Baby Birch

Some new thoughts ...

It's been bothering me that, if this song is about an abortion, the violent scene at the end can become almost nauseating. The skinning of a bunny already is unpleasant, but one can assume it is meant to represent something else. However, when that something else is a child, it can easily become disgusting. And I'm just not sure how I feel about relating the skinning of a bunny to the aborting of a fetus. But I still think it needs to be justified if this is not what the image is meant to invoke.

The scene reminds me of the line, "Blessing all the birds that died so I could live," and that line reminds me of reading an interview where Joanna eats a hamburger and explains that she used to be a vegetarian, and now that she wasn't anymore, feels like she should hunt or something, like if she can't kill an animal she feels like a hypocrite for eating meat, but she doesn't really think she could do it. I guess that idea of killing an innocent creature is definitely important here. At some point Joanna felt it was wrong to take an animal's life for food (assumed based on the talk about feeling like a hypocrite and what not, but I'm not quoting here) but then she changed her mind a bit, and instead, blesses the deaths so that she can continue to live (the "blessing" line can be applied to pretty much any sacrificial element of life). This bunny in Baby Birch is dying, presumably so that she can go on and live. It's could be that the narrator needed to skin the bunny in some way to sustain herself, promote her own life, like a meat-eater might. And it's interesting to note that Joanna has considered the necessity of death in order to feed her, but is still greatly uncomfortable with being the one to cause that death. Yet, in this song, the narrator does it, almost without hesitation.

Yet, the bunny is technically left alive and runs off. What does that mean? Is it left skinned, and the narrator is just standing there with a rabbit pelt? What exactly does that mean? Is the narrator harming the bunny out of necessity or cruelty? I don't think the album is beyond thinking of a woman as cruel, considering Joanna's relations of herself to Lola from Have One On Me, and the way Lola was not the calmest, most loving woman.

Anyway, just some ponderings.

Oh, someone on Milky Moon suggested the image that a skinned bunny almost looks like a baby. I agree that many small animals, when devoid of fur/feathers, take on a very eerie look like a tiny human body (I'm thinking of chicken specifically here, which looks so much to me like a headless baby on its back when cooked whole, I can hardly eat it). Is that an intended connection?