.

Can you think of articles or interviews in which Joanna discusses these topics?
Are you personally drawn to Joanna’s fairy tale image? Do you know why?
How do fairy tales and childhood play into Joanna’s statements about “being a woman”?
What are some of the references you have found to childhood, children’s stories or fairy tales in Joanna’s work?
How do you visualize Joanna’s world? What comes to mind when you are listening to her music?

Thanks, Joanna fans and friends!

Rachel